5 ms·

I think you're misparsing the sentence. It just means that this is when it first became known to "western science".

• bregma 6y ago
  No, it's not a mis-parse. It's a justified criticism of racist journalism.
  • markalexander 6y ago
    I'm convinced; the author is clearly a racist because the people in this thread have a poor grasp of the English language. When is his execution?
    • onyva 6y ago
      Hyperbole. The right’s favorite pass time. Also, thinking their grasp of the English language is great. Ie trump being a perfect example. This is about language though. Eurocentrism is about making everything relative to what the west thinks, even when it’s “understanding” is very limited. Like going to explore other cultures and reporting back with authority when there’s plenty of local expertise that should be sourced. Take the theory of decline of the Ottoman Empire as an example to this type of anti-intellectualism, but there so many mistakes to learn from.
      • markalexander 6y ago
        The particular sentence in the article is only slightly uncommon in terms of difficulty, so I don't really see how I've implied that my English is 'great'. Passable, maybe. We might have different standards. Nice high-brow segue from "you're obviously a Trump supporter" to "civilisation is in decline due to anti-intellectualism", though. Hint: I'm British. Talk about ethnocentrism. I'm not really sure how I can constructively help you with the sentence in question without literally parsing the tokens for you and identifying the parts of speech, objects, subjects, etc. Seems like that would be a waste of time, given you've already arrived at your own immutable conclusions.
        • onyva 6y ago
          >> civilisation is in decline due to anti-intellectualism clearly you have no idea what is the Ottoman decline paradigm, nor why this reference was used in this context. I can only quote you: "I'm not really sure how I can constructively help you"... maybe google?
  • lazylizard 6y ago
    In this case the journalist clearly meant "western science" was slow on the uptake and needed locals to point them on the way...and as late as 1911 at that!
• fma 6y ago
  It's whitewashing of the world . Take for example the Monk Fruit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siraitia_grosvenorii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siraitia_grosvenorii Known in China...but scientific name attributed to the westerner who "found it" in the 1930s. It's very common if you are cognizant of it.
  • markalexander 6y ago
    Hardly. We don't often use Chinese words in English regardless of the context, presumably because English speakers find the terms difficult to remember or hard to pronounce. Chinese does exactly the same thing. I mean, is 盲文 [1] 'yellow' (euch--your terminology) washing? It meets the same standard. And how about China claiming to have invented high-speed rail, mobile payments and ecommerce? [2] No cries of racism for that one? Strange. There are many parallel examples. Edit: [1] 盲文 lit. blind language aka Braille in English, after its creator. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_new_inventions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_new_inventions
    • fma 6y ago
      What? I don't read Chinese but Google translate tells me that 盲文 is Braille, and individually it breaks down to "Blind text". The same standard would be if China took the word "Braille" and then in Chinese, it is named after the first Chinese person who read Braille. If you think English speakers have an easy time saying "Siraitia grosvenorii", the scientific name, named after the "discover" Grosvenor, then you have some serious delusions.
  • stevespang 6y ago
    Well, it certainly wasn't a bunch of guys with spears living in huts that put men on the moon - - go figure. Those with superior brains deserve the recognition and the spoils.
  • gowld 6y ago
    It's not whitewashing, it's academicwashing.