DaveL wrote: "Their ideas have nothing to do with Egyptology at all. "


Adopting the language used by the proponents of rational history (a phrase used by Fagan and Feder,2005, to position the difference, vis a vis "alternative history") does not automatically make one's methodologies or conclusions rational.

I realize that your Pyramid Pi theorizing requires we accept decades old disproven speculations to be correct, but that does not mean that every idea that is decades old must also be correct. Recently, you suggested that we should take the opinion of Edwards as dogmatic truth because he was the preeminent Egyptologist of the 20th Century. (That post was here: [www.hallofmaat.com] , but you've edited it down three times to something very different now) Well, Smythe was the preeminent Egyptological theorists of the early 19th Century. Had people held on to your way of thinking, Petrie wouldn't have even gotten published.

The idea that unevidenced theory is to be accepted as dogmatic truth is not a method used by proponents of rational history. The fact that some people are unaware of recent evidence does not mean the evidence does not exist. The fact that several people can agree on a mistake does not mean it is correct. It means they've all made the same mistake. Nothing more.

Is it your contention that no further inscriptions, evidence or reliefs have been discovered since 1950, so therefore no new data has come out of Egypt on which new theories can be founded? If not, then the idea that a sixty year old speculation, based on a limited data set derived nearly a century ago, is surely open for re-examination.

If I may quote from the Fagan/Feder paper:

Quote

...the latter-day openness of archaeology to archaeoastronomy in no way justifies the pseudoarchaeological abuse of the technique as a stand-alone interpretative (let alone dating) tool, where it is routinely presumed, rather than argued, that star alignments perceived by modern minds were intentionally established by ancient builders. Matters get worse when acceptance of speculated alignments requires throwing out large quantities of other relevant, verified and contextualized data. So, at heart the utility of archaeoastronomy is a matter of degree.

Fagan/Feder, "Crusading against straw men: an alternative view of alternative archaeologies: response to Holtorf", World Archaeology, 38 (2005)

The rational approach to studying history is to be skeptical of everything. The mandate for blind acceptance of unproven speculation is not good research practice. Time moves on, and so does historical discovery and theorizing.

Anthony

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/27/2007 07:10AM by Anthony.