Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863) • Hacker News Board

Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

#191

Post by Analemma_ » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:23 PM UTC

gwd wrote: post #182

philipkglass wrote: post #60

Here is the longer original article, scanned by Google Books and hosted by the HathiTrust project: "Age of the Sun -- Force and Heat" Scientific American Vol IX -- No. 7 August 15 1863 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x001601382&view=1...

It's also worth noting that this is not an extract from a technical paper, but from the "Canadian Presbyterian", apparently a Christian journal; and not written by a professional scientist, but "Principal Leich". Someone feels the need to justify including information from such a source by prefacing it with: "Principal Leich seems to be perfectly familiar with mechanical science." So just keep in mind, what's written…

I don’t think YEC existed in the mid-19th century. It was (and remains) very much a deliberate reaction to evolutionary theory.

Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

#192

Post by Sharlin » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:24 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #185

gwd wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also worth noting that this is not an extract from a technical paper, but from the "Canadian Presbyterian", apparently a Christian journal; and not written by a professional scientist, but "Principal Leich". Someone feels the need to justify including information from such a source by prefacing it with: "Principal Leich seems to be perfectly familiar with mechanical science." So just keep in mind, what's written…

The 6000 year claim does not appear in Genesis, I do not know enough history to say but it's possible that YEC-ism is based on a modern invention of interpretation.

Well, naturally it could not appear in Genesis, lacking any reasonable epoch point relative to which it could be defined. The 6000 year figure, at least in the Anglosphere, most likely derives from Archbishop James Ussher's genealogical calculations in the 17th century [1]. However, I don't think that has been any sort of common belief before the modern YEC movement.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology

Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

#193

Post by cataphract » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:31 PM UTC

jonplackett wrote: post #157

Pop quiz - what do you think people will be laughing this hard about from our time in 150 years?

Probably much of our understanding of biology. It seems to be in a much more incipient stage.

Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

#194

Post by gwd » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:33 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #185

gwd wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also worth noting that this is not an extract from a technical paper, but from the "Canadian Presbyterian", apparently a Christian journal; and not written by a professional scientist, but "Principal Leich". Someone feels the need to justify including information from such a source by prefacing it with: "Principal Leich seems to be perfectly familiar with mechanical science." So just keep in mind, what's written…

The 6000 year claim does not appear in Genesis, I do not know enough history to say but it's possible that YEC-ism is based on a modern invention of interpretation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology

There are long chronologies in Genesis that include, "A lived for X years and begat B. B lived for Z years and at C." If you assume these are contiguous and precise, and that the meaning of "year" hasn't changed, and that Adam was "born" on day 6 of creation, and the universe was created 6*24 hours before that, then you can calculate when various Biblical events happened -- including when the world was made. Ussher made his estimate in the 1600s; according to that Wikipedia article, Rabbi Jose ben Halfata made an estimate as far back as the 2nd century AD.

But I'm pretty sure even in Ussher's time, there were lots of Christians who said that those kinds of calculations weren't necessarily useful or accurate: that the book of Genesis wasn't trying to teach people Geology, but Theology.

Read through the Babylonian creation myth [1], in which the Earth is created by the carcass of a murdered god ripped in half and humans are made from the droplets of blood of another god "to serve the gods", and ask yourself: "What is the world like? What is my place in it as a normal human being?" Then read Genesis 1 and ask yourself the same questions. You'd reach quite different conclusions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En%C3%BBma_Eli%C5%A1

Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

#195

Post by Sharlin » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:34 PM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #155

elvinyung wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe "he" is short for "Helios" :-)

Or it's the elemental symbol for Helium, and they knew about nuclear fusion. Oh, you weren't joking?

Well, coincidentally, helium was discovered in 1868, just a few years after the OP article was written, via detection of a spectral line in sunlight that didn't correspond to any previously known element. Hence the name. Of course they didn't yet have any idea about stellar nucleosynthesis and helium's role in it.

Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

#196

Post by gwd » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:36 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #191

gwd wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also worth noting that this is not an extract from a technical paper, but from the "Canadian Presbyterian", apparently a Christian journal; and not written by a professional scientist, but "Principal Leich". Someone feels the need to justify including information from such a source by prefacing it with: "Principal Leich seems to be perfectly familiar with mechanical science." So just keep in mind, what's written…

I don’t think YEC existed in the mid-19th century. It was (and remains) very much a deliberate reaction to evolutionary theory.

Right, but this was written in 1863, and Origin of the Species had just come out in 1859. (And there were various other evolutionary theories before then.) Like I said, it's just a guess, but the question of the age of the universe would have been very fresh at the time.

Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

#197

Post by hutzlibu » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:46 PM UTC

Articles like this, are a good reminder, to maybe not be tooo hard with the anti-science crowd. Or the ignorant about science crowd.

It is all quite new, and probably take some more years, to sink in. So keep that in mind, the next time you discuss with anti-vaccers, anti climate change, ... as that level of ignorance can get depressing otherwise.

Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

#198

Post by Ididntdothis » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:58 PM UTC

froidpink wrote: post #181

garmaine wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If nature did it 3 times (more, we now know), it’s a bit presumptuous to say humans won’t be able to.

Nature has created conscious beings. It would be a bit presumptuous to assume humans will be able to do so too

It would be very presumptuous to categorically rule out that humans will create conscious beings. We don’t know how to do it yet but if nature did it, why wouldn’t we?

Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

#199

Post by User23 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 2:00 PM UTC

dividedbyzero wrote: post #145

kd5bjo wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Icelandic retains the full 3-gender system to this day, and it’s generally incorrect to refer to gendered inanimate objects as “it”, rather than “he” or “she”.

Same with German, which has a neutrum genus but sometimes even uses it for people (the child, das Kind, the girl, das Mädchen, the victim, das Opfer, ...) The number of inanimate objects that are not gendered must be pretty small. The sun is female (die Sonne), a street is female (die Straße), cars and houses are neutrum (das Haus, das Auto)

Butter is a fun one. You get different answers depending on who you ask.

Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

#200

Post by Ididntdothis » Tue, May 05, 2020, 2:01 PM UTC

maitredusoi wrote: post #156

I would really like to be in 150 years in the future to see what assumptions we are making today are totally foolish like that was the case is sun as coal ;)

It’s pretty much guaranteed that we currently have a lot of beliefs that will look completely ridiculous in a few hundred years. I am also curious which ones...