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Crowstep  1yr ago (experimental-history.com)   1132 thread views

On the Importance of Staring Directly into the Sun

experimental-history.com

Submission statement: Adam Mastroianni examines why scientific discovery seemingly avoided low-hanging fruit for so long.

For example, why did the Ancient Egyptians know how to calculate the volume of a truncated pyramid 4,000 years ago, but medieval European thought that meat transformed into maggots until 1668? Why were ancient people able to make significant mathematical discoveries, while still demonstrating ignorance about basic real-life processes?

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Funny I didn't get that from this blog post at all. Maybe I should re-read it but my impression was that the writer is suggesting a human tendency to accept we know more than we do, irrespective of when (i.e. in the past or now).

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