Flat Earth Societies

     That's what conservatives are accused of running, as you all know.  Recently I was poking around in John Dewey's How We Think, one of those works by the mild-mannered destroyer of classical education that shows the uses of believing that people who lived long ago were imbeciles.  Dewey says that before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, everyone believed that the earth was flat.  Now they know it's round.  Actually, it isn't round, either, and Columbus thought it was sort of egg-shaped, but you get the point.  In the old days, Dewey says, in his long descent from Kant, people didn't think on their own, which is to say they didn't perform empirical experiments, but accepted "truths" from tradition, "truths" such as the flatness of the earth.  So, in teaching children, he says, in his even longer descent from Francis Bacon, we have to sever them even from the opinions of their own parents, so that they may learn to think on their own.  "So that they may learn to think on their own," wrote thousands and thousands of teachers, nodding in unison.

     Yet people of Columbus' day knew perfectly well that the earth was round.  So did people of Dante's day.  So did the ancient Greeks and Romans.  The only prominent thinker I know of who did not believe, necessarily, that the earth was round, was the materialist and empiricist Epicurus.  He thought the earth might well be a flat disk, because it sure looked flat.  He didn't care whether it was flat or round -- he was not a mathematician or an astronomer, Epicurus -- so long as we didn't believe that the gods were in charge of it.  But Dewey didn't even know enough about the Middle Ages to come up with a decent slander against them.  How any editor could let him get away with the embarrassing mistake is hard to see.

     It's one of the characteristics of the "progressive" strain in the West, the slander of one's ancestors.  A strange phenomenon, really, and as far as I know it's pretty peculiar to the west.  Architects in the Renaissance coined the term "Gothic" to describe the most splendid buildings ever to grace the earth; the term means "fit for barbarians."  The philosophes of the eighteenth century, when they were not laughing at the messiness of Shakespeare or the barbarisms of Dante, looked at the art of Tintoretto, Rubens, Carracci, Caravaggio, Reni, Borromini, El Greco, Bernini, and all the rest, and called it "Baroque," meaning "grotesque".  We for our part have had some hearty laughs at the supposedly straitlaced and intellectually dormant Victorians -- from that age that gave us Newman, Arnold, Macaulay, Ruskin, Mill (well, we could have done without Mill), Browning, Carlyle, Dickens, Lord Acton, and Pater.  In fact I think you could define "modern progressivism" as that ungrateful urge to exalt oneself by belittling one's forebears.  Or, to look at it in a more malignant light, it is the urge to separate the little people from their cherished traditions, so that you can do with them what you like.  "No, we don't believe that the earth is flat!  We just follow every word that comes from the mouth of CNN."   

Comments

[windmilltilter]

"the barbarisms of Dante" -- a reference to Milton's Note on the Verse introducing Paradise Lost? Not that Milton was a 18th century philosophe...

And I wouldn't be surprised when the boomer generation gets a taste of their own medicine...I can just hear the student of the class 2108 whispering to his fellow, "Can you beleive they bought into "global warming"?

[Tony Esolen]

Don Q:

Yes, the deprecation of Dante set in pretty early. You see it already in the Renaissance, even in Italy -- though there it's a red state / blue state split. By the 18th c., he's wholly in eclipse. I too am waiting for the laughs to come my generation's way (I'm actually near the end of that generation)....

[windmilltilter]

You may be part of that generation, its true, but one of the benefits (indeed one of the greatest benefits) of a classical liberal education is its ability to free men from the constraints of the narrow year, to see the wide, and coherent vision of the centuries...you taught me that.

I think you get an honorary exoneration. Lets hope I do too from the blunders of my own times. O tempore, o mores...

[Kamilla]

Don't the boomers run the academy now? If so, I think it will take another generation or two to weed them out and start hearing the line, "I can't believe they bought *that*!"

Of course, right now, when anyone says the magic words, "Global warming" I laugh and think about the new ice ages scares of just a few years ago.

And yes, despite him being the subject of the only work I've actually gotten published, I agree we could have done without J.S. Mill.

Kamilla

[Kamilla]

Speaking of JSM and flat earth societies - isn't Dewey's sin one of the sins of religious feminists - trying to cast off the past and acting as if those who have gone before just didn't understand oh, so very much?

Kamilla

[James Kabala]

Incidentally, the claim that Columbus had to fight the idea that the world was flat can be traced back to Washington Irving in his biography of Columbus. It had its origins more in militant Protestantism rather than in general anti-Christianity.

