A seamstress who solved the ancient mystery of the Argonaut | Hacker News Reader

A seamstress who solved the ancient mystery of the Argonaut

themarginalian.org

121 pointsjelliclesfarm41 comments

> Walking the shoreline and wading into the sea in her long skirts, she fell in love with one of Earth’s most alien life-forms: the small sepia-like octopus Argonauta argo

Wellp, nothing to do with the Argonauts from Greek mythology [0], I clicked wondering what the mystery was and if it had anything to do with the Golden Fleece...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argonauts

Actually the current name "Argonauta argo" is taken directly from the Argonauts from Greek mythology.

The Ancient Greeks used the name "nautilos" for it.

Confusingly, now the name "Nautilus" is used for a completely unrelated genus of cephalopods.

While many biologists or mineralogists who have coined scientific names for animals, plants or minerals have taken Greek or Latin words from ancient authors, like Pliny the Elder, Aristotle or Theophrastus, most of them have been too lazy to actually read the old books.

Because of that, while most ancient names of animals, plants and minerals have been reused in the modern scientific terminology, many of them have very different meanings now, which occasionally confuses those who browse some old books, from Antiquity or from the Middle Ages, where the original meanings of the words are used.

Because the philologists are usually ignorant about biology and mineralogy, the dictionaries of ancient languages frequently contain erroneous definitions for the words denoting animals, plants or minerals, so they are not very helpful.

Same here

Same here, too

It wasn't just women who were excluded, the poor didn't stand a chance at all. It's clear that Jeanne had the means to set up underwater cages and build a marine lab, and more than enough time to spend on her studies. The article's title calls her a "seamstress", but that is unrelated.

I had never heard of Jeanne Villepreux-Power, or of the papered nautilus, before just this moment.

Nor of the Marginalian, a singularly fascinating magazine.

Subscribing! I foresee many happy hours of exploration and discovery. Thank you, jelliclesfarm!

> Schopenhauer’s exquisite insight that “talent is like the marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach [whereas] genius is like the marksman who hits a target which others cannot even see.”

Great quote in a great article. Thank you.

Jeannette Power's "Observations physiques sur le poulpe de l'Argonauta argo" (1856) is available at the Internet Archive [1].

[1] https://archive.org/details/b2228476x

TheMarginalian is my favorite piece of the internet. So much beauty.

+1000. Not only her writing is fantastic, the articles are also extensively linked to each other, so you can easily spend 1-2 hours jumping from one excellent article to another. I have learned about so many people from the Marginalian.

If you want to delve may I suggest:

* The unfortunate story of Virginia Frances Sterrett, an illustrator of great talent: https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/01/27/virginia-frances-s...

* Maria Mitchell, the astronomer, who was the “first woman employed by the American federal government for a ‘specialized non-domestic skill’”: https://www.themarginalian.org/2021/04/03/maria-mitchell-tel...

* Ursula Le Guin on being a man: https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/10/17/ursula-k-le-guin-g...

* Popova’s review of the book Literary Witches, An Illustrated Celebration of Trailblazing Women Writers Who Have Enchanted and Transformed the World: https://www.themarginalian.org/2018/02/07/literary-witches/

This quote from Ursula Le Guin struck me as funny

>Sex is even more boring as a spectator sport than all the other spectator sports

I think the massive popularity of porn on the Internet would argue against this assertion.

I think you miss the point, she's taking the perspective of a failed man. In general, porn is pretty boring to her compared to the act itself. She states this by saying she'd rather watch show jumping while having sex, over watching sex. (I'm in her court and anecdotally so are many other women).

the great research work aside, her drawing is lovely.

> Since women were excluded from the scientific establishment, unable to attend universities or present at learned societies, her research traveled into the world by proxy.

> By the end of her long life, Jeanne Villepreux-Power belonged to more than a dozen scientific societies.

The exclusion doesn't seem to have been very strict.

