By 300 A.D., the size of the Moon and its distance from the Earth were known to within 10%.
I think part of the reason that most of the replies in this thread are discussing what was known to man at certain points of history, rather than what was common knowledge at different times, is because the latter is much more difficult to get at historically.
One way of investigating this would be to check out journals and diaries of average people (or not so average, whatever) from the time you’re interested in. Of course, even then, you would be much more likely to find out what people knew than how they managed to find it out. Old newspapers and periodicals can also provide clues about common assumptions and views people had about the world around them.
It’s a fascinating historical question, though. I took an archaeology class recently about pre-European civilizations in the Americas, and this was one of the questions that bothered me the most. I was disappointed to learn that it’s very hard - maybe impossible - to answer through archaeological means.
ETA: I don’t have any specific recommendations of diaries or newspapers that might be of particular interest. I don’t suppose you have access to a friendly local research librarian?
The New York Times in 1860 mentions the “commonly receive[d] opinion that there is no water on the surface of the moon.”
The New York Times in 1873 calls the moon “a dead, decaying planet.”
The New York Times in 1874:
The New York Times again in 1874:
The old saw I’ve heard significantly qualifies the situation, stating that Leonardo was the last person in history to have known pretty much all there was to know that was possible for a person to know. In other words, he’s generally off the hook for not knowing about, say, the exact dates of the origins of certain Chinese spices. Supposedly, he knew pretty much all he could know about science, art, engineering, literature, politics, history, etc., but in a general way, not in encyclopedic fashion, and not necessarily globally.
Once you qualify it enough, you can probably make a case for it, though I’m certainly not going to try. I’ve heard other people say it was Jefferson, others say it was Franklin, and still others claim it was Sam Pepys, the old letch.
As for the OP, who knows? There are plenty of highly educated people today who have absolutely no idea what’s up with the moon. They don’t understand why it’s not always visible at night, why it’s usually not visible during the day, but sometimes is, a little bit, and why sometimes one part is lit up and then a few nights later…
I’m not so sure of this.
In doing genealogical research for my family I’ve had the opportunity to look at quite a bit of Census data from the 19th Century, and one of the questions asked was “Can person read or write?” There were still very, very many people who did not have these skills. Of course, perhaps the “very lowest rungs of society” were bigger then or it could have been the communities I was interested in just had undereducated people (the communities tended to be rural and agrarian).
My grandfather, for instance, was born in 1882 and could neither read nor write until my aunt taught him to sign his name with something other than in “X.” She did this in the 1940s.
The following links gives illiteracy rates in the US from 1870:
In 1870 the illiteracy rate in the US for whites over 14 was 20%.
Or Batman. He knows a lot of stuff.
Regarding the moon – John Herschel (the son of the guy who discovered Uranus, and a major scientific figure himself) wrote a popular book about astronomy circa 1835 that was widely read. The “Moon Hoax” that ran in the New York Sun and Edgar Allen Poe’s own “Unparalleled Adventures of Hans Pfall” added popular interest, both when they ran, and in the debunking. That stuff made it into popular science books and Christmas annuals and encyclopedias for years afterwards.
There was quite a bit of popular interest in science, and many outlets for such information. Read Poe’s works like “Some Words with a Mummy”, or :The Tale of the Thousand and Second Night’ for popular treatments of this stuff. Heck, by the time of that Little house episode, Verne had already published his “From the Earth to the Moon” (and its sequel “Around the Moon”, which contains all you’d need to know , and its less well-known second sequel “The Purchase of the North Pole” aka “Topsy Turvy”.)
Yeah, but he’s a model citizen, and thus a crashing bore. The other guys were loads of laughs, especially Pepys, who married a very lively curiosity to a very lively yard, the randy old dodger.
I will take the simple backwoods farmer explanation:
Stuff that grows is green. The moon is gray. Therefore we can conclude nothing grows there.
So. What you’re saying is, a farmer has to be outstanding in his field?
Ow, ow, ow!
Which means 80% of the population could read, that’s actually pretty damn impressive to me.
Yeah, keep in mind a lot of guys like Lincoln became smart men because they really wanted to, it wasn’t as easy as it was for wealthy people who lived in cities and went to the best schools. But it was doable, Lincoln read every book he could get his hands on as a child (which wasn’t a small number, even growing up in the relative frontier of civilization at the time), he read newspapers vociferously and et cetera. Basically he made a serious effort to become educated and informed, and he was capable of doing so, despite being a “backwoods yokel.”
Yup. Still haven’t changed my mind about it either.
That’s what I was going to mention (Damn You Meaaaaachaaaaaam!). The hoax (a series of articles about high-power telescopes seeing herds of buffalo and tribes and palaces on the moon) was swallowed hook/line/sinker by many, even among the educated classes. From that link:
Because it was such a huge story, the debunking with “it’s a great big cold rock” was equally huge, and Caroline or her parents would have known of this as the hoax and the “CITE?” editorials and the retraction/confession were reprinted all over America and Europe.
Plus in the apocryphal Little House book, Little House on the Edge of Forever, Laura discusses her father’s timespace portal in a bard in DeSmet, South Dakota. For a time he was actually elected god emperor of a race of locust like obelisk builders from a dimension located only near Bellatrix on ninth Wednesdays.
ETA: PS: The new cover art on the LH books is abomination.
Sequel: A Wrinkle in Gingham.
Perhaps, but it still deflates Freddy the Pig’s argument that by the late 19th Century it was “unusual” for someone to have no education. Having a fifth of the population over 14 illiterate wouldn’t make it exactly “unusual.” (And the illiteracy rate for blacks was 80% - not surprisingly).