Columbus' Dark Underside

[Exapno_Mapcase]

No, not his drawers after a long ocean voyage. Or his actual bottom.

The one referred to in this letter to New Scientist.

Further to your review of Dava Sobel’s book on the heliocentric theory of Copernicus (24 September, p 61), the Polish astronomer was not alone in overturning long-entrenched beliefs. In the same era, Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the New World eventually banished notions of the globe having a dark underside, academic and clerical opposition notwithstanding.

Anyone have an idea of what he’s referring to with “dark underside” in relation to Columbus?

[Erdosain]

To me, it just sounds like a flat-earth reference.

[Simplicio]

Yea, I can’t really parse it any other way then that the writer of the letter thinks Columbus “proved the world is round”.

Sort of impressive that both the writer and editor were apparently unaware of whats wrong with that. But I guess from what I recall of New Scientist, its not exactly surprising.

[MEBuckner]

It might be a reference to the medieval notion that the Antipodes of the spherical Earth were nonetheless unreachable and therefore could not be inhabited.

[BigT]

@MEBuckner

It might be a reference to the medieval notion that the Antipodes of the spherical Earth were nonetheless unreachable and therefore could not be inhabited.

Yeah, but, based on that article, Columbus didn’t really prove anything about that, either, since antipodes refers to the southern hemisphere, not the western one.

[Jackmannii]

What a relief. Seeing a thread about Columbus’ Dark Underside, I thought someone was pissing all over Grove City again.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@BigT

Yeah, but, based on that article, Columbus didn’t really prove anything about that, either, since antipodes refers to the southern hemisphere, not the western one.

That was my first thought, but Columbus never even reached the equator. And even if he had it would be moot historically. Bartolomeu Dias (Bartholomew Diaz) reached the southern tip of Africa four years earlier. It wasn’t hidden. Certainly everybody in the right circles in Spain and Portugal knew such a feat had been achieved.

But when I was poking around this morning, I found, of all things, The Lives and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, by Washington Irving, p. 401.

It must be observed that, at the time when Columbus defended his proposition before the learned board at Salamanca, the ancient theory of the burning zone had not yet been totally disproved by modern discovery. The Portuguese, it is true, had penetrated the tropics; but though the space between the Tropic of Cancer and that of Capricorn, in common parlance, was termed the torrid zone; the uninhabitable and impassable part, strictly speaking, according to the doctrine of the ancients, only extended a limited number of degrees on each side of the equator; forming about a third, or at most, the half of the zone. The proofs which Columbus endeavored to draw therefore from the voyages to St. George la Mina, were not conclusive with those who were bigoted to the ancient theory, and who placed the scorching region still further southward, and immediately about the equator.

That explains a lot. Columbus went to the board at Salamanca in 1487, part of his years-long campaign to get permission and funding for his voyages. He hadn’t gone anywhere yet. Neither had Diaz. Or rather, he hadn’t returned to tell anybody about his voyage yet, because that wasn’t until the end of 1488.

None of this makes the letter writer correct in any detail, but I start to see where his mistaken understanding might have come from. He’s 261 years old and went blind in 1849.

The letters page in New Scientist, BTW, is handled just like a thread here at the Dope. Sometimes distinguished scientists write in to give corrections or explanations. And sometimes the editors print the nuttiest letters from people who have theories but no knowledge or understanding. After the real answer has been given, people are allowed to post jokes. If you like GQ, you’ll like their letters page.