…so why is there a picture of a black swan illustrating this? It’s a phrase I used when Janet and I were talking about Karl Popper, deduction, and induction. I hand-waved at the black swan philosophical problem, which is a problem of induction that illustrates the role both our ignorance about what we don’t know and our own biases play in shaping the questions that we ask and the answers we assume are right. The concept of a black swan is old (Juvenal references one), but until 1697, European countries used the metaphor of a black swan to indicate something that did not exist (‘all swans are white’ being a “well-known truth”).
Why until 1697?
Because in 1697, Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered black swans, in Australia.