believe their existence than not

[GoodTaste]

Does the phrase "believe their existence than not" sound natural in English? By "than not", I mean "than (the people who do) not (believe the existence)".

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Do black holes really exist in the universe? The history of discovery of black holes is short, but more and more people believe their existence than not.

Source: From my reading note.

 

[probus]

It's possible but a bit tortured. Simply "more people" is more natural than "more and more people" here. And "believe in" would be an improvement. Also, I'd say "than do not" rather than just "than not". Parallelism is good.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

To me, it's natural written English but not very natural spoken.

And Probus is right: It should be believe in.

 

[jutfrank]

The phrase more and more is not at all correct. You just need to say more, since you're making a simple comparison. We use more and more when we're talking about a trend.

Also, the noun phrase their existence does not work as an object to the verb believe. You could improve this by adding in.

Also, than not is not correct. You could correct this to than don't but overall, it would be better to rewrite the whole sentence. I think it's very poor English.

 

[GoodTaste]

The phrase more and more is not at all correct. You just need to say more, since you're making a simple comparison. We use more and more when we're talking about a trend.

I did want to describe a trend. Because historically, Einstein denied several times that black holes could form. It is not easy for ordinary people to conceive its existence.

 

[jutfrank]

I did want to describe a trend.

In that case, the elements that serve to make a comparison are incorrect (more ... than ...).

Remove those elements and try again. Use the present continuous to make it clear that you're describing a trend.

 

[GoodTaste]

Do black holes really exist in the universe? The history of discovery of black holes is short, but people are increasingly believing in their existence.

 

[Tarheel]

That's better.

 

[jutfrank]

Do black holes really exist in the universe? The history of discovery of black holes is short, but people are increasingly believing in their existence.

That's better.

Now you can deal with the first part of the second sentence. What does 'The history of discovery' mean? Why do you mean to use contrastive 'but'?

 

[GoodTaste]

That's better.

Now you can deal with the first part of the second sentence. What does 'The history of discovery' mean? Why do you mean to use contrastive 'but'?

New version: Though the history of discovering black holes is brief, more people are beginning to realize their existence.

 

[GoesStation]

New version: Though the history of discovering black holes is brief, more people are beginning to realize their existence.

No. Try again.

 

[jutfrank]

New version: Though the history of discovering black holes is brief, more people are beginning to realize their existence.

Let's clear up the logic problem next. Your use of the conjunctions but/though is not right. Can you explain what you consider to be the logical relation between the two propositions? At the moment, the sentence is incoherent.

 

[GoodTaste]

Let's clear up the logic problem next. Your use of the conjunctions but/though is not right. Can you explain what you consider to be the logical relation between the two propositions? At the moment, the sentence is incoherent.

The history of discovery of black holes is short, but people are increasingly believing in their existence.

It appears to be perfect in my Chinese perspective. Suppose there has already been a long history (like 500 years), more people would have naturally known the existence of a rare phenonmenon even if there were only 10 people knowing it each year (you get 5,000 people knowing it by now). But if the history is only 10 years, you get only 100 people.

Now suppose you find there are 3,000 knowing it in the ten years. It surprises you and you want to express this feeling of surprise, you use "but" to connect the two parts of the sentence:

The history of discovery of black holes is short, but people are increasingly believing in their existence.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

It appears to be perfect in my Chinese perspective. Suppose there has already been a long history (like 500 years), more people would have naturally known the existence of a rare phenonmenon even if there were only 10 people knowing it each year (you get 5,000 people knowing it by now). But if the history is only 10 years, you get only 100 people.

Now suppose you find there are 3,000 knowing it in the ten years. It surprises you and you want to express this feeling of surprise, you use "but" to connect the two parts of the sentence:

The history of discovery of black holes is short, but people are increasingly believing in their existence.

Hm. I don't follow your reasoning. If ten people know something every year, then ten people know it this year.

If ten more people know something every year, that still doesn't add up to a lot of people, since people die. There might be about 700 living people who know it in any given year.

If ten more people know it each year than knew it the year before, that adds up to more people knowing it today. It might get you to 5,000, but 5,000 still isn't a lot of people.

But your sample sentence makes sense and is natural.

 

[GoodTaste]

I don't follow your English logic either.

Suppose that Mr. X, Mr.Y and Mr.Z lived 3 hundred years ago and knew the rare phenonmenon existed. Today they had long passed away. In Chinese logic, they were the people who knew the phenonmenon and should be counted as the people knowing it (like they recorded it in books - can you ignore the record?).

 

[Tarheel]

They didn't know it existed. They knew about it.

I don't follow your Chinese logic. Just because somebody in the past "knew" something that doesn't mean we know it today.

Thinking on many things has changed over the years.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

I don't follow your English logic either.

Suppose that Mr. X, Mr.Y and Mr.Z lived three hundred years ago and knew the rare phenonmenon existed. Today they have long passed away. In Chinese logic, they were the people who knew the phenonmenon and should be counted as the people knowing it (like they recorded it in books - can you ignore the record?).

People who are alive know things. People who are dead knew things.

If they wrote it down, then more people might know what they wrote, and the numbers could be bigger. I was just sticking with the numbers you gave.

And again, your sample sentence is fine.

 

[jutfrank]

It appears to be perfect in my Chinese perspective. Suppose there has already been a long history (like 500 years), more people would have naturally known the existence of a rare phenonmenon even if there were only 10 people knowing it each year (you get 5,000 people knowing it by now). But if the history is only 10 years, you get only 100 people.

Well, then the logic of using but/though would be to contrast the high number of people aware of black holes with the short history. That would be logical.

The problem with your sentence is that you've used more and more people to describe a trend instead of a quantifier, such as a lot of people. That's why it doesn't make sense. The length of time has no bearing on the direction of the trend as it does on the number of people.