Display options
Cite
Nothaft CPE. Zaccaria Lilio and the shape of the earth: A brief response to Allegro's "Flat earth science". Hist Sci. 2017;55(4):490-498doi: 10.1177/0073275317714933.
Nothaft, C. P. E. (2017). Zaccaria Lilio and the shape of the earth: A brief response to Allegro's "Flat earth science". History of science, 55(4), 490-498. https://doi.org/10.1177/0073275317714933
Nothaft, C Philipp E. "Zaccaria Lilio and the shape of the earth: A brief response to Allegro's "Flat earth science"." History of science vol. 55,4 (2017): 490-498. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0073275317714933
Nothaft CPE. Zaccaria Lilio and the shape of the earth: A brief response to Allegro's "Flat earth science". Hist Sci. 2017 Dec;55(4):490-498. doi: 10.1177/0073275317714933. Epub 2017 Jul 03. PMID: 28670939.
Copy Download .nbib Format: NLM
Share it on

Hist Sci. 2017 Dec;55(4):490-498. doi: 10.1177/0073275317714933. Epub 2017 Jul 03.

Zaccaria Lilio and the shape of the earth: A brief response to Allegro's "Flat earth science".

History of science

C Philipp E Nothaft

Affiliations

  1. All Souls College, Oxford, UK.

PMID: 28670939 DOI: 10.1177/0073275317714933

Abstract

This is a response to James J. Allegro's article "The Bottom of the Universe: Flat Earth Science in the Age of Encounter," published in Volume 55, Number 1, of this journal. Against the solid consensus of modern scholars, Allegro contends that the decades around 1500 saw a resurgence of popular and learned doubts about the existence of a southern hemisphere and the concept of a spherical earth more generally. It can be shown that a substantial part of Allegro's argument rests on an erroneous reading of his main textual witness, Zaccaria Lilio's Contra Antipodes (1496), and on a failure adequately to place this source in the context of the cosmographical debate of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Once this context is taken into account, the notion that Lilio was a flat-earther falls flat.

Keywords: 1492; Age of Discovery; Antipodes; Columbus; Zaccaria Lilio; cosmography; flat earth

Publication Types