The seaweed is always greener in somebody else's lake...

Is our way of knowing better than Columbus’? Clearly. But is it the best? That’s questionable. Humans are constantly improving our knowledge as civilization advances, but by no means have we reached the eighth dynamic. :)
Comparing our two ways of “knowing” is apples and oranges. The way our society and world views “fact” now is completely different than the way they saw it in the 16th century. Ben beat me to it in class, but as the world population becomes denser and denser, it is important for humanity to have some sort of uniform way of perceiving reality, truth and knowledge so that we can operate more smoothly as a global community. We can’t have half of us believing in divine predetermination and the sirens of Odysseus and the other half in atoms and evolution. It’s a sort of globalization of knowledge, we learn more and record more and share it with more people.
Reason, what we currently gauge knowledge with, is better than faith. The whole point of science is to be skeptical. Like Catherine mentions, “physicists mostly come up with theories, which can be proved wrong.” If someone published a revolutionary new theory tomorrow, the first thing a scientist would do is try to prove it wrong. Only if that can’t be done might it begin to be considered further and perhaps gain credibility.
Our knowledge may not be absolute or correct, but if it is better than Columbus’s- that is, more thoroughly studied and held to a higher standard based on reason and logic, more acceptable in explaining the current state of the world, and general an improvement to his, then absolutely- our knowledge is much better.
Speaking of globalization, this is an interesting series in which “BBC News is following a container around the world for a year to tell stories of globalisation and the world economy.”