Tag Archives: Rabelais explanation of a league

A measure of the universe; Renaissance slide-rules and Heavenly spheres

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Measurement is a cornerstone of science, in fact of pretty well everything we do: How far? How fast? How long?  We take most measurement for granted, with little thought to how the process originated.  We demand accuracy and precision, forgetting that these are relatively modern luxuries.  Before the universal clock chimed GMT in 1884, there were more than 200 time zones in the US.  A league in France was shorter than a league in Spain, a discrepancy for which the 16th C French scribe François Rabelais had an imaginative, if rollicking explanation.  In his tale, The Life of Gargantua and Pantegruel (1532-1564), a king required a standard distance to be determined (after all, if he was going to send his armies to battle it would be best if his advisors new how far they had to go).  He sent a trusted Knight, instructing him to ride to Spain, stopping every league to “roger and swive”; hence the discrepancy.  The leagues gradually became longer. The amusing satire of this explanation had its roots in real Medieval measures; the width of a hand, the distance one could walk in an hour. Continue reading

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