Freethought & Rationalism Archive

neilgodfrey · 12-02-2006, 07:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Agreed. {to the first part of my post only, but to the second part.... }

............................

This presupposes that the texts in question are not fictions.
For example, consider the "Historia Augusta".
We may assume (quite nievely) that the text is descriptive
of historical events, but it may be baloney.

Therefore, at the detail level, prior to any assessment,
all we have is a text and a date. It then needs to be
categorised, and this is a separate step up from the detail,
the first in a series of steps which provide commentaries,
which themselves are texts, with dates (from some chronology)

Best wishes,

Pete

Agreed ditto. I did not mean to suggest that an inscription's value was in a naive reading of its text. Certainly it must be read in context of larger picture, the purpose of the monument that holds it, etc, and archaeologists may well conclude that it is all baloney, but then that baloney tells them something interesting about those responsible for it. It's a warm Sunday afternoon and I've cut back on my beer drinking and it's nice to be agreeable all round today :-)

Neil
http://vridar.wordpress.com

mountainman · 12-02-2006, 08:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by neilgodfrey

Agreed ditto. I did not mean to suggest that an inscription's value was in a naive reading of its text. Certainly it must be read in context of larger picture, the purpose of the monument that holds it, etc, and archaeologists may well conclude that it is all baloney, but then that baloney tells them something interesting about those responsible for it.

Also agreed. I have highlighted the reference in context of
the larger picture, because I think that this summarises
the "RELATIONAL" aspect of the task of assembling the bits and
pieces (texts, coins, see list, which should also include grafitti)
which are deemed to have a common "chronology".

This would seem to support the notion that in the end there are
just two levels of the architecture: the detail (consistent of the
archeological and textual citations for a given chronology), and
the commentary associated with the historical interpretation
of the detail.

Best wishes,

Pete

Clivedurdle · 12-03-2006, 03:12 AM

I have a great need to bring post modernism and hyper reality into this discussion!

We are discussing in English, with a huge weight of cultural and historic baggage behind every word we use.

Are we not attempting a good enough, a "reasonable" interpretation of all the varieties of "evidence" we find, being conscious that the very fact of us looking at it and thinking about it has already contaminated it in some way?

How do you map this onto this markup language?

Clivedurdle · 12-03-2006, 03:45 AM

Quote:

Yet more because the Antikythera Machine represents the amazing scientific, astronomical, and technological achievements of the Greeks and Romans in particular, which have all captured my mind and my career. I am continuously amazed at what I learn, not only about what the ancients achieved and knew, but also how difficult and complex the questions they answered were. They ventured smartly into planetary theory, the laws of mechanics, optics, and acoustics, even neurophysiology. And though never mass produced or ubiquitously available, they nevertheless had all manner of technologies, from vending machines and mechanized harvesters to automatic doors and electroshock therapy. The Antikythera computer is perhaps the most amazing of all. If you want to know what fascinates me, this is it.

But even more I chose it because this discovery shattered all the assumptions of historians of science about the cultural and social context of ancient science and technology, refuting in one blow a widespread belief that ancient scientists did not work closely with ancient craftsmen, or endeavor to achieve technological advances, or respect any physical work of the hands. It reminds me of how easily historians can get things wrong, and how important careful historical methodology is. This find is an especially good example of how the archaeological record repeatedly proves there were things going on in the ancient world that our surviving literary texts don't mention, demonstrating the dangers of arguments from silence, which have been all too common in the history of science. Careful historical methodology, getting right the history of ancient science, these are things I am very much about.

http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2...re-avatar.html

Quote:

There is a sad ending to the story. Though Posidonius (shown at left) wrote extensively on science, history, tactics, engineering, ethnology, and philosophy, Christian scribes chose not to preserve a single book or even a single page of his work. All we know about what he wrote and did comes from scattered quotes and paraphrases by later authors, even though Posidonius was widely regarded in his own day, and still by knowing scholars now, as one of the greatest scientists and most influential philosophers of the Roman era. I can't tell you how often I run into this tragic loss in my study of the ancient world. Medieval Christians genuinely deserve condemnation for tossing great work like this in the garbage and instead exhausting their resources on copying tons of inane religious literature. But that's a soap box for another time.

mountainman · 12-03-2006, 10:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

I have a great need to bring post modernism and hyper reality into this discussion!

We are discussing in English, with a huge weight of cultural and historic baggage behind every word we use.

Are we not attempting a good enough, a "reasonable" interpretation of all the varieties of "evidence" we find, being conscious that the very fact of us looking at it and thinking about it has already contaminated it in some way?

Of course we are, but that is the purpose of the attempt
to identify the lowest common atomic element of historical
consideration. At the atomic level detail we have such
things as authors, texts and coins (See the extended list above).

These things are at the basis of historical analysis, and the first
step in that analysis is to arrive at a chronological date for the
historical element (author, text, coin, etc). Sometimes the date
is clearly determined, but at other times there may be a range
of dates to be associated with the element, because the date
cannot be uniquely determined.

But let's assume that the dating of the historical object is agreed
by all parties, we now have an object (from the list) and a date.
This is sufficient as (what is called a) "STUB" - minimal information -
for the entry to a database -- for historical analyses.

This collection should not have any ancilliary "baggage", for it
should represent the bare-boned skeleton of history. Do you
agree so far?

Quote:

How do you map this onto this markup language?

The references above to "Markup languages" were really an attempted
method of harvesting this data from other (usually textual) sources
in an automated fashion by a computer scan. I think it was put forward
as a way to pump the above specified elements into the database, and for no other purpose (in the end).

At a meta level, it may be argued that a TEXT ITEM in the history
database might be processed -- after registration in the database --
in order for it to provide further derived historical data. At least I
think that is what Peter and Toto are discussing. A citation base.

Obviously this meta level does carry baggage, and implicitly assumes
that we are going to not only acknowledge the historical existence
of a certain object type, associated with a specific date (or range),
but also that it contains within it further historical data, which is of
the same status as itself. This may not always be the case. (eg:
the text "Historia Augusta")

To summarise, IMO there does exist a foundational layer of history
which must be common to all commentary, analyses, opinions and
reductions, and that is simply collection of historical objects, with
an associated date (or date range). This dating may also carry
baggage (eg: the Eusebian chronology).

This "huge weight of cultural and historic baggage behind every
word we use" is not present at the atomic and elemental detail
registration of these items in a database. It is only in the presentation
of a collection of these items, formed to serve the narration of an
historical comentary (an interpretation of history) that this cultural
baggage is activated.

Anyway, that's how I see it at the moment.

Pete

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12-03-2006, 03:12 AM	#13
Clivedurdle Contributor Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: London UK Posts: 16,024	I have a great need to bring post modernism and hyper reality into this discussion! We are discussing in English, with a huge weight of cultural and historic baggage behind every word we use. Are we not attempting a good enough, a "reasonable" interpretation of all the varieties of "evidence" we find, being conscious that the very fact of us looking at it and thinking about it has already contaminated it in some way? How do you map this onto this markup language?

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