Re: Why only crap in this NG? (was Wolter claims ...)

Apparently on date Wed, 1 Jun 2005 19:15:07 +0000 (UTC), David Johnson
<trolleyfan_nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

>nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote in
>>
>> Anyone other than Philip feel capable of discussing the question of
>> Columbus?
>>
>> I realise he's not a mythical figure and it's not some weird theory
>> about stuff that never happened, but what's the problem otherwise?
>
>Main problem? That he probably made up the whole finding his latitude by
>an eclipse story:
>
>from: http://www1.minn.net/~keithp/longi.htm

Ok, this is an excellent starting point. We presumably agree that the longitude
could and can be estimated to the same accuracy as local time is known, so the
story as the URL puts it is valid.

Now I'm thinking that Columbus was aware of the method and was able to present
"results" which supported his smaller earth preconception? That is, he knew
what should happen, and was equipped to perform the experiment in 1494.

This leaves a number of possibilities:

1) He did the experiment but someone had forgotten to turn the egg timer over
or whatnot and therefore he got an inaccurate result, timing the eclipse by
over an hour wrong.

I would hope we would all reject this possibility because getting an error that
continued his false conception of the size of the globe is a bizarre result by
chance.

2) He did the experiment, got the approximately correct result that pointed to
the navigation board at Salamanca being right and him wrong, and chose to
falsify the results.

This is a strong contender for what happened.

3) He didn't do the experiment at all and merely reported that he had for
dishonest reasons, giving the false result that suited him.

This is also a strong contender. I take it you currently favour this position?

I would like to add some speculative thoughts. Columbus was very well aware
that there was a major difference of opinion between him and the establishment
regarding the size of the Earth. He was aware that the Navigation Board
reckoned the circumference to be somewhere around 26,000 miles and he was
pushing a figure of 18,000 miles.

The measurement of longitude quite clearly supports one or other of these
positions. He has a reasonable dead reckoning figure for his travels and he
argued it was 3,500 miles to Japan, this was roughly how far he had travelled.
Providing he was in Japan, he was right and everyone else was wrong.

Now I don't know about you, but I would probably be very pleased with the
result and quite eager to do experiments that would confirm what I already
knew, so given the ability to measure longitude to an extent that would confirm
the Earth was as small as I had claimed, I would have every reason to do the
experiment.

Now it is possible that the opportunity was missed, e.g. someone forgot to turn
the hour glass over or he overslept but as this happened twice, and in both
cases he gave false figures that we know never happened, I'm driven to the
position that he probably knew he had been wrong about the size of the globe.



.

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