Although he was a footnote to history and by no means an "important figure," one can't help but be amused and fascinated by the infamous Cosmas Indicopleustes, who argued at great length that the universe was shaped like the Tabernacle described in the Torah, with the Earth as the table of shewbread. Unfortunately, anti-religious historians have treated him as a representative figure, which he certainly was not.

Cosmas's work can be found here: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/pearse/morefathers/files/cosmas_00_0_eintro.htm

Nowadays, nearly all scholars recognize the falsity of the claim. Wikipedia, for example, has an eminently fair article on the history of belief in a flat Earth, and a separate article on the history of the myth. I also found an article communicating the remarkable fact that the famous picture of a man sticking his head through the earth-sky boundary dates from 1888! (It was apparently not originally meant as a hoax, but was misinterpreted as authentically medieval after being frequently reprinted.) Unfortunately, the falsity of the myth seems to have not yet trickled down to the general public.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammarion_woodcut

[JRM]

"Unfortunately, the falsity of the myth seems to have not yet trickled down to the general public."

That's very unfortunate, because the measurement of Eratosthenes was one of the great accomplishments of science and should be studied in every high school geometry class.

http://www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/observatory/eratosthenes/

[Judy K. Warner]

I don't know Latin but I know the word for world in the Latin Bible is orbis. The Hebrew word in the psalms also refers to roundness.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Incidentally, the claim that Columbus had to fight the idea that the world was flat can be traced back to Washington Irving in his biography of Columbus.<<<

Those who opposed Columbus also knew that the world, she be-a round, not-a flat. Where they disagreed with him was over the circumference of the earth--they thought Columbus had underestimated by about 10,000 miles. They were right. Columbus tried to justify his explorations by claiming he could find a shorter route to Cathay that also avoided the Turkish-dominated Levant. His opponents said that, while there may be a way to get to the Orient going East, it would be too long to be practical. Until the arrival of the steamship and the building of the Panama Canal, they were right about that one, too. Columbus lucked out because the Americas were in the way between Spain and China, so he could redeem his error by opening up new, exploitable lands for European conquest.

[James Kabala]

Yes, Mr. Koehl, that was my point.

[GL]

You mean the earth is not flat? The next thing I'll probably read is that the earth is not the center of the universe. What kind of Christian blog site is this? ;-)

[Darrel Hoerle]

I seem to remember C.S. Lewis saying something about "chronological snobbery", the temptation to dismiss the wisdom of previous eras.

[redcrosseknight]

"So that they may learn to think on their own."
The idea that education exists to produce a student who has "an open mind" has long bugged me. We learn from Lewis and Chesterton that the purpose of an open mind is to be closed again on something solid and nourishing.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I seem to remember C.S. Lewis saying something about "chronological snobbery", the temptation to dismiss the wisdom of previous eras.<<<

Actually, every year archaeology reveals more and more of the ancient past, overturning much of that snobbery. The Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans were doing stuff thousands of years ago that we have only learned to do again in the past century or so. There are still a lot of things they could do that we simply cannot--the secrets were lost in the mists of time.

[Joe Long]

Even one weekend with 18th or 19th century "Living History" folks is often sufficient cure for 21st century arrogance. Yet the assertions and easy assumptions people commonly make about the past, show that chronological snobbery is rampant (and that critical thinking is an uncommon virtue).

I was part of a "Living History" program for Fort Jackson recruits ("Basic" has become much friendler than MINE was years ago). And a young woman in uniform hefts my 1851 Enfield, grimaces, and asks - with all seriousness -

"What did women soldiers carry in the Civil War? Because this rifle is too heavy."

God preserve her, she might be overseas right now - toting an appropriately light rifle, I hope.

[Mairnéalach]

Where is the philosopher of this age?

The reason Dewey's philosophy has so much traction is that, on the surface, he is correct. We do indeed possess more scientia than previous people did, by and large.

We may even "know" a lot more than Jesus of Nazareth did about certain things (depending upon how much mundane knowledge he emptied himself of--that is something of a mystery which I doubt any Christian could completely solve).

However, that knowledge buys us nothing, for none of us love as Christ loved. Our great learning is so often for naught.

The real issue for people like Dewey, and the other idolators of our age, is not that we know more than our ancestors did.

It's that, without their knowledge, we'd know nothing.

We stand on the shoulders of giants.

The modern snob's root sin is ingratitude.

[Bobby Neal Winters]

You say the world is not flat. I say "Wichita."

[Christopher Hathaway]

The next thing I'll probably read is that the earth is not the center of the universe.

You would never hear that from me, because any place where our Lord became flesh, was born and died and rose again, is most definitely to me the center of the universe.

Oh...did you mean spatially?

Who cares?

