Shawn <scurryfifewonniyne@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote :
> The world is flat. Must be. 99% of the population believed it in 1461.
Actually, they didn't. By about the third century BC most educated people
believed the Earth to be round, and certainly by the 1400s very few people
would have imagined the Earth to be flat, if any.
The question that concerned Columbus before he set out on his failed
voyage
to the Indies was how BIG the Earth was - specifically, how wide was the
Ocean Sea? He believed it was possible to cross it with three ****ps -
others disagreed because they believed it was far wider than that; NOT
because they thought he'd fall off the edge. The term 'Ocean' was
originally applied to the sea thought to go around the edge of the disc of
the world, but this usage was a long time before Columbus.
The popular idea that people in Columbus' day thought the Earth was flat
dates from the early 1800s.
All that said, let's assume they did. Let's imagine that 99% of people in
the 1400s DID think the world was flat.
So because 99% of people think something is true that turns out not to be,
does it then logically follow that everything that 99% of people believe
is
true is actually not true?
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