ABSTRACT
When Magellan decided to launch his circumnavigation of the globe, and confront unknown conditions and risks, he knew a few things: the cosmology of the time, based on calculations and theories of the ancient Greek and Egyptian mathematicians and astronomers, was inadequate and misleading; the "best practices," fitted for the Mediterranean sea, would certainly prove to be dangerous traps; he would have to break time-honored assumptions. Last but not least, he would have to confront the backlash of a blasphemous disruption of accepted theory (Bergreen, 2004, pp. 10, 201-2).
