The “new ligament discovered” angle gets less impressive (to me, at least) when I read this part:
Their starting point: an 1879 article by a French surgeon that postulated the existence of an additional ligament located on the anterior of the human knee.
I’m more impressed, actually, in terms of the unevenness of progress—it took ~134 years to confirm his postulate? It’s not like corpses were unavailable for dissection in 1879.
It inspires more awe at our collective failures, but suggests that we should not be so impressed with the new people as if they had a method that would make us sure that we hadn’t missed even more ligaments.
The “new ligament discovered” angle gets less impressive (to me, at least) when I read this part:
I’m more impressed, actually, in terms of the unevenness of progress—it took ~134 years to confirm his postulate? It’s not like corpses were unavailable for dissection in 1879.
It inspires more awe at our collective failures, but suggests that we should not be so impressed with the new people as if they had a method that would make us sure that we hadn’t missed even more ligaments.