[Steve Nicoloso]

Well, the earth is the center of the observable universe... Take that Galileo!

[Ann]

"No, we don't believe that the earth is flat! We just follow every word that comes from the mouth of CNN."

LOL, oh so true...

[YaknYeti]

You say the world is not flat. I say "Wichita."

Bobby,

I've heard of a precocious grad student who set out to empirically verify whether Kansas is flatter than a pancake. After measuring the average surface roughness of numerous pancakes and scaling it appropriately, he found that the old gag was, in fact, correct.

[Bisaal]

Regarding the respect for tradition and ancestors, do the American Conservatives conservative with regard to their diet?.
Do they try to eat the same as their ancestors and prepare the food in the same manner?.
Or do they rather go along with any new fad from anywhere in the world?

[Kamilla]

Bisaal,

Sorry, but my grandmother's native food has been ruled a violation of basic human rights.

Anyone for lutefisk?

Kamilla

[Joe Long]

"Regarding the respect for tradition and ancestors, do the American Conservatives conservative with regard to their diet?
Do they try to eat the same as their ancestors and prepare the food in the same manner?.
Or do they rather go along with any new fad from anywhere in the world?"

The American conservative, my friend, is an interesting animal. You see, a libertarian perspective and a certain peculiar "tradition of innovation" are among the things we try to "conserve". So at its heart there's a certain paradox; conservatives here, for instance, are often big fans of technology - particulary military technology.

And even without that affinity for innovation, the American conservative is likely to have several ethnicities in his background, each with separate cuisines. (I've got Irish, Scots-Irish, English, German and French in discernible amounts and who-knows-what-else otherwise. Should I eat potatoes, whiskey, kidney pie, sauerkraut and a snail...?)

Personally I take considerable enjoyment in the occasional feast featuring traditional dishes from my Southern ancestors (like collard greens, and dove or quail that you have to pick the occasional shot out of)...but day-to-day I don't even eat grits, and though I want to send all of the illegal Mexican immigrant back over the border, I certainly want to keep all of the legal Mexican restaurants right here.

[Judy K. Warner]

American tradition is that we are a nation of immigrants. So we traditionally welcome any and all cuisines. I lived in Washington DC in the 1980s and enjoyed the proliferation of Ethiopian, Afghan, El Salvadoran and other ethnic restaurants as immigrants left their troubled homelands and sought a way to earn a living here. We used to joke that we hoped Canada would never go communist, as then we'd have to put up with Canadian food. (Apologies to Canadians here.)

[Stuart Koehl]

You could always tell when the Democrats were in power: a whole bunch of countries would fall to the Communists, and a new batch of ethnic restaurants would pop up in Georgetown--which, as they used to say in Pravda, "is no coincidence".

And American conservatives are, for the most part, classical Liberals. That's one reason why we're so much better than Europeans.

[Carbonel]

Thank you, JRM for the reminder about Eratosthenes: Did you know that he was not only a mathematician and geographer, but a librarian?

There is a book, The librarian that measured the earth which is both a good story about his accomplishment and a good introduction to the math involved.

[Michael]

>>Anyone for lutefisk?<<

This Lutheran says: uh, lutefisk is a violation of human rights, too.

[Tony Esolen]

Lutefisk: The piece of cod that passeth understanding.

[JRM]

"Thank you, JRM for the reminder about Eratosthenes: Did you know that he was not only a mathematician and geographer, but a librarian?"

I did not know that. I think that's fabulous and will be sure to read the book.

It turns out Eratosthenes pretty much got the right answer: 25,000 miles, only 100 miles off.

Later Greek recalculations got a significantly lower number, 18,000 miles. Although Eatosthenes's number was the most widely accepted, Christopher Columbus argued for the shorter distance, the better to obtain Isabella's funding of the project, as Stuart Koehl pointed out. If not the first, this has to be one of the better examples of government contractors misrepresenting specs on the optimistic side to justify their reach into the goverment purse.

[YaknYeti]

Hey, what's wrong with a little lutefisk? Many people overcook it so that it dissolves into a puddle of amorphous goo, which is atrocious. But when it's a quivering mound of amorphous goo, covered with white gravy and butter, it's pretty good!

Mind you, I didn't touch the stuff as a kid... But I decided after surviving some questionable sushi meals in Japan that no cooked fish could harm me, and have acquired the taste for it.

[Bisaal]

I was thinking more of American innovations rather than imported ethnic cuisines.

Also as CS Lewis observed, there is one thing evolving within a tradition and another is
making revolutions outside that tradition.

Demonising traditional foods such as butter
and innovating corn oil is not evolution within a tradition that any conservative should be comfortable with.

