[HN Gopher] Pfeilstorch
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Pfeilstorch
Author : bloat
Score : 131 points
Date : 2021-07-22 13:10 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| bloat wrote:
| Just a great demonstration of how much knowledge we used to not
| have, how much we still have to obtain, and the weird ways we'll
| get it!
| mc32 wrote:
| The obvious realm is the deep seas -we know little about that.
| We only took plate tectonics seriously starting in the '60s.
| jstimpfle wrote:
| ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener )
| lqet wrote:
| The deep sea terrifies me enough [0] that I wouldn't be _too_
| surprised if a fish would return from down there with an
| arrow through its body.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_sea_creature
| ginko wrote:
| Not a fish, but whales with ancient harpoons lodged in them
| are found on a semi-regular basis.
|
| http://awesomeocean.com/guest-columns/harpoon-bowhead-
| whale/
| robin_reala wrote:
| That's common enough that it's got a name:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassophobia
| kiliantics wrote:
| There's also a lot of knowledge we used to have and which we've
| lost. I believe past humans had a lot of knowledge about e.g.
| ecosystem dynamics before the agricultural revolution which we
| eventually stopped passing down to younger generations once our
| lifestyles became fully dependent on our own artificial
| ecosystems. Now we are slowly (re)learning things about natural
| systems that we sadly neglected to consider in our hubris
| during the industrial era. Sadly, since we may have destroyed
| too much at this point.
| philistine wrote:
| There's a strong argument to be made that the Amazon jungle
| is a past work of engineering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| 1491%3A_New_Revelations_of_the...
| Y_Y wrote:
| "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to
| add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
|
| - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
| dkarp wrote:
| similarly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eel_life_history
| bronzeage wrote:
| > In 1876, as a young student in Austria, Sigmund Freud
| dissected hundreds of eels in search of the male sex organs.
| He had to concede failure in his first major published
| research paper, and turned to other issues in frustration.
|
| What a Freudian story, looking for male genitals. I wonder
| what would Freud say about that...
| jamilabreu wrote:
| Feel so sorry for that lil guy!
|
| Adding this to my newsletter on random Wikipedia pages :)
|
| https://randomwalk.substack.com/
| katzgrau wrote:
| > Besides migration, some theories of the time held that they
| turned into other kinds of birds, mice
|
| I'm guessing/hoping this was more folklore and not a serious
| theory :)
| residualmind wrote:
| I'm sure I've encountered several Pfeilstorchs working on
| software.
|
| Finding out edge-cases in complex behavior by accident - while
| trying to fix bug A, indroducing bug B which then leads to
| discovering unrelated unexpected behavior C with then explains
| old mystery bug D.
| tragomaskhalos wrote:
| Always amusing and perplexing in equal measure to hear about some
| of the nonsense people used to believe about the natural world
| before the principles of scientific enquiry took root.
|
| That said, the idea of animals transmuting into a different
| species is at least backed by apparent precedent (caterpillar-
| butterfly, tadpole-frog), and non-trivial to disprove. That
| maggots spontaneously generate from rotting meat, or some of the
| 'cryptids' described by Pliny (https://medium.com/exploring-
| history/meet-six-of-the-beasts-...), err less so.
| memling wrote:
| There's an interesting series called the Great Ptolemaic
| Smackdown that charts one of the more prominent examples (i.e.,
| the Copernican/Galilean revolution):
| https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-sma...
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Isn't it great that we've stopped creating incorrect hypotheses
| to explain phenomena we don't understand? /s
|
| I look forward to seeing what we're completely, laughably wrong
| about today, if I live long enough. I hope it's one of the
| things _I_ am right about --- but I 'm not counting on it.
| nn3 wrote:
| It's not clear to me these theories were outside scientific
| enquiry:
|
| They had an observation: birds disappear in winter, that they
| were trying to explain.
|
| As you say there is precedent with other animals transmuting of
| which they had observations of.
|
| So it's not really unscientific to combine these two pieces of
| evidence into a theory.
|
| Certainly happens often enough today that people do these
| things, but end up being quite wrong.
| [deleted]
| ttz wrote:
| Whatever concept you can think of, it is likely that there is
| already a German word for it ;)
| wwarner wrote:
| Migrating birds really know what's important in life.
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(page generated 2021-07-22 23:02 UTC)