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Thanks to Bill for a really interesting posting about "the
circumnavigator's paradox".

I hadn't heard, before, about either of his quoted sources, theorising
about what a circumnavigator would discover. It's good to learn that the
"what if ...?" style of argument was in use in those days. Did the clergy
of the day, Muslim and Christian, realise how this might subvert the notion
of divinely-ordained holy days?

I had thought the matter hadn't arisen until Magellan's ship returned in
1522, to discover that Mass was being celebrated on a different day to
everyone else, in spite of having kept a meticulous count. So it's good to
discover that the matter had been thought out long before.

But I'm a bit puzzled when Bill writes-

>Around 1377 Oresme wrote his Traiti? du ciel et du monde, a French
>translation and commentary of Aristotle's De caelo et mundo, in which he
>again discussed the circumnavigator's paradox.

Is he saying here that it was originally Aristotle, before Oresme, who had
posed and resolved the circumnavigator's paradox?

George.

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