Historical Standpoint

[Crossless2.0]

I expect there were a few persons keen and observative enough to surmise certain things about the world and their surroundings back then. There always are, aren't they?

Leaving aside the mathematical demonstration courtesy of the Greeks, I should think that there were keen and observant sailors in the Mediterranean area who noticed that vessels appeared to sink over the horizon and who may have drawn the correct conclusion. Speculation, of course, but possible.

[robvalue]

Right. People didn't start being able to learn stuff all of a sudden a few hundred years ago. There's probably loads of knowledge that was discovered and then lost, found through all kinds of methods, with varying degrees of accuracy.

[Minimalist]

But suddenly a couple of hundred years ago the church lost the power to burn them at the stake for doing so.

Can't overlook that.

[abaris]

He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, stretches out the heavens like a curtain, And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.

Another indication that the earth was round before any proof.

Now take out the point of magic, etc.  My question is how could people have known this when these two books were written, if we did not have the start of science around 1589 AD starting with Galileo Galilei?  How would this be possible?

We haven't got the start of science around 1589. Just people starting to move out of medieval stupidity. As far as the West is concerned. In antiquity, the earth already was measured by Greek scholars. The scope was a little bit off, but they didn't believe it to be flat. Egyptians had a very good understanding of the sky, as had ancient native American societies. And, as opposed to popular belief, Christoph Columbus didn't set out to discover a new continent, but to find a sea passage to India, sailing to the West. So, in 1492, the earth being round was hardly up for dispute.

That's only a nutshell of many more sources the bible could draw from, if you are to interpret some scientific meaning into the usual ambiguous verses.

[Regina]

^Agreed

In fact, pretty much every major culture I can think of before Biblical times had some awareness the Earth wasn't flat - The Egyptians, The Greeks, The Celts, The Chinese, The Maya (after Christ but as good as before given their isolation). If the Bible really does say, albeit with ambiguity, that the Earth is round, the writers get sarcastic applause from me for their several thousand year late observation. Hardly remarkable or impressive.

Yknow, I can't help but think where we'd be today if it wasn't for religion's stifling of knowledge. Scientific knowledge didn't advance all that much in the 1000 years between the fall of Rome and the discovery of The Americas, it was almost stagnant in fact. Some people like to uplift early Islamic civilisation as a beacon of scientific learning within the dark ages, but tbh even they just got all their material from the ancient Greeks (while burning the original works so they could claim credit for it).

[abaris]

Yknow, I can't help but think where we'd be today if it wasn't for religion's stifling of knowledge.

Actually, it was a combination of factors. The folks taking part in the migration of peoples weren't the sharpest tools in the shed. At least not the most educated ones. They couldn't even keep the roman aqueducts in good working order and Rome declined from a metropolis of a million people to about 20.000 in the Middle Ages. Again, due to many factors, not least of them losing the hinterlands that could sustain such a citiy.

Funnily it was the muslim cultures preserving the ancient knowledge, since they weren't as afraid of what the Greek and Roman scholars taught.

[Cyberman]

Right. People didn't start being able to learn stuff all of a sudden a few hundred years ago. There's probably loads of knowledge that was discovered and then lost, found through all kinds of methods, with varying degrees of accuracy.

There's a Gary Larson cartoon of two stoneage hunters armed with bows and standing next to a dead mammoth or similar, with an arrow sticking out of its side. One hunter says to the other, "We'd probably better write that spot down."

It doesn't take much knowledge of the sciences, or of the scientific method, to notice things and learn from them. You don't need to know the laws of thermodynamics to find out that a pot of water over a fire will boil, nor - to borrow from a recent-ish thread - how the nervous system works to spot that setting fire to someone hurts. Anyone standing with an unobstructed view of the horizon can see that the ground appears to be flat with a circular edge.

It's like claims that religious books 'knew' - magically - that the Universe is filled with millions of stars, instead of being written by some primitive schmuck looking up at the night sky and going "fuck me - that's a lot of stars!"

[Minimalist]

[Thumpalumpacus]

Circular does not mean spherical. They may have still thought the world was flat, but that it just doesn't have corners. There's an old depiction of the world where the top is flat, but it isn't a circle, and it shows a dome above it. Like a tent, as it were. Obviously there is no dome above the world.

Hangs is not really an accurate term either. The world spins and rotates around the sun, held there by centripetal force. Hanging on nothing is better than saying the world sits on pillars, but still isn't quite there.

It's not easy to test the roundness of the world without planes or space shuttles, but given enough travel time and study it's possible to figure out the world is round without divine inspiration.

Sailors have long deduced a spherical earth, as they were able to watch ships and land masses disappear over the horizon, with the tallest parts remaining visible longest.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I expect there were a few persons keen and observative enough to surmise certain things about the world and their surroundings back then. There always are, aren't they?

Leaving aside the mathematical demonstration courtesy of the Greeks, I should think that there were keen and observant sailors in the Mediterranean area who noticed that vessels appeared to sink over the horizon and who may have drawn the correct conclusion. Speculation, of course, but possible.

According to both Daniel Boorstein and Samuel Eliot Morison, this is this case.