Harebrained hypotheses prove invaluable to scientific debate
- From: Roger Bagula <rlbagula@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2006 16:57:07 GMT
Gee and I thought it was just
sci.anthropology.paleo...
http://www.dispatch.com/science/science.php?story=dispatch/2006/12/19/20061219-D7-02.html
Harebrained hypotheses prove invaluable to scientific debate
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
BRADLEY T. LEPPER
Archaeologist Richard Michael Gramly, in the current issue of Ohio Archaeologist, offers a startling explanation for the rise of the Hopewell culture in Ohio and neighboring regions 2,000 years ago.
Archaeologists defined the Hopewell culture predominantly on the basis of gigantic earthen enclosures, such as the Great Circle and Octagon Earthworks preserved at Newark, as well as dazzling works of art crafted from materials, such as mica and obsidian, brought from distant lands.
For Gramly, this remarkable florescence of art and architecture was the result of the extravagant largesse of uberrich Hopewellian drug lords, equivalent to the drug cartels that supported the economy of Colombia for many years in the 1980s and ’90s.
The notorious Emilio Escobar, for example, paid for many large-scale civic projects, such as sports stadiums and hospitals. But, instead of cocaine, the Hopewell kingpins supposedly acquired their wealth from controlling the distribution of tobacco in eastern North America.
Native tobacco certainly was a potent drug, which the Hopewell grew in their gardens and smoked in their elaborately carved pipes.
Personally, however, I see no evidence to support Gramly’s proposition, and I think it is about as bizarre as the notion that because wine is used in Holy Communion, the architectural and artistic splendor of the Vatican was bankrolled by early Christian moonshiners. Nevertheless, I think there is value in such seemingly outrageous ideas.
In 1926, Harvard University’s W.M. Davis published a paper in the journal Science titled, "The Value of Outrageous Geological Hypotheses." Davis argued that when a discipline, which in his case was geology, got too stodgy and conservative, it was in danger of "theoretical stagnation."
Science sometimes needs wild and seemingly harebrained ideas to shake things up and get people thinking outside the box. Davis wrote, "We may be pretty sure that the advances yet to be made in geology will be at first regarded as outrages upon the accumulated convictions of today, which we are too prone to regard as geologically sacred."
I agree with Davis and think his insights are just as applicable to archaeology as they are to geology. Gramly’s outrageous hypothesis can serve a useful purpose and should not be dismissed as "impossible" or "absurd."
Instead, it should provoke discussion about why the idea is wrong and which alternative explanations might be better. Vigorous, but still respectful, debate enlivens our understanding of the data and interpretations.
Bradley T. Lepper is curator of archaeology at the Ohio Historical Society.
blepper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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