Warwick L Nixon Wrote:

> as an Egyptologist I do not believe that they knew
> what an Agnostic was
>
> This makes understanding their Scientific method a
> little more complex than understanding ours.
> Insofar as they saw nothing wrong with paradox.
>
> WE see Nothing acceptable in paradox
>
> The ultimate point being...we cannot rely on the
> scientific method in understanding their
> science...and ultimately any past science.
>
> an Hypothesis has to be based on what we know they
> knew not what we think they could have known given
> the asme set of factors we have for
> consideration.
>
> this is why, IMHO, the why trumps the how as an
> arbiter of History re science
>
>
> warwick

Heh, now you've gone and confused me

Determining what we know they knew would follow the process I summed.

What we think they could have known would be speculatory - ie hypothetical, and thus fit into the process as well - test it till we know if they knew it or not.

And even if you discard my second statement there, the first would still stand - determining what they knew would certainly follow the stated process, thus the how in our determining what they knew.


All confusing forms of 'know' aside however, *why* they did something will always be a subjective question in the lack of hard evidence and the presence of circumstantial (interpretable) evidence only - thus, the 'soft' science side of Egyptology, yes?

The *how*, on the other hand, possesses literal man-made mountains of data in the form of accomplished effects and lends itself to the scientific process quite nicely, thus leading to the 'hard' science of math and figures as postulates for 'how' that are then testable.

so to summarize:
1) Intuitive thinkers will always be leaping into conclusions regarding 'how'
2) Grunt testers will always be proving these conclusions either work or not
3) Even if they do, some will fit it into the context of the softer side and others will deny it in context from the same data points. No solution will ever be accepted as the 'right' solution because of the interpretable evidence from the softer side that any solution would have to fit.


So my point is, it shouldn't matter that they accepted paradox as a course of life (though I do not believe they did so - but that is an unfounded belief). What they did and how should be hard science and affected/worked via the process. For the WHY they did it, I would look to egyptologists who spend their life studying ancient Egypt as I haven't the patience to sort their paper mountains to determine a consensual point of view.

As to the nature of their science... I'm not wanting to derail on Egyptology I'm staying on topic with the intuitives vs grunts --- just, in this case, much of Egyptology appears intuitive to the layman, and thus constant new theories popup in popular science - mostly due to the 123 process I describe above.


I'm hoping I made as much sense there as I did in my prior post Thanks for the compliment!