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Op 12/09/2021 om 22:18 schreef Samuel B.:
> Cousin Ricky <ric### [at] yahoo com> wrote:
>> On 2021-09-11 6:09 PM (-4), Samuel B. wrote:
>>>
>>> And there's an area near a river which I suspect might be harboring corundum.
(...)
>>
>> I was in a jewelry store a few years ago, and saw gems labeled "red
>> sapphire." I'm no geologist, so I asked the sales clerk what's the
>> difference between red sapphire and ruby. She responded only that ruby
>> and sapphire are two different gems. Probing further, I learned that
>> she didn't realize that ruby and sapphire are both forms of the same
>> mineral.
>>
>> So I'm wondering, is it common for retail jewelers not to know the
>> mineralogy behind the stones they are selling? Or did she know just
>> enough to sell them?
>
Sam rightly answered this, so just a small additional comment.
I had not really realised it before, but I ran against a similar problem
when researching for the Granite_21 macro. "commercial" granite names
can be pointing to something totally different from the "scientific"
point of view. "marble" is another of those confusing name tags in
stores it seems.
Humans are great at naming things, and it was often part of (ancient)
religious practice; knowing the name of something or somebody gave you
power over it or him/her as it were. The result is more often than not,
that a bewildering number of names tend to grow like weed.
The scientific community is not immune to this either. Before things
settle down after a new discovery, the same or similar things are know
by different names. The history of human palaeontology is a good example.
--
Thomas
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