[wycy]

It’s really strange reading the words of such an intelligent person beginning to understand something back then that is so fundamental today that even laypeople understand it more scientifically. Really weird, but really cool to get a peek back into a scientific mind in the 1700s.

[jstanley]

> even laypeople understand it more scientifically

Laypeople use more scientific-sounding words, sure, but what more scientific way is there to understand something than to have discovered it yourself through experiment?

[utensil4778]

Experimentation brings knowledge, not understanding.

Franklin did not understand electricity, but merely observed it.

It wasn't until we discovered the electron proper and Maxwell did his work that we-- anyone-- understood electricity.

Understanding comes from scientific and academic rigor after the discovery.

[teraflop]

Along similar lines, I recently learned about an early nuclear physics textbook written by George Gamow. The first edition came out in 1931, and the preface of the second edition in 1937 describes how the book had to be completely written because the state of knowledge had changed so radically in those few years -- most notably, by the discovery of the neutron and of induced radioactivity.

It's fun to think about a time when this stuff that we now take for granted as basic physics was not just new and poorly understood, but the forefront of knowledge was advancing so rapidly.

I haven't been able to find an online copy of the 1931 edition, but the 1937 edition is called Structure of Atomic Nuclei and Nuclear Transformations, and it's available through the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.501245

[teraflop]

D'oh -- I meant to say "the book had to be completely rewritten" but it's too late to edit my comment.

[detourdog]

I often prefer the original language of discovery. My favorite is the term accumulator compared to battery.

[mrunkel]

In German we use “Akku” which is short for “Akkumulator” for rechargeable batteries.

[somat]

That is a much better term, battery: inconsequential detail on how it is constructed. accumulator: what it does.

[freedomben]

Indeed! I love reading Benjamin Franklin for exaclty that. If you haven't read it, Walter Isaacson's biography on Franklin is absolutely fascinating. Brilliant, hilarious, driven, and wildly accomplished. The dude was (IMHO) one of the most interesting humans to have ever lived. Highly recommend.

[lupire]

This was how the 18th Century worked. In the 19th Century mathematical language became rigorous and formal, better able to handle more complex constructions accurately, but harder for lay people to learn, as it became a new language.

[kqr]

Well... going by the Fermi biography and the first few chapters of The Idea Factory (about Bell Labs) I would think this is what it always sounds like in the early stages of humans discovering a new part of nature.

It's just that our most recent theories have been so rich that we have happened to discover many things theoretically before we find them in real life. (Theory has preceded practice in recent decades, rather than the other way around which is historically more common.) I'm not sure this will always be so, it might be a temporary leap.

[IAmNotACellist]

TBH that's how I feel trying to intuitively understand and remember the various colors of quarks and their interactions.