[Michael]

>>But when it's a quivering mound of amorphous goo, covered with white gravy and butter, it's pretty good!<<

Rat poison covered in white gravy and butter is pretty good, which isn't too far off the story...

[Judy K. Warner]

Bisaal, you have hit the nail on the head. Demonizing butter is a perversion as are promoting soy as a healthy innovation, demonizing animal fat and fat in general, promoting skim milk, and putting corn syrup in everything. These things have been very bad for our health as well as our spirit. Fat makes people happy because it is soothing to the nerves and tastes good. It does not necessarily make people fat. I am not sure of the exact reasons for these changes, but I know that processors of corn and soy have conducted campaigns to promote their products which included demonization of other products. I think your approach is correct -- our traditional foods, although they are from various ethnic groups, are based on what people were able to make or grow in their traditional farm heritages, and perverting our food has also perverted these heritages.

[Joe Long]

"Demonising traditional foods such as butter
and innovating corn oil is not evolution within a tradition that any conservative should be comfortable with."

Ah, now I see what you meant. Yes, the majority of conservative folks that I know, ignore most modern food-crazes. (Some even ignore doctors' orders, which I don't recommmend.) When they do focus on food, it tends to be free-range, or "organic" food, or lots of vitamin pills. True enthusiasm results in extensive gardening, beekeeping, or in extreme cases, buying goats.

I think that many of our cultural food superstitions (and that's what I think of them as) are wrapped up in an unspoken delusion of immortality. Me, I'm gonna die sooner or later; and while I don't intend to eat quite enough sausage (for instance) to hasten that day unduly, I'm going to eat enough to enjoy (I hope) a good number of breakfasts and pizzas in-between.

[Tony Esolen]

I'm with everybody here on the stupidity of modern fads in diet. First, most of them turn out to be worthless or downright harmful; second, it's not like I'm staying here on earth for good, is it? It's also caused me to be deeply suspicious of scientific claims about things we still know very little about (weather, for the most obvious example). We can chart the rise of malignant melanoma along with the rising use of sunscreens -- I have heard that UV rays are implicated only in those skin cancers that don't mean a whole lot, while MM appears anywhere on the body; and that vitamin D is protective against MM and against colo-rectal cancer.

It would be fun to make up a list of tasty things that were supposed to be bad for you, but are in fact good: wine, chocolate, butter, red meat, whole milk, eggs, olive oil, sunlight. And then a list of things that were supposed to be good for you, and aren't really, or are bad: margarine, high-carb diets, skim milk, egg-beaters ...

[Judy K. Warner]

What kind of delusion could we have been under to have thought that sunlight was bad, at least in moderation? Isn't that disrespectful to our Creator? I admit to having swallowed that one for a time, but I couldn't have been too serious about it because I let my daughter run around outside without sunblock all the time, even before I changed my mind. Or maybe it's because I'm lazy.

[Kamilla]

I missed something - since when has it been found that skim milk is bad for you.

OTOH, I recently read about a finding that women who are having fertility problems should stop consuming fat free dairy products and start drinking 2% or whole milk, etc.

My favorite fad to despise" The Blood Type diet. I tried it and became anemic on it! And now, it is rather sad to see it being promoted on "Christian" television - especially considering it is based in evolutionary theory.

Kamilla

[Judy K. Warner]

Skim milk has more sugar than whole milk and thus contributes to our national sugar addiction and resultant diabetes epidemic. Because of the sugar and lack of fat it causes a rise in blood sugar and subsequent drop, causing hunger and overeating. It is terrible for children because the fat is needed to absorb various things, including the vitamin D that is added to milk, and also for the myelinization of the nerves and the development of the brain.

Please recall that earlier generations drank only whole milk and there was very little obesity.

[Kamilla]

Oh, well, I should have known that!

What about lactose intolerance? I wonder about that - as I drink the lactose-free milk which has the sugars already split up. But in my defense, I do get the 1% (grins).

Kamilla

[Bobby Winters]

>>Please recall that earlier generations drank only whole milk and there was very little obesity.<<

((Clears throat in professorial manner)) Here I must step up and make some remarks concerning the difference between correlation and cause. Earlier generations also spent less time in front of the tube guzzling soda pop. They spent more time clearing fields of stumps and walking to school in the snow uphill both ways through feral pigs and longhorn cattle.

[Maureen]

And there were women soldiers in the Civil War. They didn't enlist as women, and they were generally either skinny like boys or big hefty agricultural young women with muscle. But then, there were a lot of boys who enlisted in the Civil War pretending to be men, and a lot of emaciated city menfolk.

