Shape of the Earth

Introduction

[Classroom scene. Flat-earth woodcut on overhead.]

— Figure 1: Classroom scene. —

— Figure 2: Flat-Earth woodcut. —

Professor (idiot voice): In today’s lecture, we will learn about the Dark Ages, when people thought the Earth was flat. Here we have a medieval woodcut showing a bishop trying to reach the stars by traveling across a flat Earth....

Sound effect: Unlocking, opening of a creaking door.

Swirling fog. Library scene, with desk.

— Figure 3: Otherworldly History of Science library. —

Student: Where are we?

Student Dimbulb: This looks like a haunted house!

Student: No, it’s a Library... look at all the old books!

Student: How did we get here?

Oresme: Bonjour! I'm the one who brought you here. And yes, you're in the Otherworldly Library of the History of Science. The books and scientists in this place live in a special time dimension, called the Cosmic History Zone.

Students: Who are you?

Oresme: Who am I? Don't you know me? I’m the famous author of the book you can see right there on the desk!

— Figure 4: Book on desk. —

Student: What? Le livre du Ciel et du monde?

Oresme: Hey, you can read medieval French! Great! For the rest of you, it means The Book of the Heavens and the Earth. It was a best-seller in its time.

Student Dimbulb: How come I’ve never heard of it?

Oresme: You haven’t heard of it? Ah! Maybe that’s because I wrote before Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1454. But even before printing, lots of people copied my manuscript. It circulated widely, and made me famous. It’s not a technical work like the disputations I wrote as a professor. This book was for Charles V, the king of France. He and all the nobles in his court found it greatly entertaining. Even after Gutenberg, people like Copernicus and Galileo still read it. I bet you’ve heard of them!

Student: When did you live?

Oresme: I lived in the 1300’s, the 14th century. You may have heard of some of my friends. Do you know about Ockham’s Razor?

Student Dimbulb: A razor? When were they invented? I thought you old guys always wore beards.

— Figure 5: Ockham's razor? —

Other students (unison): Doh!

Oresme: You’re right about one thing: in my day at the University of Paris, we had a rule: No beardless masters teaching on the bridge! We didn’t want some young know-it-all like your flat-Earth professor lording it over our students.

Student: Isn’t Ockham’s Razor the idea of William Ockham, that we should reject unnecessary hypotheses?

Oresme: Right! “It is vain to do with more what can be accomplished with less.” Ockham also wrote about life on other worlds, impetus, and gravity.

Student: Really? That doesn’t sound like the Dark Ages.

Oresme: Of course not! Ours was an age when cathedrals transformed stone into light, we held public disputations to determine the truth, and we wrote beautiful handwritten manuscripts. I call our time the Age of Illumination! (Figure 6) How about my friend Jean Buridan? Have you heard of Buridan’s Ass?

Students (unison): Buridan’s WHAT?

Oresme: Jean Buridan, a great logician, had a donkey. Because that donkey was taught by such a master, it became really smart. One day Buridan grew careless, and left the donkey exactly half-way between two identical stacks of hay. Naturally, the very logical donkey starved to death, because there was no sufficient reason to choose one haystack over the other...

Student Dimbulb: Is that for real?

Student: Ugh!

Student: You’re weird!

Student: So what is your name?

Student Dimbulb: There it is, on the book: Nicole Ore-ez-mee.

Oresme: No, you’re saying it wrong; the “s” is silent. In your modern French they add a circumflex accent over the “e” to show that an “s” has been dropped, like this: Nicole Oreme.

Students: Nicole Oh-rhem. [unison]

— Figure 7: Nicole Oresme. —

Student: Alright, now we know who you are, but why did you bring us here?

Oresme: Are you complaining that I saved you from that dry and boring lecture? Besides, your professor didn’t know what he was talking about, so you should thank me for setting you straight.

Student: What do you mean?

Oresme: Remember, he was starting to tell you that people in the Middle Ages thought the Earth was flat.

Student: What’s wrong with that?

Oresme: AHH! What do they teach in schools nowadays? Hmm, this is going to be harder than I thought. I think I need to take you on a little journey... a trip of time travel...

Voice becomes distorted... fog...

Exhibit credit: Kerry Magruder.