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Originally Posted by Drolefille
Then again you may think that Columbus actually convinced Ferdinand and Isabella that the world was actually round and that this was a revolutionary idea. If so, I'm sorry.
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Very true -- it was hardly a revolutionary idea, nor were Galileo's discoveries "radical." Pythagorus, Plato and Aristotle all taught that the earth was spherical. Eratosthenes did a pretty good job of estimating the Earth's circumference sometime around 240 BC. In the second century AD, Claudius Ptolomy plotted the Earth as a globe complete with latitudinal lines measured from the equator and longitudinal lines.
What Galileo brought to the table -- actually what Copernicus brought to the table -- was scientific support for the idea that the sun, not the Earth, was at the center.
And yet we still tend to think a little bit like the folks back in Genesis. Funny how we all know that it's the Earth that rotates and moves around the sun, but we still talk about the sun rising and setting, as though the sun is the thing that's moving. Interesting how we find no conflict with that traditional, even slightly poetic, way of thinking about it and what we know from science actually happens.
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