I don't think Mercator himself is to blame for this. But it is nonetheless true that a distorted view of the physical world also serves to distort ideas about the world.
The world is a sphere, and a map must be flat. Therefore, it really isn't possible to have an undistorted view of the world.
The Peters projection flattens the northern tiers of latitudes excessively.
Here is a discussion of projections:
http://www.hypermaths.org/quadibloc/maps/mapint.htm The polyconic projections seem to have the least distortion. The importan thing to remember is that every square outlined by longitudes and latitudes is a square exactly as large as all other squares.
I thought that this was an interesting presentation. After all, Greenland a LOT smaller than South America or Africa.
