The Science of Discovery
There’s this thing about discovery that keeps popping up in the TL. How come Newton discovered gravity while our ancestors knew apples fall to the ground? Discovery is a systematic process. Making an observation of something and doing nothing about it is not discovery. #THREAD
Before modern satellites were invented, cartography was a very difficult task. People wanted to travel but they did not know which path to follow. The reason is that there were no known landmarks, or named physical features.
Therefore, before Europeans came they had to send explorers to do reconnaissance. For those who know how maps are built nowadays, reconnaissance is done using remote sensing techniques. Using satellite imagery we can differentiate between mountains, rivers, lakes and rangelands.
In the early days, these techniques were not present and explorers had to walk to different places and map what they see. Cartography is a skill that requires visual-spatial intelligence. That’s why most of these guys rarely got lost.
These explorers, therefore, made notes of what they were seeing and of course they named physical features with names they themselves were familiar with. That’s how we end up with L. Victoria, Thompson Falls etc.
Discovery, therefore, doesn’t mean finding something that everybody is blind to. No, it only means systematizing information, making formal observations, and maintaining a single name for something.
For example, somebody asked what locals used to call L. Victoria before the explorers came. However, that question is unhelpful because Kenyans will call it something different, Ugandans will have their own name, and even Tanzanian’s.
If you were to have it on a map, which name do you use? Europeans made that attempt severally. For example, Lake Naivasha is a Maasai word but in distorted form. Maasai’s used to call it Naiposha. We have thousands of these cases.
The same goes for species. Carolus Linnaeus came with the double naming system. The reason is that he noted the naming of plants and animals was quite messed up. There had to be a formal system of naming. So over and over again we hear animal and plant species being discovered.
The idea is not that the plant or animal has popped out of thin air. Most often, the species hadn’t formally been discovered. That is, does it have the double name? Do we know from what class, group, kingdom it belongs? If we don’t, then that’s a new discovery.
The other day, some white guys discovered what I guess is a new species of whale or shark in the coast. The scientist said it was a new discovery and all of a sudden Kenyans were angry saying the locals knew about it. Could the locals give the scientific name of the shark?
We can go on and on. Francis Crick, James Watson and Rosalind Franklin discovered the DNA double helix. We all have DNA in our bodies, but none of us is ever angry that it was discovered by other people.
What about planets? Our ancestors have lived for millennia looking up to the sky and seeing the balls of burning gas. But it took the works of Copernicus and Galileo to get basic facts right. Did your ancestors know the earth revolves around the sun and not vice-versa?
I have thousands of examples I can give. But my point here is that discovery is a science, not a whim. How we name places, animals, planets, and physical features is a scientific process.
I’ve done some work with open street maps. In this exercise, we name buildings, streets, roads etc so that they are easily identified by Google maps. The good thing is that if I misname a building or road, another mapper can come and correct it.
But early explorers did not have such a luxury made possible by technology. That’s why they misheard names or in the case of L. Victoria, gave it a whole new name. If L. Victoria was being named today, a local would just log in and change the name.
My appeal here is that Africans should focus on doing science not complaining. There are a lot of undiscovered things in the world, some in plain sight. But you’ll have to go and do the job. And like they say, “there’s genius in the obvious.”
Gravity is an obvious concept but it took the genius eyes of Newton to see it. Evolution is pretty obvious but did we have to wait for Darwin the genius? Ask yourself, what’s so obvious about what you see. #END
