Oxford theory among UK acedemics (was Re: Shakespeare authorship)
Mike Ward
news:wPGdnV32iYU...@pipex.net:
> In article <Xns96EECB...@204.127.36.1>, m@d.w (Mike Ward)
> wrote:
>
>> While I wasn't surprised at how the bots lapped it up I was a bit
>> surprised at Byrne. No matter what my opinion of the man he never
>> struck me as one who'd not only embrace a Looney conspiracy theory
>> but would preach it with such zeal.
>
> This theory is actually gaining some ground among serious academics in
> the UK, for what it's worth.
>
> Regards
> Guy
I was wondering if somone could address the claim that the Oxford theory is
taken seriously by acedemics is in the UK. So far as I know, it's seen as
as much nonsense in the UK as it is over here, but wanted to let the
Shakespeare group weigh in.
Mike
seaker
Elizabethan England think the Oxford theory is rubbish. The Oxford
movement began in England when school master, J. Thomas Looney
published his little book in the 1920s
David Kathman
All the British academics I know who specialize in Elizabethan history
or literature consider the Oxfordian "theory" rubbish, if they think
about it at all. I suppose Guy may be thinking of William Rubenstein,
co-author of the new book ("The Truth Will Out") arguing that Henry
Neville was Shakespeare, but Rubenstein is a historian of 19th- and
20th-century England, with no specialized knowledge of Elizabethan
literature that I'm aware of. In fact, to judge from the Shakespeare
authorship article he wrote a few years ago for "History Today", along
with the "Media Pack" for his new book, his knowledge of Elizabethan
literature and history is rather shaky and filled with the usual
antistratfordian misunderstandings, and is not of a type that would
compel anyone to take his opinions on the subject seriously.
Dave Kathman
dj...@ix.netcom.com
Elizabeth
> All the British academics I know who specialize in Elizabethan history
> or literature consider the Oxfordian "theory" rubbish, if they think
> about it at all.
The biggest threat to Oxfordianism is Early Modern
studies.
Cordially,
Elizabeth
dialector
Elizabeth wrote:
>
> The biggest threat to Oxfordianism is Early Modern
> studies.
>
>
> Cordially,
>
> Elizabeth
How so?
Thanks,
KCL
Tom Veal
(http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/000600.php)
Professor Rubinstein says that anti-Stratfordian theories face "adamant
and virtually unanimous opposition from nearly all established scholars
of Shakespeare". He's probably credible on that point, if not on much
else.
gangleri
study under some established scholar, continues with some junior
academic appointment which will in due course lead to tenure as
established scholar provided the young academic's published writings
are viewed favorably by established scholars on the tenure committee.
It's a long and arduous path, along which would-be established scholars
acquire a vested interest in established orthodoxy in the form of
intellectual capital which, if all goes well, will ensure the scholar's
passage through decades of work into financially secure retirement.
All of us are protective of things which are important to us.
Thus, it is in the nature of things that radical departures from
established orthodoxy are unlikely to come from within the ranks of
established scholars.
Paul Crowley
news:1129523524....@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Rubenstein is a well-respected academic --
although that fact is no bar to putting out
rubbish; of which I'm sure that his new
book will prove to be an unmitigated pile.
BUT, while his book is little more than another
straw in the wind, the point is that a gale is
blowing. The academics "who specialize in
Elizabethan history or literature" are getting
more and more annoyed, as more and more
'ignorant' folks are asking questions, and are
not satisfied with the brush-off answers that
were accepted (more-or-less) up to recently.
Paul.
BCD
Paul Crowley wrote:
> [ . . . ] more and more
> 'ignorant' folks are asking questions, and are
> not satisfied with the brush-off answers that
> were accepted (more-or-less) up to recently.
"Thus men, extending their enquiries beyond their capacities, and
letting their thoughts wander into those depths where they can find no
sure footing, it is no wonder that they raise questions and multiply
disputes, which, never coming to any clear resolution, are proper only
to continue and increase their doubts, and to confirm them at last in
perfect scepticism." -John Locke (from the introduction to *Essay on
Human Understanding*).
Best Wishes,
--BCD
Web Site: http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor
Visit unknown Los Angeles: http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor/socal1.html
Bianca Steele
Okay. Suppose I grant you this.
We might object that the subject matter of English literature, and of
literary studies generally, was not created by scholars, let alone
"established" scholars. Yet experts in English literature are,
admittedly, established scholars employed by universities.
What is the missing premise? It is again obvious: there exists a solid
and well-articulated body of knowledge that explains the proper
"scientific" way to study and to write about literature, comprising (as
the layman would see it) psychology, social science, and philology,
among other fields.
Maybe in Denmark they believe this.
Since this thread is cross-posted to a comics group, and there are a
handful of science-fiction experts here in the Shakespeare newsgroup
(as well as a couple of people who might well be religious nuts, but
who are certainly at least secular cranks), might one want to replace
even my preliminary objection, with something along the lines of:
'those authors were _in reality_ nothing more than the witting or
unwitting pawns of those who had indeed been trained according to
"establishment" standards of "scholarship"'? You tell me.
