Terrestrial and Celestial Globes Volume 1: Their History and Construction Including a Consideration of their Value as Aids in the Study of Geography and AstronomyStevenson, Edward Luther
History
Terrestrial and Celestial Globes Volume 1: Their History and Construction Including a Consideration of their Value as Aids in the Study of Geography and Astronomy
Stevenson, Edward Luther
Geography -- History; Globes
Among the Christian peoples of Europe in this same period there was not
wanting an interest in both geography and astronomy. We are now learning
that those centuries were not entirely barren of a certain interest in
sciences other than theological. In Justinian’s day, or near it, one
Leontius Mechanicus busied himself in Constantinople with globe
construction, and we have left to us his brief descriptive reference to
his work. With stress laid, during the many centuries succeeding, upon
matters pertaining to the religious life, there naturally was less
concern than there had been in the humanistic days of classical
antiquity as to whether the earth is spherical in form or flat like a
circular disc, nor was it thought to matter overmuch as to the form of
the heavens. Yet there was no century, not even in those ages we happily
are learning to call no longer dark, that geography and astronomy were
not studied and taught, and globes celestial as well as armillary
spheres, if not terrestrial globes, were constructed. The Venerable
Bede, Notker Labeo, Pope Sylvester I, the Emperor Frederick II, and King
Alfonso of Castile, not to name many others of perhaps lesser
significance, displayed an interest in globes and globe making.
The modern age opens with an interest in the expansion of Europe
overland eastward, with this interest soon to be followed by greater
enthusiasm in transoceanic expansion. With the rapidly increasing
knowledge concerning the hitherto unknown or but little known regions of
the earth came a desire for better map making, came an interest
intelligently directed in the construction of terrestrial globes on
which the newly discovered parts might be represented in their relative
positions as they are on the real spherical earth. To this interest
Martin Behaim gave striking expression, producing in the year 1492 his
famous “Erdapfel” referred to above as the oldest extant terrestrial
globe. His century closes with every evidence that the spherical theory,
as Aristotle had expressed it nearly two thousand years before, could
alone be accepted by geographers, and if spherical, the fact could be
most impressively taught by the use of a material representation, that
is, by means of a terrestrial globe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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