Did Magellan really

December 30, 2007 12:33 AM

Did Ferdinand Magellan really say this? “The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow of the earth on the moon and I have more faith in the Shadow than in the Church.”

The earliest reference to this quote comes from 1873, in an essay by Robert G. Ingersoll. Did Ingersoll make the quote up, or did he get it from somewhere else?

posted by micketymoc to Writing & Language (14 answers total)

Google Book Search has only one hit for the phrase and attributes it to Galileo. I am skeptical.
posted by LarryC at 12:40 AM on December 30, 2007

I don't think this could be correct, because a Lunar eclipse doesn't have a bright, clear line. The Moon never really goes black, it just gets very dark red, and it does it gradually enough that I just can't imagine inferring the Earth being round just from that.

There's a lot of ways the Earth's roundness can be determined, using just handheld instruments, but I don't think a Lunar eclipse is one of them.
posted by Malor at 1:31 AM on December 30, 2007

Malor, that's not entirely true. A lunar eclipse doesn't have a clear terminator line or anything, but it's very clear that something of a spherical nature is obscuring the moon over time if one is watched, as per these images.

I can't find any reference to Magellan saying it myself, but I can see someone of his "job" as it were either expressing it or at least agreeing with such a sentiment, due in no small part to the experience someone like him would have with phenomena that would be best explained by a round earth.
posted by barc0001 at 2:30 AM on December 30, 2007

Why interpret this as if he's referring to an eclipse? Normal, everyday phases of the moon are shadows of the earth, and clearly curved.

No idea about the quotation, though.
posted by jon1270 at 3:16 AM on December 30, 2007

Normal, everyday moon phases are not shadows of the earth. They're shadows of the moon.
posted by flabdablet at 3:24 AM on December 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

And a round shadow doesn't imply a sphere, necessarily -- could be a flat disc.
posted by futility closet at 5:19 AM on December 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

So flabdablet, the moon is casting shadows on itself? That's quite a trick.

Futility has a point, though.
posted by jon1270 at 5:44 AM on December 30, 2007

So flabdablet, the moon is casting shadows on itself? That's quite a trick.
Imagine someone facing a campfire at night. You'll be able to see his face fine, but his back will be in shadows. That's how it goes for the moon too — the sun lights the near side, leaving the far side dark.

(An eclipse would be like someone stepping between our camper and his campfire. Now his face isn't getting much light either.)
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:16 AM on December 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

Did you see this?
posted by lucia__is__dada at 6:25 AM on December 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

Okay, I see that I posted before I'd consumed enough caffeine. Thanks for setting me straight, and apologies to the OP for the derail.
posted by jon1270 at 6:31 AM on December 30, 2007

Count me as dubious as well. While a few medieval Christian theologians believed that the Earth was flat, most of them didn't; the debate about whether Columbus' voyage would succeed primarily concerned whether the Earth's circumference was small enough to make it to the Indies without resupply. Wikipedia has an article on the historical status of the flat-earth theory if you're interested.
posted by Johnny Assay at 7:18 AM on December 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

It's a post-enlightenment myth that people in the middle ages thought that the earth was flat. The church NEVER argued that point or defended it. The opposition to Columbus' expedition wasn't that he would sail off the edge of the world, but that he would run out of supplies before making land fall in the Orient. (Indeed, Columbus had made his gamble on the faulty calculation that Asia was 5,000 miles longer than it really was. So everyone was wrong in a way...) Everyone since the Greeks had known that the earth was a sphere, at question was its longitudinal size.

So it makes complete sense that the quote is a late 19th century fabrication from a time when uppity scientists and philosophers were busy giving the heave-ho to religious mysticism.

On preview lucia__is__dada has it.

It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions, -- some one who had the grandeur to say his say. I believe it was Magellan who said, "The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church." On the prow of his ship were disobedience, defiance, scorn, and success.

posted by wfrgms at 12:26 PM on December 30, 2007

Here's a .pdf of a pretty good essay by Stephen Jay Gould explaining the origin of this sort of myth. It started in the nineteenth century as an exemplar of the conflict between religion and science in books like 1896's The Warfare of Science with Theology, and that it almost certainly has no basis in fact - the major issue of conflict between these early explorers and their backers was over the size of the earth and thus the oceans around Eurasia, not over whether or not they would tip off over some edge. Ingersoll himself was part of this movement to create a dichotomy between silly superstition and freethinking, so it would make sense for him to make something like this up, especially if you can't find anything that predates him.

But then, this sort of thinking is still continued in supposedly-trustworthy textbooks today.

preview: oops, a little late to lucia's party
posted by The Bridge on the River Kai Ryssdal at 12:44 PM on December 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

As far as the side discussion as to if this can be true, as far as a disk casting the same shadow I'd refer again to the wikipedia article cited above.

He also noted that the border of the shadow of Earth on the Moon during the partial phase of a lunar eclipse is always circular, no matter how high the Moon is over the horizon. Only a sphere casts a circular shadow in every direction, whereas a circular disk casts an elliptical shadow in all directions apart from directly above and directly below.

posted by TheDukeofLancaster at 1:40 PM on January 2, 2008