But -- I forget myself -- your point was only that, as everyone knows,
large and long-established institutions and disciplines tend to be
resistant to change, and so require mechanisms for permitting change
instigated from the outside to be absorbed into their own methods of
operation. As might be expected from an IMF economist.
Your point is wholly an Establishment one. But you've left loopholes
scattered throughout your argument, in which all kinds of crank
theories might be able to nest. "Let a hundred flowers bloom," is
_not_ an idea I'd expect to see supported by an IMF economist, from
Harvard or anyplace else, and I don't think when Jesus said, "In my
Father's house are many mansions," Chairman Mao is quite what he had in
mind.
----
Bianca Steele
David L. Webb
"gangleri" <gunnar....@verizon.net> wrote:
> The normal career path for established scholars begins with university
> study under some established scholar, continues with some junior
> academic appointment which will in due course
"In due course" ought perhaps to be made more precise. The normal
probationary period at most institutions for a freshly-minted Ph.D.
appointed to a tenure-track position is six years. A scholar appointed
to a tenure-track position after one or more postdoctoral appointments
might easily negotiate a shorter probationary period, and many people in
that situation do.
> lead to tenure as
> established scholar provided the young academic's published writings
> are viewed favorably by established scholars on the tenure committee.
No, that's a radical oversimplification; although procedures vary
slightly among institutions, initial tenure recommendations are normally
made not by a "tenure committee" but by a vote of the entire tenured
faculty in the department in which the candidate holds an appointment.
That departmental recommendation is generally based in part *not* upon
department members' assessment of the candidate's work, since few (if
any) of the candidate's colleagues are likely to be specialists in the
candidate's field, but upon opinions of the candidate's work solicited
from widely recognized leaders in the candidate's field of speciality
outside the candidate's institution.
Many other factors enter into such decisions as well, including the
quality of the candidate's teaching (as assessed by the candidate's
departmental colleagues and often by the candidate's students), the
candidate's willingness to shoulder departmental and institutional
committee work and other administrative burdens, his or her service to
the profession, etc.
Once the department settles upon its recommendation, the case is
passed on to the level of institutional oversight, generally by the Dean
in consultation with a committee. A negative recommendation from the
candidate's department kills the candidate's case at the outset, but a
very enthusiastic (even unanimous) departmental recommendation may well
be overturned by the Dean or his/her advisory committee; such denials
may very well turn upon unpredictable factors such as budgetary
constraints, but they may also result from the Dean's own sometimes
idiosyncratic reading of the experts' opinions.
> It's a long and arduous path,
It is indeed arduous, but not generally long, unless the candidate is
denied tenure and must thus seek employment elsewhere; as noted, the
normal probationary period is six years, and strong candidates in demand
by other institutions can and often do negotiate early tenure decisions.
> along which would-be established scholars
> acquire a vested interest in established orthodoxy in the form of
> intellectual capital which, if all goes well, will ensure the scholar's
> passage through decades of work into financially secure retirement.
Again, this caricature of the process is far from accurate. In fact,
tenure frees a researcher to undertake riskier and more speculative
projects. Indeed, some of the most controversial proposals (such as
Martin Bernal's _Black Athena_) have come from tenured academics.
> All of us are protective of things which are important to us.
>
> Thus, it is in the nature of things that radical departures from
> established orthodoxy are unlikely to come from within the ranks of
> established scholars.
I've already mentioned Martin Bernal's _Black Athena_. One could
also mention the radical and certainly controversial explanation
suggested by Alvarez and Alvarez and colleagues for the mass extinctions
at the K-T boundary. And if John Mack's explanation of the widespread
preoccupation about alien abductions is not "radical," then one wonders
what gangleri means by the word. All of these radical proposals were
made by established scholars. Gangleri seems rather out of touch with
reality where the academy is concerned.
gangleri
It is indeed arduous, but not generally long, unless the candidate
is denied tenure and must thus seek employment elsewhere; as noted, the
normal probationary period is six years, and strong candidates in
demand by other institutions can and often do negotiate early tenure
decisions.
Comment:
> The normal career path for established scholars begins with
university
> study under some established scholar, continues with some junior
> academic appointment
Adds up to a total of 11-12 years.
> along which would-be established scholars
> acquire a vested interest in established orthodoxy in the form of
> intellectual capital which, if all goes well, will ensure the scholar's
> passage through decades of work into financially secure retirement.
Again, this caricature of the process is far from accurate. In
fact, tenure frees a researcher to undertake riskier and more
speculative projects. Indeed, some of the most controversial proposals
(such as Martin Bernal's _Black Athena_) have come from tenured
academics.
Comment:
There are exceptions to every rule.
Even among orthodox Stratfordians - witness Donald Foster's
identification of Will Shakspere as author of the William Peeter
funeral elegy!
David L. Webb
"Bianca Steele" <bianca...@yahoo.com> wrote:
[...]
