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A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

economist.com

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Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#221

Post by thaumasiotes »

garmaine wrote: post #219
thaumasiotes wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

中 [inside] is the opposite of 外 [outside]. (Actually, there are several synonymous words which are opposites of 外, but in the 中国 / 外国 contrast, the opposite of 外 is obviously 中.)

My history may be off, but I believe that the Chinese named their country 中國 because they believed themselves the center of the world. Much like how the Romans named the Mediterranean (which means “middle sea”). The primary meaning of 中 is “middle” and it gains the meaning of “inside” by the geometric implication of the insides of something being that thing’s middle. 中國人 is a specific term of nationality. Likewise wi…

> My history may be off, but I believe that the Chinese named their country 中國 because they believed themselves the center of the world.

Your history is off; the term is very old and does not even originally refer to all of China. It's also the name of a small, non-central part of Japan.

> Interestingly, A LOT of mainlanders don’t know to line up in the 外國人 line when they go through Taiwan’s passport control, and they get upset when they are told to switch.

I think they have a point here; putting mainlanders in the 外國人 line would seem to be an explicit contravention of the One China Policy.

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#222

Post by etrevino »

koheripbal wrote: post #176
HarryHirsch wrote: post #13

The Grand Banks fisheries were known to Basque fishermen even before John Cabot's voyages, so it's not completely surprising that Markland shows up outside the sagas.

That seems unlikely. source?

I'll try to find a source, but it's true. The import of this wasn't apparent to them, though.

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#223

Post by Beldin »

hirako2000 wrote: post #185
ethbr0 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess my perspective (from watching struggles with public health & vaccine development information during early COVID-19) is that modern intellects aren't well exercised with respect to uncertainty. Our predecessors lived in a culture suffused with unreliable information. There weren't even "alternate" facts, because there were few accepted ones to have alternatives to. On the one hand, we know more than they did (…

We don't know more than we did. We have a strong belief that our cumulated knowledge, tools and infrastructure are leading to more accurate knowledge. We accomplish technological advancements that comfort us in the idea we know better. That's all. Science could be made a verb, but like wisdom, calling something science doesn't de facto make it so.

We actually do know more. Sure, physics is basically modelling and observations. Our current models might be completely wrong - even if their predictive power is far greater.

But we've also made some genuine proofs. For example, we know that Fermat's last theorem is correct. That was suspected, but not known.

Yes, this applies basically to all of maths - and even to other disciplines that produce proofs. Another example: we know that one model of gravity permits black holes, wormholes, and warp drives. Sure, the model might not accurately reflect reality. But still: this is something we know nowadays, that we didn't know 105 years ago.

Not to mention all the things we collectively have done - we know it's possible to leave Earth, to live in orbit for a while, to convert sunlight directly into electricity, that it is (barely) possible to run the 100m in under 10 sec, what the earth looks like from a distance, how to make fusion bombs, how to fly... we know a lot more than folks from even the early 1900s, let alone further back.

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#224

Post by dang »

exdsq wrote: post #220
dang wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post religious flamebait to HN. It leads to religious flamewar, the most avoidable of all flamewar, which we do want to avoid here. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28649134 .

I don't think it's religious flamebait, I believe it's historically accurate - but okay.

Those are not mutually exclusive.

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#225

Post by dc-programmer »

koheripbal wrote: post #176
HarryHirsch wrote: post #13

The Grand Banks fisheries were known to Basque fishermen even before John Cabot's voyages, so it's not completely surprising that Markland shows up outside the sagas.

That seems unlikely. source?

https://www.amazon.com/Basque-History-World-Story-Nation/dp/...

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#227

Post by sdiupIGPWEfh »

hutzlibu wrote: post #140
distances wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfeilstorch But that's different, I doubt birds intentionally carry anything from Africa either.

"Before migration was understood, people struggled to explain the sudden annual disappearance of birds like the white stork and barn swallow. Besides migration, some theories of the time held that they turned into other kinds of birds, mice, or hibernated underwater during the winter, and such theories were even propagated by zoologists of the time." Ok, it seems that Aristoteles believed, that birds actually transfo…

> Besides migration, some theories of the time held that they turned into other kinds of birds...

Makes me think of loons, which completely change their plumage for the winter in addition to migrating from fresh water lakes to oceanic waters. Without close study, you might not realize they're the same birds.

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#229

Post by rupi »

koheripbal wrote: post #176
HarryHirsch wrote: post #13

The Grand Banks fisheries were known to Basque fishermen even before John Cabot's voyages, so it's not completely surprising that Markland shows up outside the sagas.

That seems unlikely. source?

The book ‘Cod’ goes into detail on this.

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#230

Post by hirako2000 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #200
hirako2000 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't know more than we did. We have a strong belief that our cumulated knowledge, tools and infrastructure are leading to more accurate knowledge. We accomplish technological advancements that comfort us in the idea we know better. That's all. Science could be made a verb, but like wisdom, calling something science doesn't de facto make it so.

Not sure if you're arguing from an epistemological or objective basis, but I'll assume the latter. We know that our knowledge better describes the results we reliably reproduce in the world around us. We have knowledge about things that our ancestors did not. If that doesn't constitute "knowing more than they did," I'm not sure what does.

We don't know that. All we know is that we have further knowledge that at certain points in time.

We have a tendency to assume we know more than at any other time before on the basis that we know more than our rather recent ancestors.

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