Re: Provenance and Historical Science.

From: Eric Stevens (eric.stevens_at_sum.co.nz)
Date: 02/19/05 

Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2005 18:04:45 +1300

On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 01:12:01 GMT, Philip Deitiker
<Donevenask@worlnet.att.net> wrote:

>I have created this thread, we can also entertaine the archaeological
>sciences in this also.
>
>This is a philosophical discussion that is along the lines of Occam's
>razor in terms of logic.
>
>This razor would go as follows.
>
>There are an infinite number of things science could entertaine as
>possible, however there is a limitation of things that actually exist
>or have occurred, and therefore the focus should be on what is
>plausible or probable over things that are highly unlikely.
>
>Before I went to Japan we did engage the meaning of Zero, and that
>with proper sampling it came to some agreement (although put in
>different ways) that absense of evidence could be used to support
>evidence of absense. And I clarified how statistics allows a record
>of Zero events of type X in a survey of Size Y, but that one should
>be careful because there are an infinite number of type X events of
>zero representation some of them occurred and most, the overwhelming
>majority did not.
> Others in this group disagreed, suggesting no amount of sampling is
>ever sufficiently conclusive.

'Sufficiently conclusive' is a value judgement. Set up acceptance
criteria (and state them) and all becomes obvious.
>
>We are in the same delimna once again with the Vinland Map. But, I
>should add that we also are in the same delimna with Cnoyens notes
>and the mythical Inventio Fortunata, both of which are only availed
>to us through here-say evidence and both of which have no provenance
>what-so-ever except the evidence in Mercators Map and letter to Dee.
>In fact if one looks at proclaimed 'prime sources','primary sources'
>you will see this is a trend in these discussions.
> In fact, like the possibilities of rare events that can be sampled
>as zero, there are an almost infinite number of here-say claims,
>attempted forgeries, fakes, ruses, artistic interpretations, etc.
>that exist or if allowed into the discussion without serious
>critique, may be brought up by naer-do-wells to thwart the scientific
>work or discussion.
> There are limited resouces of science to examine everything that
>_might_ be of genuine value. There are many things that are genuine,
>as a matter of fact, will never be researched because of a lack on
>interest or money. Therefore we admit that a practical limit of
>science is that it cannot entertaine everything. If science cannot
>entertaine everything, what then should it entertaine.
> Enter the VM, this is a good example because it lacks critical
>features we expect in a historical document, namely who made it, when
>was it made, and what information was used to make it. Given these
>are missing you can see immediately there is an infinite number of
>scenarios that could describe who made it, when, and how. Science is
>incapable of researching all of these scenarios. In fact the Map
>takes on a religious quality, in the sense that somehow it simply
>exists, and we need a faith that it genuine to the period which it
>appears on the surface to come from. Science is not very good with
>these types of arguments, in fact science should avoid these types of
>arguments. This is a reason that it should be rejected from the
>discussion until some essense of its past can be _Verified_. There is
>a relatively good likelihood that verification will show it to be a
>late 19th or early 20th century document. That Yale possesses this
>document is of no greater importance than the British Museum
>Possessing the skull of Piltdown man, possession of objects by
>revered institutions is not a cause for scientific discussion,
>somewhere in smithsonian institution are a few chips of Ed Conrads
>rocks that he believes are human kidneys.
>
> In the subset of these Objects without proper provenance we have
>secondary discussions, for example who wrote the Inventio Fortunata
>or who did Cnoyen speak to in Bergen . . . . . . . Much wasted
>bandwidth. If we take the Mercator map, whose reconstruction of the
>North Pole is so erroneous as to be useless, no definable presense of
>a compass for voyages before 1363. The mythological presence of
>pygmies and king authors knights and 77 ships in a norwegian fleet,
>and a fantastica tale about survival, we can see even if we were
>provided with provenance, the story is still more myth than fact, and
>without it the stories lack of provenance is probably a major source
>of the mythical fabric. Science is incapable of entertaining every
>man's speculation on fragmented facts. Not for today, and being 500
>years in the past does not increase the reliability of speculation
>either. Within the context of the VM we have the secondary discussion
>of the parchment and the Ink. Even if the parchment and Ink are real,
>how valid would the map be, given the acute inaccuracies of the maps
>from the same period, and other historical sagas, and archaeological
>evidence did suggest the Norse made it to the new world, and the map
>does not clearly verify or concur with the areas where this expected
>settlements were. Thus it lacks the power as a historical document
>anyway. IOW is there a star on the map with the L'meadows site with a
>shoreline relief that clearly corroborates a connection between the
>observed. And without such anchor points, how do other parts of the
>map find a relative place with current day places. Once again the
>lack of provenance could be interpreted as a reasoning for
>discongruity between the map and what represents norse settlements.
>
> So the great battle of the Ink is a battle of partial facts. While
>Eric and Steven refuse to admit this, there disagreement is, in fact,
>rooted in the lack of provenance, not in the definition of dates or
>dating.

Read for comprehension Doctor Deitiker. I have stated nothing about
this other than that in a particular statement Seppo was right and
Steve Marcus wrong in his refutation.

You don't know my opinion on the VM for I have never stated it.

>What has happened here is that we have tried to surplant
>definitions with actual facts. The reason we have done this is
>because that which we desire, the period in which the map was
>crafted, is missing, along with any other evidence of its synthesis.
>This is a warning of what types of arguments to avoid, not how to
>best argue, which is what this has turned into.
>
> Dates, Dating, Historical dates, Prehistoric Dates, Estimated
>Dates, Blind Dates, Hot Dates, Palm Dates, . . . . .
>
> So lets get real, the battle of dates and dates definition is a
>battle to replace provenance with some other discription of VM
>origin. One side here is biased against the VM authenticity, or
>minimally its description of the eastern coast of the US. The other
>side wants to project this as 'the tip of the iceberg'. The third
>group here wants to project this as evidence of the fallability of
>the science. Truth lies at the intersection of perspective.

The only question of dating in which I have been involved is whether
or not the INK has been dated. To the best of my knowledge, it has
not.

Eric Stevens

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