Abstract
The determination of the size of the Earth and its shape, begun in Antiquity, was systematized by the geographers-astronomers of the Académie Royale des sciences in the second half of the seventeenth century, through the use of triangulation and astronomical methods that involved a state policy, the investment of large financial resources and the realization of prolonged expeditions to remote places. Among its fruits were not only the determination of the longitude of the meridian and the first complete cartography of France, but also the establishment of the decimal metric system and the first major international collaborations. In parallel, the process of exploration of the planet extended to the most unknown regions, including the northern and southern territories around the poles, and the interior of Africa. By the end of the nineteenth century, practically the entire surface of the continents had been covered to a greater or lesser extent by Western cartographers and the gaps in the first atlases had been explored. The Greek dream of complete knowledge of the oikouménē had finally been fulfilled.
Times will come as the years go by
when the ocean lets go of the barriers of the world
and the earth is opened to the fullest extent
and Thetis discovers new orbs for us
and the ends of the earth no longer be Tule.
Seneca, Medea, 375–379.
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Notes
- 1.
Initially estimated at 240,000 stadia (Cleomedes, De motu circulari, 1.10) and later reduced to 180,000 (Strabon, Geographia, II.2.2).
- 2.
It is possible, however, that Antonio de Nebrija made another one before, which would not be published.
- 3.
O’Connor and Robertson, “Willebrord van Royen Snell”, [online], <http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Snell.html>, [accessed: 3 September 2015].
- 4.
Before Snellius, at the end of the 16th century, Jerónimo Muñoz (Muñoz, J., Astrologicarum et Geographicarum institutionum libri sex, in Navarro Brotons, V. (ed.), Introducción a la Astronomía y la Geografía, Consell Valencià de Cultura, 2004, 354 pp.) and Tycho Brahe (Brahe, T., Astronomiae instauratae mechanica, Wandsbek, 1598) applied the method of triangulation.
- 5.
Lafuente and Mazuecos (1987). This value was used by Isaac Newton during his initial calculations of his Law of Universal Gravitation. Being an excessive estimate with respect to its real value, it almost caused Newton to give up, since it did not allow the derivation of a dependence with the inverse of the square of the distance to balance with the centrifugal force experienced by any body when rotating, as in the case of a slingshot. Fortunately, the results of Jean-Félix Picard would reach the English lands in time, in 1671 (Christianson 1987, Newton, pp. 95 and 103).
- 6.
O’Connor and Robertson, “Pierre Vernier”, [online], <http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Vernier.html>, [accessed: 3 September 2015].
- 7.
O’Connor and Robertson, “John Napier”, [online], <http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Napier.html>, [accessed: 3 September 2015].
- 8.
O’Connor and Robertson, “Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat Condorcet”, [online], <http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Condorcet.html>, [accessed: 3 September 2015].
- 9.
In his address to the Commons John Rigg Miller (Speeches, 1790, p. 52) included a poem by Renerus Budelius that appeared in De Monetis of 1591: “Una fides, pondus, mensura, moneta, fit una, // Et flatus illaesus totius orbis erit.” (“One faith, one weight, one length and one coin // Would make the world unite in harmony”). Thus, the desire to standardize has always been present (Alder 2002, pp. 85–89, 240–241).
- 10.
“On s’amuse de tout quand on ne sait à quoi s’en prendre; les dames faisaient foule jeudi chez Madame de Chaulnes, où le savant Huyghens, l’un de nos académiciens importés, lisait des lettres toutes hérissées de chiffrés, de courbes, de tangentes et de triangles, qu’il a reçues de Cayenne. Les physiciens qu’on envoyé l’an dernier dans ce pays pour faire des observations marquent qu’ils ont découvert que la terre n’est pas, ainsi qu’où l’a cru jusqu’ici ronde comme une boule, mais aplatie de deux côtés”. Original in Touchard-Lafosse (1908, pp. 26–27); also quoted in Andriesse (2005, p. 274).
- 11.
Policy that could be called Keynesian.
- 12.
O’Connor and Robertson, “Jacques Cassini”, [online], <http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Cassini_Jacques.html>, [accessed: 3 September 2015].
- 13.
- 14.
