The somewhat esoteric subject of when, exactly, it was realised that the earth was round, not flat, has taken the interest of some of my commenters and a polite dispute has arisen. It all began with my surprise that the Romans always believed the earth was round and I wondered how this 'world view' had been superseded by the idea of a flat earth. By coincidence last week (and aren't coincidences creepy no matter how rational we think we are?), I was browsing a second-hand book stall in Tavistock market and came across a slim, 1964, OUP paperback edition of an original book published in 1945 by some academic cove by the name of R. G. Collingwood, hitherto, unknown to me and whilst it isn't made clear in the book, I suspect he was Emeritus Professor of all sorts of brainy things. The book is called The Idea of Nature and from the few pages I have read so far it seems to be a comparison of the 'world view' of the Ancients, the Renaissance and the Modern. Happily for my second-rate brain it is written in an old-fashioned prose style so that it is clear and fairly easily understood. If it has anything to say on our flat/round earth dispute I shall report it immediately.
In the meantime, I thought you might enjoy this piece of academic 'bitchery' by Prof. Collingwood, in which the emphasis is mine:
"A warning against these two errors is needed because they have been over and over again taught as truths in modern books whose authors are so obsessed by the ideas of the twentieth century that they simply cannot understand those of the eighteenth. They are, in a way, none the worse for this; it is progress, of a sort, that people should have got away from the thoughts of their great-grandfathers; but that is not a kind of progress which qualifies people for making historical statements about the ideas which they have ceased to understand [ouch!]; and when they venture to make such statements, and appear to say that for Hegel 'material characteristics are delusive appearances of certain mental characteristics' (C. D. Broad, "The Mind and its Place in Nature", 1928, p.624) or that according to Berkeley 'experience of green is entirely indistinguishable from green' (G. E. Moore, "Philosophical Studies", 1922, p14 where Berkeley is not named, but seems to be meant) respect for their personal attainments and their academic positions must not blind a reader to the fact that they are publishing untrue statements about something they have not understood. [Double ouch!]
Nobody slides the knife between the ribs with more ease than an academic at war with another academic! Some of the unruly youngsters who visit here from time to time and resort to crude abuse should take a lesson from this. Of course, it leaves you wondering what slights or insults Collingwood had received in order to provoke that particular piece of venom.
Is your Collingwood RC or RG?
Posted by: dearieme | Tuesday, 26 June 2007 at 15:52
RG - thanks, 'DM', I have corrected the text above. Do you know of him? I suppose he was frightfully emminent but he's new to me.
Posted by: David Duff | Tuesday, 26 June 2007 at 16:39
JNL Myers "The English Settlements" OUP 1989. The intro includes "This more or less fortuitous circumstance led to Volume I becoming known to generations of history students as 'Collingwood and Myres'. The implication which the phrase carried, that it was a cooperative product of joint authorship, was entirely erroneous. Collingwood himself was eager to make this clear from the start. The first sentence of his preface reads 'This volume is not a work of collaboration'...". Worth a grin, I think.
Posted by: dearieme | Tuesday, 26 June 2007 at 17:12
Worth a gin, I think, and a large one, too, in many a common room!
I have just 'Googled' him and I quite like what I read, including this:
"However his political thought, and in particular his book The New Leviathan, have been neglected, even dismissed in some quarters."
Anything that is dismissed by contemporary academe must be worth a read.
Posted by: David Duff | Tuesday, 26 June 2007 at 17:26