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I have had the experience of serendipitous discovery when researching relatively recent history. To find Galileo’s handwriting 400 years later, effectively enga
by macintux 7mo ago
I have had the experience of serendipitous discovery when researching relatively recent history. To find Galileo’s handwriting 400 years later, effectively engaging in both agreement and debate with Ptolemy through the latter’s work… even though he specifically was looking for it, it still must have been surreal.
- divbzero 7mo ago> even though he specifically was looking for it The historian was looking for conceptual connections between Ptolemy and Galileo, but the discovery of Galileo’s handwriting in Ptolemy’s book seemed to be a surprise.
- macintux 7mo agoI interpreted the fact that he was reviewing multiple copies of the same text as him searching for Galileo’s notes, but I suppose it’s possible that the motivation was the possibility of discrepancies between printings.
- SiempreViernes 7mo agoThe Almagest was hand written about 1400 years before Galileo lived, so it's not so much looking at different printings as at different editions that are based on different set of copies of the copies of the copies etc, further many editors would try to "fix" the ancient work, removing material they didn't like and adding their own stuff or material from other works... it can get very messy.
- 2b3a51 7mo agoOwen Gingerich was a historian of astronomy who did a census of printed early editions of Copernicus' book De revolutionibus. He found a tradition of students copying annotations from teachers readings into their own copies of the book. I recollect that he was able to trace various traditions of commentary each stemming from a well known astronomy teacher. I suppose that checking early printings of key works looking for annotations is a pretty standard thing to do now.
- Diederich 7mo ago> I have had the experience of serendipitous discovery when researching relatively recent history. I would really love to hear about this. (:
- macintux 7mo agoNothing all that exciting, just pleasure from finding a photo in a local newspaper of my great-great-grandfather’s (approximately, I don’t remember the specifics at the moment) car being pulled by horses out of a local river, or researching a family name I found in a cemetery and finding interesting tidbits about their history. Probably the most impressive effort I stumbled upon was a woman from rural Indiana who collected (and typed up) thousands of pages of local history & genealogy in the mid-20th century. Was interesting reading personal accounts of Morgan’s Raid, for example.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]