Myths of the Modern Mythos: The (Not So) Flat Medieval Earth

Poking holes in Secular Modernity's narratives about history

As I mentioned (in some post recently) I’ve been writing a lot more and have more things that I want to share just for Paid Subscribers. This is one of those posts which for some reason came out in a sassy combative tone that surprised me (both for the edge of sass and in how fun it was to write). Not sure I’d send this out into the world at large given the way sparks can often fly but I enjoyed writing it and am happy to have a more inner circle to share it with.

Thanks for the support and I hope you enjoy it,
James

“43. if you told someone in the year 1400 that the earth rotates around the sun, they’d be very upset at you” — Alexey Guzey, lifehacks

This is number 43 of a list called “lifehacks” that’s been languishing in my Reader’s read-it-later bucket for some time. A look at the source tells me that I originally saved this article from the TLDR newsletter (a daily digest newsletter of all news tech-related); that detail might seem irrelevant but I don’t think it is. I’ve been thinking a lot about our 21st-century subcultures recently and how beliefs tend to come in constellations (something I’ll talk about in another article soon enough).

There’s plenty I could say about the lifehacks list as a whole and about the overlap between the tech bro subculture and the Effective Altruism and Rationalist subcultures with their philosophy-y buzzwords like “priors” and “reasoning from first principles” but we’ll leave that for a rant about Techno-Optimism.

Instead I want to talk about this item: item 43. This item is such a trite throwaway comment but, to my mind, it’s a beam of light which, refracting through the prism of the critical eye, reveals so much about the mythos of secular modernity.

But — the rationalist logical critical thinkers among you might say — we don’t have a mythos; we are modern people who have overcome the trappings of religion, superstition and myth. My poor padawan. Listen closely because you just might learn something about yourself. And if not, then you’ll at least learn something about history.

The Modern Mythos

The Flat Earth story is a classic part of the narrative strain of the modern mythos. It's up there with Galileo who is hailed as the man who defended the delicate flame of nascent science against the bad wolf of dogmatic religion seeking to snuff it out.

But while this is a great story for a secular modernity, it bears little resemblance to the facts. Galileo wasn't persecuted for his scientific discoveries. Au contraire. The Pope and all his bishops flew Galileo to Rome (on their equivalent to) a private jet and put him up in (their version of) The Ritz for months because they all had a raging boner for his science. It was the 16th-century equivalent of Beatlemania and Galileo was basking in it all.