Columbus Day

[calimac]

Yes, Columbus discovered America. It was his coming here that directly led to the awareness of the continents by the rest of the world. The Vikings, if they were here at all, didn't do that, and the previous inhabitants kept the place to themselves. In science, you can find whatever you like in the laboratory, but if you don't publish first, you're not the discoverer, and you don't get the Nobel Prize.

As for the deplorable things that Columbus and his successors did, all of us who live here except those solely descended from those previous inhabitants are the beneficiaries of that, so while we can deplore it, as we should, denouncing its practitioners root and branch doesn't look too good on us. Considering the state of the world, our descendants won't look too kindly on us, either.

So let us celebrate, by the relentlessly logical procedure of closing the post offices, preventing me from mailing packages to B's sister and niece until tomorrow. I will give my thankfulness that the auto repair shop is not closed, and was able to repair and reinstall the flat tire I got yesterday on the freeway: exciting times.

Hobbling on my spare tire over there, I saw a nice indication of the ethnic dominance of this area in the form of front yard signs for school board and city council candidates named Chang, Zhang, and Huang.

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yes, Columbus discovered America. It was his coming here that directly led to the awareness of the continents by the rest of the world. The Vikings, if they were here at all, didn't do that, and the previous inhabitants kept the place to themselves. In science, you can find whatever you like in the laboratory, but if you don't publish first, you're not the discoverer, and you don't get the Nobel Prize.

I'll bite. I'm happy to agree that Columbus discovered America, but am more than dubious about the implication that the ancestors of the Native Americans did not! (The Vikings - and for that matter mediaeval British fishermen - may well have known about it too, but let's use the ancestors of the Native Americans as a clearer test case.)

The idea that discovery necessarily involves publication seems a bit tendentious to me, especially as this is not "science" but, I suppose, geography (if we have to label it in terms of the European school curriculum).

But even if we grant that idea, what does "publication" mean in this context? Columbus told his fellow Europeans (I've not heard that he went to the trouble of telling people from "the rest of the world"). Whichever ancestors of the native Americans discovered the Bering land bridge almost certainly told their immediate nations as well, sparking that earlier wave of immigration. Why was this not publication as much as Columbus's was?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Sure, it's unfair. There have been plenty of cases in science, too, of earlier discoverers getting cheated out of credit, because they didn't publish.

publish, v. tr. To bring to the public attention; announce.

"I've not heard that [Columbus] went to the trouble of telling people from 'the rest of the world.'" Nor did I say he did. I wrote, " It was his coming here that directly led to the awareness of the continents by the rest of the world." You know, I try to phrase these things carefully. When the Chinese, say, or the Australian Aboriginals eventually found out about it, it was as a result of Columbus.

But we could say of the unknown proto-Asian discoverer of the Bering Land Bridge, yes, that person also discovered the Americas. Mind, through no fault of their own these folks had no idea what they'd found. Neither did Columbus, at first, though he figured it out soon enough.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Well, if we're agreed (as per your second sentence) that one can be a discoverer without publication then the main issue is resolved. Your original post suggested otherwise.

As to whether one needs to fully understand the implications and nature of one's discovery in order to count as the discoverer is probably a matter of degree, and sometimes it's a nice question. If I found a skeleton under a car park and someone else identified it as Richard III, which of us would have discovered Richard III? A bit of both, perhaps.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Or, more importantly, we could make it Queen Isabella Day, to honor funding of dodgy research journeys based on contrarian theories that turn out to be wrong, but still lucky discoveries are made.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

I think I'd have an easier time remembering not to go to the Post Office if more people did start calling this "Indigenous People's Day" as I've seen suggested, as there would be more talk about it to remind me.

I don't know anyone who actually celebrates Columbus anyway. I wonder if "IPD" would take the heat off of Thanksgiving, when we do celebrate, and very authentically too, the party that the Plymouth settlers and the local Indians had in 1632.