Re: Alaska on 'Ancient' maps

From: Eric Stevens (eric.stevens_at_sum.co.nz)
Date: 06/28/04 

Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 09:17:30 +1200

On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 13:01:40 -0400, *** Wisan
<HONOR.wisanr@stny.rr.com> wrote:

>Inger E Johansson inger_e.johansson@notelia.com says...
>>
>>"Kathy" <kathy@slipknotland.demon.co.uk> skrev
>>>
>>> Eric Stevens <eric.stevens@sum.co.nz> writes
>>> >
>>> >Philip Deitiker <Donevenask@worlnet.att.net> wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >>Eric Stevens <eric.stevens@sum.co.nz> says
>>> >>>
>>> >>> What about the builders of all those unexplained stone
>>> >>> cairns in locations shown in
>>> >>> http://www.spirasolaris.ca/1amap2c.html ? If the cairns
>>> >>> were built by the norse it is possible that some
>>> >>> information did return.
>>> >>
>>> >>And if they were not? Or if they were built by some ragtail
>>> >>remnant of the greenland escapees, that eventually perished in
>>> >>some 'Injun' raid.
>>> >
>>> >I thought that you be able to handle an 'IF' - 'NOT IF' situation
>>> >by now.
>>> >
>>> Isn't that *just* what Philip is doing? You put forward a "what if"
>>> with nothing to back it up, and he has put forward another. Can't you
>>> handle that?
>>
>>How about taking a course in logic semantic analyse methodic? It's
>>definitely not what Philip is doing. That's for sure.
>
>Glad to oblige: "If p then q" implies that q is true if p is, but
>it leaves open the question of q in the case where p is not true. To
>commit yourself to both cases, you would say "p if and only if q",
>which is a different assertion. In that sense, Kathy's right. But
>Eric's right, too in the sense that he simply did not commit himself
>about the consequences of p being false, so Philip's air of contra-
>dicting him is unjustified.

Thank you. That was my point.

> But, he's wrong if he thinks that he
>covered the case of "NOT IF", (or rather "IF NOT...").

As has been demonstrated, the alternatives are wide open. That the
norse built the cairns is merely one avenue of exploration and the
possibility that geographical information then flowed back to europe
is open to further exploration.
>
>But both of them are nit-picking.

Not really. Philip had responded to:

  "I think that Alaska was EXPLORED, not discovered, in the
   mid 18th century."

... by writing:

  "Yes, explored by asians and native americans. Prior to the 17th
    century it probably was not explored by anyone who could have
    given Italian cartographers anykind of coherant information.

 ... and I was pointing out that it possibly was explored by the norse
who could havelater returned information to europe.

Eric Stevens

Quantcast