Comment

Comment by Chris on May 5, 2012 at 1:14am

Thanks for the link to the book Poutine. I wonder how much information was destroyed during wars, competing religious and political ideologies, and cultural genocide. 

Comment by Godless Poutine on May 2, 2012 at 4:43pm

Hi Chris.  Yes they took some liberties with the Hypatia story.  In a sense you cannnot blame them since there is very little left concerning her.  Apparently she was 60 when she was killed but that didn't stop painters from coming up with this picture of her apparently just before she was killed.

Notice where she is... "defiling"a Catholic altar with her long flowing hair... Okay actually I think the altar is defiling her!

Plenty of artists and authors held her up as a hero - a great martyr.  In fact it was opinion among many scholars that her death was the last dying gasp of Classical Antiquity and heralded in the Dark Ages.

So, sort of like Socrates or Jesus Christ, what really happened will forever be shrouded under the many layers of added embellishment to the story - mostly as praise.

http://archive.org/stream/cu31924032702098 

Comment by Chris on May 2, 2012 at 1:28am

I watched the Agora link and one of her death. It's too bad they didn't show the way she was really reported to be killed. The entire movie is on YouTube. I'll watch it later. I hadn't heard of this movie before. It's nice to see that it was made. With all the good stories available it's beyond me why movies are remade.

Comment by Adriana on May 1, 2012 at 7:05am

Thanks for the link, Chris! I bought an e-reader precisely for that. I downloaded The Origin of Species for free. Most of the classics are free. I know a movie is not history but for an entertaining watch, and a movie that depicts Christians as anti-science brutes, watch Agora, on Hypatia's life.

Comment by Chris on May 1, 2012 at 12:49am

Thanks for the Flat Earth Myth links Adriana. For some reason I never bothered to look it up. I see what you mean by the book covers. Hypatia sound like an interesting woman. Her story sounds tragic. Here's a digital version of Lucretius, On the Nature of Things. Makes me want a digital book reader. 

Comment by Godless Poutine on April 30, 2012 at 9:46am

Thanks Michel and Adriana for the most awesome discussion!  I truly dig the woodcut pictures lovely pictures!

Comment by Michel on April 30, 2012 at 9:21am

The Progression of Human’s Portrayal Of Planet Earth And The Moon

Over the course of human history, the vision and portrayal of Earth and its Moon has evolved. At each new milestone in astronomy, a new portrait of the Earth has historically always been produced. Read on to discover some of the many portrayals of our world that have been painted, sculpted, carved, and photographed throughout our long history.

One of the earliest portraits was first produced in 550 A.D. by Cosmas Indicopleustes in his “Topografia Christiana.” Indicopleustes was a Greek merchant and later monk and his book included this world map expressing the notion that world was flat. In addition to the focus on a flat world, the heavens form a lid over humanity.

Muhammad al-Idrisi,  in 1154, the Andalusian geographer, cartographer, Egyptologist and traveller, drew this round world map in his world atlas. It pictures the Earth with mountains surrounding it.

In 1246, this diagram appeared in L’Image du Monde (“The Image of the World”), a book written by Gautier de Metz. It portrays Earth as spherical and is one of the first in this fashion.

Between 1459 and 1463, Mappa Mundi, an adaption of a T and O Map or Beatine Map, was created. It was published in La Fleur des Histoires. A T and O Map or Beatine Map consisted of three sections of land (Africa, Asia, and Europe) surorunded by a “round” ocean. Debate over whether the artist believed  Earth was spherical or disc consists still today.

In 1493, the Cosmos Imagined by Hartmann Schedel was published in his book “Liber Chronicarum.” The painting is extremely symbolic: Earth is in the center of the painting with the Sun and stars surrounding it in perfect spheres. Additionally, God and a number of angels overlook the portrayed solar system.

More HERE

Comment by Adriana on April 30, 2012 at 9:05am

Yes, I need to download Lucretius book myself! No, never read Charles Kingsley's Hypatia. She was on my mind because she's mentioned in this very good book, I'm reading "The Swerve". Check out the discussion I posted on our Group Books, here. 

Comment by Godless Poutine on April 30, 2012 at 8:42am

Hi Adriana.  I can actually remember writing an argument *against* Lucretius back when I was still a theist!  He's on my reading list and his book is free these days - so another good reason for me to pick it up!

I have a special soft spot for Hypatia.  Not sure if you've ever read Charles Kingsley's "Hypatia".  (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Hypatia) ... at the end he tries to fob it off onto the mob and remove culpability from the Church... he needs to make his obligatory nod to Christianity ... but it's a pretty good historical novel.   Apparently he was in correspondence with Thomas Huxley concerning agnosticism as well.

Comment by Adriana on April 30, 2012 at 7:18am

I second Chris! We want to hear about "On the Nature of Things"

Also, @ Chris: The educated Christians in Europe may not have thought the Earth was flat. But who knows what the common people thought. The church chose to systematically ignore and/or destroy all the works of philosophy/science that imperiled their nonsense beliefs, and they also chose to keep the common people as uneducated as possible. Think what they did to the library of Alexandria (and to Hypatia). A lot of knowledge had to be "rediscovered" after the Middle Ages.

Some contemporary Christian writers and philosophers are trying very hard to purge Columbus and also Medieval Christian thinkers from the common impression that they were anti-science. Look here. Look at the cover of the books they promote. They seem to have a clear agenda, with their books proposing the the origins of modern science lie in the Christian Medieval thinkers. I don't buy that for a second. The origins of modern science are much, much further back. And the origins of "modern" science are not exclusive to the Western world.

According to Wikipedia, the "flat Earth" story was invented by the Protestants to discredit the Catholics in the 17th Century. Ha! A case of the pot calling the kettle black.

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