Cardinal Richelieu’s policy of expanding the frontiers of France to its natural limits is the best example, especially when compared to the Spanish policy (Elliott 1984).
- 15.
The metre, the fundamental unit of measurement, was initially defined by the French Academy of Sciences in 1791 as the ten-millionth part of the distance separating the North Pole from the line of the Earth’s Equator, in the rationalizing process that emerged after the revolution of 1789. Therefore, the fathom proposed by Cassini is equivalent to 2/π meters.
- 16.
O’Connor and Robertson, “Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis”, [online], <http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Maupertuis.html>, [accessed: 3 September 2015].
- 17.
The family pacts consisted of three alliances between the Spanish and French monarchies, both of the Bourbon dynasty, between 1733 and 1789.
- 18.
Although it might seem that Spain completely departed from the scientific evolution in the seventeenth century, it is nevertheless possible to find outstanding figures such as Bernardo José Zaragoza (1627, 1679), belonging to the Spanish novatores or pre-Enlightenment, author of the treatise Esphera in común celeste y terráquea Esphera in común celeste y terráquea, published in 1675.
- 19.
In this contact, the term “philosopher” is equivalent to “scientist”. Quoted in Lafuente and Mazuecos (1987).
- 20.
The Royal Observatory of Cadiz was founded in 1753 at the request of Jorge Juan (Lafuente and Mazuecos 1987).
- 21.
The properties of the bark may have been brought to Europe by the Marquises of Chinchón (Luis Fernández de Cabrera and Ana Osorio Manrique) after their stay in Peru as viceroys in the 1620s and 1630s, although the story may not be free of myths and the real culprit may be Cardinal Juan de Lugo, who promoted its use in Spain in the seventeenth century (Bruce-Chwatt 1988). In any case, Linnaeus is responsible for the confusion with the name in his cataloguing of 1742, when he transcribed cinchona, from which the term quinine was derived.
- 22.
O’Connor and Robertson, “Pierre François-André Méchain”, [online], <http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Mechain.html>, [accessed: 3 September 2015].
- 23.
O’Connor and Robertson, “Adrien-Marie Legendre”, [online], <http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Legendre.html>, [accessed: 3 September 2015].
- 24.
O’Connor and Robertson, “Jean Charles de Borda”, [online], <http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Borda.html>, [accessed: 3 September 2015].
- 25.
The term “feudal” to refer to a particular relationship of exchange of property for service or labor was not coined in France until the seventeenth century, while “feudalism” did not appear until the nineteenth century. In the Middle Ages the expression “vassalage” was used (Cantor 1994, pp. 195–197).
- 26.
O’Connor and Robertson, “Gabriel Mouton”, [online], <http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Mouton.html>, [accessed: 3 September 2015].
- 27.
L’Encyclopédie or Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, which appeared between 1751 and 1772, edited by these two enlightened scholars.
- 28.
Despite his well-known atheism, on a visit to the Roman pontiff he advocated the removal of the works of Copernicus and Galileo from the Index of Forbidden Books. However, De revolutionibus, the Pole’s work, would remain on this infamous list until 1835. Gilbert Romme’s Revolutionary Calendar followed Lalande’s suggestion. In addition, he smuggled John Harrison’s diagrams of the clock, which in any case were published by Neville Maskelyne (Alder 2002, pp. 18, 76–83, 140, 149–150).
- 29.
Lalande, on being appointed president of the Collège de France in 1791, opened it for the first time to women of all classes. Thus, Louise-Elisabeth-Félicité du Piery was the first woman to teach astronomy in Paris and her daughter, Marie-Jeanne-Amélie Harlay was his calculator. O’Connor and Robertson, “Marie-Jeanne Amélie Harlay”, [online], <http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Harlay.html>, [accessed: 3 September 2015].
- 30.
Charles-Maurice Talleyrand (1754–1838) developed a successful career during the Ancien Régime, the revolutionary governments, the Consulate, the Napoleonic Empire, the Bourbon Restoration and the new dynasty of Louis-Philippe d’Orleans and was a key figure in the European political architecture that developed at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, which was to keep the continent in an unstable peace for half a century.
- 31.
