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It 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.
by willis936 3y ago
It 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.