It’s presumably easier to get accepted if your first work is good, original and presented by a member of the establishment.

I wonder what progress humans would have made if an inclusive approach had been taken a few hundred or thousand years earlier?

Good luck as a man without pedigree or means to get your research noticed, much less published, translated, and promoted by leading scientists.

If you're talking about scientific research especially, not much because it was not a shortage of people that limited research.

> I wonder what progress humans would have made if an inclusive approach had been taken a few hundred or thousand years earlier?

You're wondering how much value was lost by ignoring what was -- by your own hypothesis -- unoriginal, shoddy work?

Or work that was interesting but was authored by someone lacking inside connections?

How did you arrive at this conclusion?

lostlogin's explanation of why women really were excluded from the scientific establishment, despite the fact that Jeanne Villepreux-Power had no trouble becoming one of the establishment's most established members, was that her work was good.

If that's what it takes, the implication is that all you're missing when you indulge in exclusionary systems is the bad work. How much of a loss is that?

I see, you have a issue with understanding logic. In this case we have an illustration of the fact that A => B != B => A

Armies got a lot better when the officers stopped being restricted to the nobility. This was forced on European armies by the slaughter of the nobility in WW2.

The subtext of the movie "The Blue Max" was about commoners becoming acceptable as fighter pilots because the knights were wiped out.

P.S. It's a tragedy that an excellent movie like TBM is not available on bluray. Sigh.

> P.S. It's a tragedy that an excellent movie like TBM is not available on bluray. Sigh.

I was curious, and it looks like it had a Blu-ray release, but it was a limited production run. I guess they decided to constrain supply in order to get a high price.

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-Blue-Max-Blu-ray/87746/#O...

Thanks. I just bought it! Woo-hoo!

Always looking forward to Stachel showing us some real flyink!

> This was forced on European armies by the slaughter of the nobility in WW2.

History is a bit more complicated.

History is always complicated. But you're free to provide nuance.

If you focus on Britain only then this was effectively turned around with the Cardwell reform of 1871: https://victorianweb.org/history/armyrefs.html (and you can find examples going back to the 17th century where "commoners" became officers in areas where competence was considered more important than anything else). As for the rest of Europe, that happened long before WW2 as well. Did you mean to write WW1? Even at that time nobility didn't have much to do with the army in most of Europe.

Yeah, I meant WW1. Sorry about the mistake.

Now that's a claim that I wouldn't have nearly as much beef with as the version with WW2.

Well for starters the first modern European army with commoner officers was France's when it had to take on all of Europe in 1790. So dating it to WWII is being more than a century late.

Yes. And nobility was going out of fashion in most of Europe after WWI at the latest. Eg in Austria you weren't allowed any titles at all anymore.

Though if you concentrate on Germany, because of the smaller armed forces demanded by the Versailles treaty, you probably did have a higher proportion of noble officers during the Weimar Republic.

Some countries, including - regrettably - my own are still solidly stuck in the past on this.

I made a mistake. I meant WW1.

I feel like we'd be super advanced if we'd just stop arguing about petty shit.

> I feel like we'd be super advanced if we'd just stop arguing about petty shit.

If everyone always agreed, science and technology would stagnate. Disagreement drives advancement.

Please, explain how disagreement over petty shit drives advancement. By my understanding, petty shit is of no value, and thus unimportant to advancement of anything but resentment and dismissal, and indeed is an inhibitor of progress. (Irony acknowledged.)

The week to week grind in academia, disagreements included, is typically petty shit to people outside of a very niche subfield.

One man's petty garbage is another man's sacred ox?

your name is 'moistly', was that petty at the time - just curious because it's ironic.

It’s ironic? How so? ELI5 please.

Anyhoo, I chose “moistly” because his reaction to saying the word was hilarious, because it’s completely unlike other aliases here, and because it’s one of those words that everyone feels a little squeamish about, like “lugubrious”, “bulbous”, “phlegm”, “orifice”.

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