Based on my short cladistical analysis, Panthera tigris (Tiger) is more ancient than Panthera leo (Lion). This is due to lions being more steps away from the base of Panthera than tigers
True, but the Qaran isn't, so most people won't be able to compare the dates. Meanwhile whilst Dickens isn't as well studied as Shakespeare there have been enough adaptations of his books (Oliver, Christmas Carol etc.) that most people will know he's Victorian.
I'm not convinced they would, the average person on the street knows next to nothing about Islam. In 2019 Pew research surveyed 11,000 Americans and gave a multiple choice question asking what religion Ramadan came from - only 60% got it right.
I think that, past a certain point, it's hard for people to contextualize the past. Most people have encountered at least a little Shakespeare and Dickens, even if only through parody or reference, and can probably tell just by looking at the speech and costuming that Shakespeare is much older than Dickens. (Consider the standard interpretations of Romeo & Juliet and A Christmas Carol, for example). The Bible and Quran are so old that most people can't meaningfully distinguish based on context clues which is older. They're both more a thousand years old. Most people can't discern between the fashion and language of 100 AD vs. 700 AD.
Context clues from what? Where would people be seeing the fashion of the Quran? In all those plays, paintings, and visual representations of Muhammad and the Quran stories which are all over the place?
Even if you've only read one of them (I can recommend skimming through both, just because they matter to a lot of people and it makes it easier to understand historical and current actions of believers) the mere point that Islam or Muhammad aren't mentioned in the Bible (in spite of Jerusalem being mutually holy), but Jesus (Isa) and Mary (Maryam) are very prominent in the Quran should make it obvious which was written first even if you couldn't figure it out from historical context.
It makes sense. Insects are capable of existing without flowers, but most flowers can't function without insects. Flowers couldn't evolve if there were no insects already present.
But there are heaps of flowers that function without insects - all grasses flower, for example, but very few (if any?) of them are pollinated by insects. Likewise as far as I'm aware trees are much more often pollinated by wind than by insects. So how did plants reproduce before flowers were around? Did everything have rhizomes or what? I suppose I could just look it up rather than blathering on here...
...Turns out Wikipedia, or at least what I can make out through its incorrigibly opaque style, thinks it was about a mixture of spores and self-pollination. So there we are.
hey! currently in envirosci so this is just off the top of my head and could be slightly incorrect, but the seeds came well before the evolution of flowers. so, pine trees, for example, are coniferous, no flowers, and spread seeds! same with many grasses, and countless species that rely on either wind or other forms of distribution of seed. flowers just evolved as a more efficient, alluring way once insects rolled around - one more to add to the many ways plants reproduce!
I liked all of them except for the Armstrong/Davis question. They were born 25 years apart and died 20 years apart. You need to specifically know jazz history to know who came first among people who were alive at the same time.
right... because the authors of the Old Testament clearly knew a lot about radiation, ionized plasma and ancient cosmology and that's probably what they were referring to. Makes sense to bring this up in a conversation about the order that things appeared on planet Earth, too.
That's a bit like rubbishing stone-age man's knowledge of gravity because he hadn't read Einstein. The fact that they didn't understand it in a modern scientific sense doesn't imply that they couldn't say anything correct about it.
The more rational observation to make about this particular issue is that it's remarkable the writers of Genesis somehow had this insight that was far ahead of its time - that light is something that exists apart from the heavenly bodies and artificial sources.
(Obviously there is much to be said against that, but it at least makes more sense than insisting no-one knows anything who can't describe it in terms of physics)
Nowhere did I say or imply that the authors of the Bible understood ionized plasma or "ancient cosmology". You mocked the idea that light could come before stars. Not only were you wrong, you were wrong while trying to be clever and derisive, which is even more embarrassing.
Easy - Quantum Mechanics. Sliced bread (in a package) wasn't invented until the late 1920's. Einstein wrote his four famous papers in 1905, which formed the foundation for general relativity, Brownian motion, quantum mechanics, and mass-energy equivalence. By 1924, quantum mechanics had been pretty well formalized into the set of ideas we still use to define it today (although, like any branch of science, it's grown quite a bit since then).
Bostjan: QM was invented by Max Planck in 1900. Einstein did not formulate general relativity until 1915 - his 1905 papers were about (1) the photoelectric effect; (2) Brownian motion; (3) special relativity; (4) mass-energy equivalence (an extension of the 3rd paper).
Brain Surgery. The first successful removal of a tumor from the brain was in 1887, and the first liquid fueled rocket was made by Robert Goddard in 1926.
The computer question was the only one I missed. What about the Babbage Engine of 1830? It is considered to have had most of the characteristics of the modern digital computer.
And Blaise Pascal of France and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz of Germany invented mechanical digital calculating machines during the 17th century.
I also had a flashback from that movie. On my part it is because we were taught in school in Finland, that the machine that flies is "aeroplane" (in Finnish it is lentokone, literally flying machine). When I was a child, word "Airplane" (with capital letter) was always connected to that movie, and I wondered, how it is written (and I of course thought that it is logical with word "air" as part of it). It was long before I learned about spelling differences in British and American English.
The photo is related to the first question. According to Google/ Wikipedia, it's from the Three Barons Renaissance Fair in Anchorage. File here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lady_at_Three_Barons_Renaissance_Fair_Anchorage_(IMG_7768a).jpg
Good questions! Quite shocked only 40% got the insect flower question right though!
The 8% that thought the middle ages were very recent was a bit surprising too. Did they think the middle ages went right up to wwII. Or did they think the rennaissance was shortly after the year 0? (to keep religion out of this, but I am sure someone will bring it right back in ;) )
Not really. There's no reason to specify that you mean Louis Armstrong came before Miles Davis from a natality perspective or that the Middle Ages came before the Renaissance from a historical perspective. There's no "perspective" in which flowering plants appeared before insects. From a temporal perspective, from which the word "before" takes its meaning.
...Turns out Wikipedia, or at least what I can make out through its incorrigibly opaque style, thinks it was about a mixture of spores and self-pollination. So there we are.
The more rational observation to make about this particular issue is that it's remarkable the writers of Genesis somehow had this insight that was far ahead of its time - that light is something that exists apart from the heavenly bodies and artificial sources.
(Obviously there is much to be said against that, but it at least makes more sense than insisting no-one knows anything who can't describe it in terms of physics)
Genesis 1 is not a scientific account, nor was it intended to be. It is a mythological narrative with a parallel structure.
(actually this will make it easier to remember for me)
and almost existed before insects but we're 50 million years away.
And Blaise Pascal of France and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz of Germany invented mechanical digital calculating machines during the 17th century.
PS. Woman's photo on front page, in which question is she connected to?
The 8% that thought the middle ages were very recent was a bit surprising too. Did they think the middle ages went right up to wwII. Or did they think the rennaissance was shortly after the year 0? (to keep religion out of this, but I am sure someone will bring it right back in ;) )