A New World
For a couple of decades now, the left has used Christopher Columbus as a punching bag and has pretty effectively suppressed the annual celebration of Columbus Day. (Not at our house. I found this great book for the kids.)
So I was surprised to see a good article about the significance of Columbus and his discovery of America in the Los Angeles Times.
Historian Joyce Appleby focuses less on the implications for America than on the implications for Europe: "the real reason Columbus' voyages should be remembered—and celebrated—is for their central role in prying loose European curiosity from the vise put in place by the medieval church."
It took something as dramatic as finding new lands filled with exotic people, plants, and animals to liberate Europe's investigative spirit from official opprobrium. Over the two centuries that followed Columbus' initial voyage, robust questioning about the nature of the world turned an inward society outward, fueling an inquisitiveness that would eventually carry Europeans around the world....
In the 17th century, people remembered what had stimulated the dramatic changes in their thinking. "Distant voyages and travels have brought to light many things in nature," Bacon reflected, "which may throw fresh light on human philosophy and science and correct by experience the opinions and conjectures of the ancients." After studying natural phenomena became a dominant cultural trait, Europeans forgot that questioning eyes had once been verboten. Columbus' voyages unchained curiosity, and that should be celebrated.
"Curiosity" is a bit of a vague theme, but what she clearly means is that the discovery of the New World was a spectacular validation of secular reason, both against the dogmas of the Church and against the subsequent dogmatic interpretations of Classical authorities.
Columbus gave us a New World, not just to settle, but also as a new field for scientific exploration which invited new methods and new answers. In the process, it helped create a new world back in the old one, too.