Yeah. I was telling a fib for comedic effect. Semmelweis is actually a lot more impressive, to me, because he was able to deduce that something important was going on and what the solution was, without having any idea what the mechanism might be, simply from observing and following the data. He didn’t need to know the details to know it was a problem; he just trusted the evidence without needing to have a narrative built up in his head to attach it to.
Also, because once he realized it was killing people, he wouldn’t shut up about it until they literally had to kill him to make him stop. That puts him over the line from wise man to hero, to me.
Not arguing with that, but clearly people seem to believe you and think he discovered microbes, which he didn’t. The truth is more impressive anyways, no?
Yeah. I was telling a fib for comedic effect. Semmelweis is actually a lot more impressive, to me, because he was able to deduce that something important was going on and what the solution was, without having any idea what the mechanism might be, simply from observing and following the data. He didn’t need to know the details to know it was a problem; he just trusted the evidence without needing to have a narrative built up in his head to attach it to.
Also, because once he realized it was killing people, he wouldn’t shut up about it until they literally had to kill him to make him stop. That puts him over the line from wise man to hero, to me.
Not arguing with that, but clearly people seem to believe you and think he discovered microbes, which he didn’t. The truth is more impressive anyways, no?
I edited it to add a correction. I shouldn’t fib for the sake of making a more entertaining link to the posting, maybe.
Cheers, comrade.