nan
1 years ago
[History | History of Science | Paleontology | CN: racism, colonialism, non graphic discussion of enslavement]

The First Fossil Finders in North America Were Ensla...
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nan
1 years ago
This is a really good essay
transilience
1 years ago
When British paleontologist Martin Rudwick translated Cuvier’s works into English in 1997, he left out the sections on fossil myths as irrelevant to science
nan
1 years ago
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeah. So.many. dimensions. Of yikes.
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transilience
1 years ago
nineteen goddamn ninety seven, ffs
transilience
1 years ago
(to soothe myself I am picturing Stephen Maturin's FACE)
nan
1 years ago
Stephen Maturin: /has pulled a man's nose for less!
nan
1 years ago
And yeah: a lot of the sciences have this problem, where a lot of history of the discipline written by people who practice the discipline deliberately obscures huge chunks of that history because the motivation behind writing the history is not -fundamentally - examining how we know things, exploring human knowledge and such like
nan
1 years ago
But a narrow bid for professional "respectability"
nan
1 years ago
Since the project of professional respectability is unavoidably racist, classist, sexist and self valorizing-
transilience
1 years ago
yeeeeeeah
transilience
1 years ago
(Stephen: /choice string of adjectives for anyone who suppresses CUVIER on the grounds of not being SCIENTIFIC ENOUGH--!)
transilience
1 years ago
(yes, Stephen, we know)\
transilience
1 years ago
Ugh people
nan
1 years ago
You get an even more distorted historical narrative than you would if the professional respectability weren't driving the work
transilience
1 years ago
real history is so cool ;;
nan
1 years ago
(Removing that narrow self definition of professional respectability wouldn't remove the racism, classism, sexism and self valorization, of course. Decolonizing a discipline is bigger than that. But I do think it's an intensifier.)
nan
1 years ago
Real history is so cool!
transilience
1 years ago
the thing about the myths is so cool
transilience
1 years ago
I LOVE that kind of thing
transilience
1 years ago
the different ways people keep records
nan
1 years ago
AbsoLUTELY so cool! The way that use of story is a part of the lived environment too, so that there are all kinds of experience and knowledge reinforcing the structure of it in many ways
nan
1 years ago
I mean: the story of the vision in more recent time that reveals the deep past, with the journey that confirms the vision - so that making that same journey for a contemporary person then reconfirms the vision, the account of the vision, and the confirming journey.
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