The latter two ended up guillotined during the revolutionary period known as “The Terror”, a revolutionary period that lasted from September 1793 to the spring of 1794. After Lavoisier’s execution, Lagrange commented to Delambre that it only took the extremists a few moments to sever his head, but that it would not take 100 years to produce another comparable one (Delambre, Notice sur la vie et les oeuvres de M. le comte J.-L-. Lagrange” or also in Lagrange, Oeuvres, 1867, 1:xl, quoted in Alder 2002, pp. 143–145). Others would be more fortunate and “only” spend some time in the dungeons of the revolutionary committees.
- 32.
O’Connor and Robertson, “Bartholomeo Pitiscus”, [online], <http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Pitiscus.html>, [accessed: 3 September 2015].
- 33.
Jean-Paul Marat, a well-known revolutionary leader, coined the term “scientifiques” in 1792, in a derogatory manner (Marat, Les pamphlets-1792, 1911), but the term actually comes from William Whewell in the 1840s (Alder 2002, p. 308).
- 34.
O’Connor and Robertson, “Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre”, [online], <http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Delambre.html>, [accessed: 3 September 2015].
- 35.
Méchain to Slop, 14 June 1794. University Library of Pisa, MS168.1, quoted in Alder (2002, p. 162).
- 36.
Two years later, no Spanish expert would be invited to the search organized by Franz Xaver von Zach, first director of the Gotha observatory, which included astronomers from several German and Italian states, Austria, Denmark, France and the United Kingdom, with the aim of finding the supposed planet located between Mars and Jupiter (Foderà Serio et al. 2002, pp. 17–24).
- 37.
O’Connor and Robertson, “Claude Louis Mathieu”, [online], <http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Mathieu_Claude.html>, [accessed: 3 September 2015].
- 38.
Etymologies, IX, 133; XI, 3.24; XIV, 5.17, with some ambiguity about its existence. In fact, the concept was postulated by numerous authors in Antiquity: Cicero in Commentary on Scipio’s Dream, VI,1; Virgilius in Georgics, I, 231–44; Pomponius Mela, I,1.4; Higinius in Astr., I 8.2 and IV 1.2; Manilius, I, 238–45 and 377–483; Marciano Capela, VI, 602–8; Macrobius, II, 5–33. Cited in Molina Marín (2010a, b).
- 39.
Major (1877). For further information on the role of the antipodes in the controversy between heliocentrism and geocentrism in the seventeenth century, see Echeverria (2015, pp. 237–255).
- 40.
Geographie de toutes les parties du monde, vol. XIII, quoted in Bernabéu Albert (2013, pp. 23–33).
- 41.
His ship “San Salvador” was crewed by 170 sailors. In 2015 a replica was launched in California to commemorate the arrival of the first Europeans to the west coast of the United States. The first landing probably took place in what is now the city of San Diego. Although irrelevant from the point of view of the historical process, recently Wendy Kramer (2019) has shown that he was probably born in Córdoba and was therefore not Portuguese (in numerous references he appears as João Rodrigues Cabrilho).
- 42.
However, at the beginning of the 21th century we are already noticing the significant effects of climate change. The Arctic ice is shrinking in extent and thickness, making it easier for ships to navigate during the short summer. Undoubtedly, with the current conditions the exploration of that region would have been much easier. Unfortunately, the overall impact is very negative in many areas.
- 43.
Arrian (Anabasis, V, 6) attributed that saying either to Herodotus or Hecataeus.
- 44.
Strabo, Geography 1.2.22-4.
- 45.
King of Spain from 16 November 1870 to 11 February 1873. The election of the successor to Isabel II after the expulsion of 1868 provoked the Franco-Prussian war (July 9, 1870 to May 10, 1871), which would result in the collapse of the Second French Empire and the proclamation of the Third Republic in France. Amadeo I ended up renouncing the Spanish throne (“Ah, per Bacco, io non capisco niente. Siamo una gabbia di pazzi”, or “I don’t understand anything, this is a cage of madmen”, he might have declared). After him, the First Republic was declared in Spain, which lasted little more than 22 months.
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Barrado Navascués, D. (2023). The Shape of the Earth and Geographical Exploration. In: Cosmography in the Age of Discovery and the Scientific Revolution. Historical & Cultural Astronomy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29885-1_5
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