“… unanticipated discoveries happen all the time in academics and in learning. You set out to find X or Y, but you actually end up discovering something entirely different.”
— Helen Nader
The Magellan Story
The Magellan Circle is named after Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer who led the first circumnavigation of the globe. Magellan was born in 1480 to a family of lower nobility. Snubbed by the Portuguese king, Magellan convinced the teenaged Spanish king, Charles I (also known as Holy Roman Emperor Charles V), that some of the Spice Islands lay in the Spanish half of the undiscovered world. Magellan believed he could get to the Spice Islands by sailing west.
In September of 1519, Magellan began his voyage with five ships and a crew of 270 men. The expedition was long and arduous, filled with mutiny, bad weather, illness and starvation; Magellan himself was killed in the Philippines by natives. Juan Sebastian de Elcano took over the expedition. In September of 1522, almost three years from the day the expedition began, the one remaining ship and 18 crew members arrived in Spain. The ship contained 500 hundredweight of cloves from the Spice Islands, and their value easily paid for the cost of the trip.
Charles I awarded Elcano a coat of arms, with a picture of a globe and a banner across it reading “Primus circumdedisti me,” which means “You were the first to circumnavigate me.” On the side of the globe were pictures of cloves, which reminds us that the expedition was indeed a business trip.
Although Magellan did not complete the circumnavigation of the globe himself, he forged through the hardest part of the journey. His accomplishment gave the world the first true idea of the distribution of land and water.
Discovery … adventure … unwavering dedication
to a vision … .These are hallmarks of the Magellan voyage that also
apply to our College and the Magellan Circle.
According to Helen Nader, professor of history and member of the SBS Advisory
Board, a less obvious lesson is the importance of unanticipated discoveries.
“Magellan started out simply trying to find a western route to the Spice Islands,” said Nader. “As a result of his voyage, the whole world knew what the world looked like physically. But another result is that different cultures began interacting on a regular basis. The Spaniards carried on a profitable trade of importing goods from China and paying with silver from Mexico. Their introduction of silver as a currency had an enormous effect on China. Nobody could have anticipated that. These unanticipated discoveries happen all the time in academics and in learning. You set out to find X or Y, but you actually end up discovering something entirely different.”
Nader cites another example of the unanticipated effects of discovery. By 1530, in searching for survivors of the Magellan expedition, Spain sent six explorers to map the coastline of Antarctica. Today, nearly four centuries later, scientists are using that map as a benchmark when measuring the constantly changing Antarctica coastline. “It is amazing that a map printed in 1530 was so accurate and turned out to be so important, Nader observed. “Sometimes discoveries that we might think are not that important turn out to have tremendous significance to later generations.”
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