[lbo-talk] On the Flight of the Bumble Bee , was Lou Proyect responds...

[// ravi]

On Feb 9, 2012, at 11:14 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> Comic Interlude
>> 
>> "Or that wonderful little joke that I have posted before: "Scientists have
>> proven beyond doubt that the bumblebee does not have the necessary wingspan
>> to fly. The bumblebee does not know this and keeps flying anyway.".
>> -ravi
>> 
> 
> I first encountered d this anecdote in the early 1940s in the pages of the
> Reader's Digest, and it has been endlessly repeated since then.
> Unfortunately, if I remember correctly, its premise (that aerodynamics
> failed to explain the flight of the bumblebee) has also, I think, been
> debunked. No doubt science often does err in this way; the flight of the
> bumblebee just happens NOT to be an actual illustration of such error.
> 

Oh I have always taken it to be a joke, not a factual claim (that bumblebees cannot, per science, fly). I didn’t know that at some time this was presented as a fact, unsurprisingly in the Readers Digest!

	—ravi