Atlantis — Birth and Death of Science : 95 



ble ocean lying beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. He and his audience 

 can apparently take it for granted that men can sail there and that 

 men could find islands in the ocean. Notice also that Plato can appar- 

 ently talk to his audience about a time span for human history that 

 runs to 9,000 years, which is considerably better than Bishop Ussher 

 could do 2,000 years later. Bishop Ussher, you remember, was the 

 English divine who decided that the world had been created on a cer- 

 tain day in the year of 4004 b.c. 



Whatever we may assume about Plato's intentions, his fable about 

 Atlantis popularized the idea of there being islands in the ocean and 

 established a tradition that continued for thousands of years. 



The best of the classic geographers included in their writing a great 

 deal of scientific information about the world, as we shall demonstrate 

 in a few pages. However, when they ran out of real information they 

 were reluctant to stop writing. Instead, they found it interesting to 

 repeat stories and legends and hearsay evidence. To Plato's Atlantis 

 other classical writers added stories about the Fortunate Islands 

 which were located out in the Atlantic; others talked about the Hes- 

 perides. Some of these islands were supposed to be inhabited either by 

 the gods or by the demigods or extremely fortunate human beings. 

 Some ideas of this kind survived into the Middle Ages and continued 

 or were reborn during the Revival of Learning. The Irish added stor- 

 ies about St. Brandan's Isle and about an island called Antillia and 

 Hy-Brasil. The very early maps used to assign a location for some or 

 all of these islands, but the map makers seldom agreed with each 

 other as to the probable location of the various named islands. As 

 knowledge about the Atlantic Ocean increased and became more accu- 

 rate, maps gradually developed and the islands got moved farther and 

 farther away. Occasionally, as we know, a mythical name got assigned 

 to an island or a group of islands; thus, there was a time when the 

 Canary Islands were also called the Fortunate Islands. 



It is extremely difficult for the human mind to contemplate empty 

 space or a completely empty ocean. The writers and map makers 

 were yielding to a natural impulse if they assigned names to islands 

 in the Atlantic. It is probable also that they were counting on reason- 

 able inference even if not reported fact. We have seen already that 

 Pythias' account was known to many ancient writers even though 

 these did not always agree with him. They did accept the fact that 

 Pythias and others knew about Ireland and Great Britain and island 

 groups lying between them, and also north of Scotland as far as the 

 island that Pythias referred to as Thule. It is said that a group of 



