Talk:Cosmas Indicopleustes
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Voyage section contains a very prejudiced statement
editThis section makes the statement that "modern science" has refuted Cosmas' worldview. True, however the reader is left with the extremely misleading impression that no one in the middle ages was able to refute his views. Not true at all. The fact is 1) Cosmas' views were NOT the dominant view even in his time 2) The common view was in fact the one "modern science" supposedly vindicated only recently in western history (i.e. Augustine, John Philoponus held modern view) 3) The previoulsy mentioned Philoponus even wrote a rebuttal to Cosmas. 4) Cosmas was not even known during the latter middle ages, none of his writngs were discovered much less translated into Latin. I am going to change that section to reflect this. Iam not going to delete anything just add. I am doing this because discussions here take too long to get an answer one way or another. You can delete what I wrote if Im breakig protocol but I hope to get a discussion going.--76.31.242.174 (talk) 00:48, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Britannica article
editain
merchant, traveler, theologian, and geographer whose treatise Topographia Christiana (c. 535–547; “Christian Topography”) contains one of the earliest and most famous of world maps. In this treatise, Cosmas tried to prove the literal accuracy of the Biblical picture of the universe, asserting in particular that the Earth is flat and trying to refute Ptolemy’s concept of a spherical universe.
Probably a Nestorian Christian, Cosmas sailed around the shores of the Indian Ocean and for some time was engaged in trade in Ethiopia and Asia. His variant name is Latin, meaning the Indian Navigator. He later became a monk and wrote several geographical treatises, but only the Topographia and fragments of his commentaries on the Psalms and Gospels have survived.
Cosmas viewed the Tabernacle of Moses as a model of the universe, the Earth being a rectangular plane surmounted by the sky, above which was heaven. In the centre of the plane was the inhabited Earth, surrounded by ocean, and beyond this the paradise of Adam. The Sun, much smaller than the Earth, revolved around a conical mountain to the north. Though Cosmas was scornful of Ptolemy and others who believed in a spherical Earth, his idiosyncratic work is not representative of the general state of cosmographic theory among Christian philosophers of his day and had small influence on later writers.