On: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

[coldtea]

He didn't say things heavier than air can't fly. Just that we can't make them... (and at the time, we didn't have any success making them - we did however had great success with "lighter than air" air displacement vehicles, namely hot air balloons).

[kiba → coldtea]

Aviation contemporaries made prototypes that either glide or flied powered, sometime poorly.

[garmaine → coldtea]

If nature did it 3 times (more, we now know), it’s a bit presumptuous to say humans won’t be able to.

[froidpink → garmaine]

Nature has created conscious beings. It would be a bit presumptuous to assume humans will be able to do so too

[whatshisface → froidpink]

Consciousness is clearly a different kind of problem than flight, for one thing it is possible to tell if something is flying buy not possible to tell if it is conscious.

[Ididntdothis → froidpink]

It would be very presumptuous to categorically rule out that humans will create conscious beings. We don’t know how to do it yet but if nature did it, why wouldn’t we?

[garmaine → froidpink]

I disagree, but we've wandered off topic.