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kataklasm
The work Bentley did sounds very impressive and I in no way strive to downplay his archival achievements. I do however take offense with the semantics of the wording. Not finding an exception isn't what proving means. Or, as Dr. Carl Sagan put it: absence of evidence != evidence of absence.
stormking
Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. The correct saying is: Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
maria2
Overly pedantic
Jarwain
It seems like an important distinction. Evidence != Proof
maria2
It's a meaningless distinction.
eesmith
I remember hearing about someone discovering two very similar snowflakes.

Ahh, found it. Nancy C. Knight, "No Two Alike?" Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 1988. https://journals.ametsoc.org/downloadpdf/journals/bams/69/5/... and available via https://scholar.archive.org/search?q=Nancy+Knight%C2%A0-+Bul... .

> Figure 1, a photograph of actual snow crystals, not replicas, illustrates a striking example of two snow crystals which, if not identical, are certainly very much alike. ...

The two very similar snowflakes are in the bottom center of figure 1, side-by-side.