There was nothing like doing a woman's work, in the old days, to put muscle on your arms. Think about doing the wash or stirring the pudding!

[Judy K. Warner]

Bobby, I take your point. But I must add that you knew those people because you were a country boy. My family was pretty sedentary and bookish as were other people I knew. Everybody drank whole milk and nobody was obese. The point isn't direct causation as much as a statement against the demonization of whole milk. Nowadays many people are horrified at the idea of giving kids whole milk while thinking nothing of letting them pour sugar and corn syrup down their gullets all day long.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>And there were women soldiers in the Civil War. They didn't enlist as women, and they were generally either skinny like boys or big hefty agricultural young women with muscle. But then, there were a lot of boys who enlisted in the Civil War pretending to be men, and a lot of emaciated city menfolk.<<<

The average Civil War soldier was about 5'7" and weighed in at 140 lbs. Most were suffering from some form of malnutrition or another, most also were suffering from parasitic diseases. Even if they didn't get shot or die from camp diseases, most would barely last into their late fifties.

Women soldiers in the Civil War, as in earlier conflicts, were noteworthy only by their scarcity. In other words, they had novelty value. Since their numbers barely reach into the hundreds out of more than three million men in uniform, they can hardly be called representative of their sex.

Soldiering then (as now) was hard work. Troops got from place to place mainly by walking, all the while carrying a load that averaged about forty pounds (and could be considerably higher), eating bad food, drinking contaminated water, sleeping in the open on the ground, in wet woolen clothes infested with lice, in the hope of giving some other guy the opportunity of blowing your head off with a musket ball or cannon shot. It wasn't much different in World War II, when Bill Mauldin tried to describe the infantryman's day by saying one should get up before dawn, having slept in mud-filled hole in the rain, put on a pack weighing about fifty pounds, and go out on a long hike on a muddy trail, falling face down in the mud at random intervals, then getting up and continuing the hike. At the end of the hike, dig a deep hole with a small shovel, half-fill it with water, get in, eat cold food out of a can, then roll over and go to sleep. Repeat.

Campaigning quickly sifted out the fit from the unfit (something we try to do today in basic training). The old, the too young, the sick, the weak--all dropped out by the wayside, incapacitated or killed by disease, exhaustion, exposure, starvation or depression. In real wars (as opposed to what we have experienced since Vietnam), nothing much has changed, and I do not think anyone who gives half a thought to the matter would want women exposed to it, not even for a second.

[Bobby Neal Winters]

>>Bobby, I take your point. But I must add that you knew those people because you were a country boy. My family was pretty sedentary and bookish as were other people I knew. Everybody drank whole milk and nobody was obese. The point isn't direct causation as much as a statement against the demonization of whole milk. Nowadays many people are horrified at the idea of giving kids whole milk while thinking nothing of letting them pour sugar and corn syrup down their gullets all day long. <<

I hear you. Listen to a vegan talk about whole milk some time. They talk as if you were giving your children lye.

[Rob G]

The "diet" that has worked best for me healthwise has been a low-carb one. I've lost 16 pounds since mid-March and both my blood pressure and cholesterol level have dropped significantly. I was not aware that a high carb diet contributes to a high triglyceride level but apparently it does.

I am a quasi-vegetarian (seafood only, with occasional skinless, boneless chicken, freerange if possible) largely for moral reasons -- I find factory farming abominable -- but moving in that direction alone didn't help my health so much, because I was still eating lots of simple carbs. Nowadays I try to stick to complex carbs (whole grains, etc.)

There seems to be a lot of truth to the "don't eat anything white" idea: white sugar, white bread, white pasta, etc. s/b avoided. Potatoes are fine in moderation by try to include the skins too.

[DGP]

>>I'm with everybody here on the stupidity of modern fads in diet.... It's also caused me to be deeply suspicious of scientific claims about things we still know very little about (weather, for the most obvious example).

Then they have a salutary effect, after all. Bring 'em on.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>There seems to be a lot of truth to the "don't eat anything white" idea: white sugar, white bread, white pasta, etc. <<<

So, do cannibals accept this notion? Can I safely travel to New Guinea at last?

[Rob G]

"So, do cannibals accept this notion? Can I safely travel to New Guinea at last?"

Stuart Koehl -- the other, other, other white meat!

[Stuart Koehl]

Well, perhaps the German and Romanian parts. I'm not sure about the Neapolitan and Sicilian parts. As the Italians say, "South of Rome it's all Africa!". Although some are more African than others. My Neapolitan great-great-grandparents looked down on their Sicilian in-laws as "mulagnam"--literally, "eggplants", but you get the drift.