Re: Science vs Scholarship and the Newport Tower

Eric Stevens wrote:
On Sat, 08 Dec 2007 22:50:42 GMT, "David B." <tronospamchos@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

As Peter pointed out, the presence of 17th century artifacts in conjunction with a surviving building does not indicate that the building was constructed in the 17th century. However, the absence of pre-17th century artifacts in conjunction with a building does make a pre-17th century construction date significantly unlikely.

Agreed. But it doesn't make it impossible. Nor does it have any
bearing on the reliability of the H&J radiocarbon dating which is the
thread where this discussion properly belongs.

Very few things are completely impossible- that's where Ockham's Razor comes in handy. As for the propriety of including this matter in this thread, I would argue that a false distinction is being made between "science" and "scholarship". History is a science, inasmuch as theories are developed on the basis of evidence gathered, and then tested by gathering more evidence. For example, when we speak of the theory that the present Newport Tower is the stone mill mentioned in Governor Arnold's will, we are using the word "theory" in the scientific sense:

>> [Eric Stevens wrote:]
You have to make a number of assumptions to accept that. They may be
reasonable assumptions but they remain assumptions.
A number of assumptions? Can you be more specific?

For a start, you have assumed that the 1777 'old stone mill' is the
1677 stone mill. I agree that this is a reasonable assumption but it
is just an asumption. There is no point in continuing the discussion
along these lines apart from acknowledging there is a great deal we
don't know for certain.

What you are calling an assumption (and you've only listed one of the "number" you claim) is what historians call a deduction 100% consistent with the available evidence. Working backwards from the earliest pictures of the Tower, themselves over 200 years old, via the 1776-7 maps, to the provenance chain of three wills, there is no documentary evidence (and, as it happens, no archaeological evidence) to indicate that the rough stone building depicted in the pictures is not the stone mill in the same plot referred to by Arnold. Absence of evidence actually IS evidence of absence- just not absolute proof of absence, because proving a negative is, well, tricky.

if ballast stone is going to be dumped is it not
more likely to be used for construction at the water's edge rather
than lugging it to the top of the nearest hill?

If Arnold had finished building his mansion, warehouses, etc. he might feel it worth while setting his draught horses to work on a little heavy hauling. Not that it's a terribly important point. The building is definitely made of stone; it's definitely near the top of the hill, it just occurred to me that there might have been quite a lot of surrplus stone coming into Newport, saving the need to quarry it.

Apart from that, I
understood that ballast was more likely to be in the form of river
dredgings (alluvial gravels) than largish blocks of stone. See
http://www.dailypress.com/features/family/dp-61191sy0jun19,0,6998506.story?coll=dp-opinion-bothead

Not necessarily- see
http://www.visitrhodeisland.com/attractions/propertyDetail.aspx?id=202
for example (Googling for boston ballast brick is also interesting). Basically you could use anything reasonably heavy for ballast, provided it didn't move around in heavy seas.

David B.
.

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