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"First" is awfully confident assertion about an event thousands of years ago. "Earliest known" is more accurate.
by willis936 3y ago
"First" is awfully confident assertion about an event thousands of years ago. "Earliest known" is more accurate.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- crazygringo 3y agoDoesn't "earliest" already imply "earliest known"? Since obviously we can't assert anything not known.
- willis936 3y agoIt doesn't imply it, no. There is an absolute true "first human measurement of Earth's size" and it is not fundamentally unlearnable at this point in history. It's just very difficult to prove and we are far from the due diligence necessary for such an extraordinary statement. It should be properly qualified until we piece together a pretty complete picture of lost civilizations.
- crazygringo 3y agoOf course it's fundamentally unlearnable. No matter what we do know, we can never prove there wasn't someone else who figured it out even earlier but never wrote it down, or they did but it and all references to it were lost. Most "firsts" carry an implicit asterisk that isn't worth mentioning. The first person to run a 4 minute mile did so in 1954. With the asterisk that somebody else might have already done that millennia ago but didn't have a stopwatch. And we'll never know.
- willis936 3y agoIn that case then "earliest known" is the only thing that should ever be said and there is no justification for claiming "first".
- crazygringo 3y agoLogically, sure. Practically, we've collectively decided to skip words that are redundant in context. Kind of the same way you don't usually include the country code of your phone number when someone asks for your number (unless you're in an international context). In all areas of life, we give technically incomplete information, but reasonably expect people to know what we mean. Because we're humans, not computers. And we do it all day long, every day.
- andrewprock 3y agoIf you study the context and development of Greek culture, astronomy, and mathematics, a good case can be made that if it wasn't Eratosthenes, it was another Greek astronomer.
- willis936 3y agoBabylonians got pretty far from what we can tell. We don't really know how far.
- andrewprock 3y agoDo you have any sources which discuss this? From what I can tell the Babylonians were really good at mapping the night sky and tracking the positions of the planets and when they reached various waypoints. I hadn't heard of them trying to estimate the relative sizes of the various celestial objects.