[HN Gopher] Coming Attraction: Charles Morton wonders where bird...
___________________________________________________________________
Coming Attraction: Charles Morton wonders where birds come from
(1685)
Author : benbreen
Score : 19 points
Date : 2022-07-25 03:14 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.laphamsquarterly.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.laphamsquarterly.org)
| gitpusher wrote:
| I find it fascinating that the author apparently knew about
| planets and gravitational attraction (which are fairly advanced
| concepts) while at the same time being completely unaware that
| animals can migrate long distances.
|
| You'd think migration is a very easily-explainable phenomenon.
| But for thousands of years it completely flummoxed Western
| thinkers. The big breakthrough came in 1822, when a stork arrived
| in Germany... carrying an African-made arrow impaled through its
| neck.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfeilstorch
| mc32 wrote:
| What did they think of migratory birds which would "disappear"
| one season to "reappear" another season. What was the
| explanation, if any?
| jimkleiber wrote:
| 1822? Makes me question whether King Arthur would have known
| that African swallows existed[0].
|
| But in all seriousness, wow, I had no idea this was such a
| recentish phenomenon.
|
| [0]: Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference.
| erulabs wrote:
| Woodcocks travel a fairly immense distance (see
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/staticarchive/3c74c7b19cb733d0f68b3c4f...).
|
| I would suspect, had one guessed in 1685 that the birds arriving
| that Halloween in London had been relaxing in Spring around the
| Caspian Sea, you would have been laughed at. Persia in the 1600s
| might as well have been the moon. I suppose one can forgive them
| for their lack of belief in the power of our fellow animals -
| that is more or less the major mistake of their time period:
| hubris.
|
| > Now, if this be true (as I have no reason to doubt it), it
| either shows the creature to come from above, or at least thus
| much, if it come from any remote part of the earth, it first
| mounts above the attraction of the earthly globe before it begins
| its journey toward us. Which, if it be gained, it fairly helps
| our supposal, as is before noted; for if there be such an
| attraction (which is called gravity) and it have bounds in a
| certain height, then it may as well serve their going to the moon
| as to some other parts of the earth.
|
| I do love this though. Perhaps birds travel to the moon! One
| cannot fault him for lack of imagination.
| abecedarius wrote:
| <pedantic engineer voice>The distance to the moon was well-
| enough known at the time, though. That's quite a migration! And
| I think they should at least be entertaining a strong doubt
| about air along the way: from how attenuated the sun/moon look
| near the horizon vs. high in the sky, most of whatever's
| attenuating that light stays very near the Earth. I think
| astronomers had been accounting for refraction from the
| atmosphere since at least Tycho Brahe.
|
| Added: just found this on the early history of atmospheric
| refraction.
| https://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~lehn/_Papers_for_Download/hist...
| erulabs wrote:
| Indeed but the bit about "maybe gravity stops applying at
| some point" is key. Just floating to the moon seems more
| doable that that this small huntable bird has an active
| domain larger than any human empire ever.
|
| Like obviously they were way wrong - but I think it's
| important to frame historical ideas with an honest "what
| would I have to believe in order to believe this".
| abecedarius wrote:
| Agreed! I wanted to come across in a "yes, and" spirit. I
| just think "what would I have to ignore?" is interesting,
| too. Such as a distance that'd take weeks of travel at the
| speed of a jet plane -- much faster than a hurricane --
| nonstop. Some such celestial current is also quite a thing
| to imagine.
| irrational wrote:
| His main problem seems to be missing data (specifically about
| where birds migrate to). I wonder how many things we are wrong
| about from lack of data that people in the year 2359 will look
| back at us like we look back at Charles Morton.
| lurquer wrote:
| > If seasonal birds did, in the time of their absence from us,
| reside anywhere in this earth, it is likely that someone would in
| one age or other have discovered the place; but I cannot, from
| any record of the learned or distinct and reasonable account of
| other men, find that there is any man who has seen them out of
| their seasons; and therefore I conclude they are nowhere in this
| our earth.
|
| I don't know this Charles Morton. But, with all due respect to
| the guy, I bet his colleagues would have pointed out the weakness
| of his argument...
|
| Morton must have known about the existence of South America (and
| the vast tracts of unexplored N. America) as well as Asia and
| Africa.
|
| Surely he wouldn't have expected to have found treatises on bird
| populations written by Incas and Zulus, Chinamen and Mongols, in
| whatever collection of writings he had access to.
|
| I think he may have really wanted to believe in the moon theory.
|
| Perhaps thats the lesson here... not so much missing data, as a
| blind spot for fallacies when you have a cool thing you want to
| believe in.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-07-25 23:01 UTC)