> "Let a hundred flowers bloom," is
> _not_ an idea I'd expect to see supported by an IMF economist, from
> Harvard or anyplace else,
If the author of the quotation had had anti-Stratforian crankery in
mind, he would instead have written "Let a hundred bloomers flower."
[...]
Mark Steese
@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> In a puff piece for his book
> (http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/000600.php)
> Professor Rubinstein says that anti-Stratfordian theories face
> "adamant and virtually unanimous opposition from nearly all
> established scholars of Shakespeare". He's probably credible on that
> point, if not on much else.
It sounds overstated to me. There's no doubt that Shakespearean scholars
dismiss alter-Shakespeareanism, but "adamant and virtually unanimous
opposition" makes it sound as though established scholars devote a
significant amount of time to the authorship 'question,' and most of
them don't. Rubinstein claims that "as a topic of discussion, it is
strictly taboo. [How can it be opposed if no one can mention it?] Most
academic conferences and journals concerned with Shakespeare and his
works automatically ban any discussion of this subject submitted for
consideration..." He cites no examples of banned such automatically-
banned submissions, though he does go on to mention the ban on
authorship discussions at SHAKSPER, which he describes as "the leading
Shakespeare academic website" -- he somehow forgot that SHAKSPER is a
mailing list whose moderator banned authorship discussions not because
of fealty to some academic taboo but because of Richard Kennedy's
intemperate behavior.
Amusingly, Rubinstein goes on to say that the imaginary taboo on
authorship discussion "is not as outrageous as it may seem," seeing as
how "although well-intentioned and often highly intelligent searchers
after the truth, many anti-Stratfordians have been egregious and
counterproductive in their persistence as well as in their lack of
compelling evidence." (Faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in
both the scales against either scale...)
--
Mark Steese
===========
The first signs of the death of the boom came in the summer,
early, and everything went like snow in the sun.
Out of their office windows. There was miasma,
a weight beyond enduring, the city reeked of failure.
Elizabeth
dialector wrote:
> Elizabeth wrote:
> >
> > The biggest threat to Oxfordianism is Early Modern
> > studies.
> How so?
Oxfordians propose that Oxford wrote a pro-Catholic
Tempest just after Regnans In Excelsis excommunicated
the Queen and put a death sentence on her head. That's
the kind of thing that Early Modern scholars would jump
on.
Cordially,
Elizabeth
prestorjon
Depends what you mean by "established scholars". I'd agree that people
with a significant body of work generally have an investment in a
certain academic approach or theory which makes then defensive of it
(if not necesarilly less innovative within that theory). That said
various academic disciplines have changed greatly over time and while
there is a certain level of conservatism there's also the desire to
come out with something new and revolutionary to make ones mark .
gangleri
with a significant body of work generally have an investment in a
certain academic approach or theory which makes then defensive of it
(if not necesarilly less innovative within that theory). That said
various academic disciplines have changed greatly over time and while
there is a certain level of conservatism there's also the desire to
come out with something new and revolutionary to make ones mark .
Comment:
Schumpeter and Keynes were the only 'revolutionary' thinkers in 20th
century economics, both of whom recognized the vacuity of established
orthodoxy which Samuelson summarized in the 1940s as follows:
"The economist has consoled himself for his barren results with the
thought that he was forging tools which would eventually yield fruit.
The promise is always in the future; we are like highly trained
athletes who never run a race, and in consequence grow stale. It is
still too eearly to determine whether the innovations in thought of the
last decade [read: Keynes' General Theory] will have stemmed the
unmistakable signs of decadence which were clearly present in economic
thought prior to 1930."
Samuelson went on to cast pre-1930 "economic thought" in mathematical
form, laying thereby the foundations for what has since been mainstream
orthodox teaching and its offshoot known as The Washington Consensus.
dialector
This is news to me. I certainly have never put forward such a
proposition nor ever heard of a circa 1570 date of composition for
Tempest. Perhaps Lynne will have a comment about it.
Best,
KCL
John W. Kennedy
> He cites no examples of banned such automatically-
> banned submissions, though he does go on to mention the ban on
> authorship discussions at SHAKSPER, which he describes as "the leading
> Shakespeare academic website" -- he somehow forgot that SHAKSPER is a
> mailing list whose moderator banned authorship discussions not because
> of fealty to some academic taboo but because of Richard Kennedy's
> intemperate behavior.
(It does have a website at <URL:http://www.shaksper.net>.)
--
John W. Kennedy
"...if you had to fall in love with someone who was evil, I can see why
it was her."
-- "Alias"
Mousie
Roger and I think we can possibly redate Tempest to 1604-1605, or
even--and this would be pushing it--1602. I don't know of any Oxfordian
who dates The Tempest to the 1570s, or suggests that it is a
pro-Catholic play, and I thought we'd read all the available
literature, both Oxfordian and traditional. Perhaps Elizabeth could
comment further.
Regards,
Lynne
>
> Best,
> KCL
David L. Webb
Mark Steese <mark_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> "Tom Veal" <Tom...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in news:1129551563.129932.85100
> @g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
>
> > In a puff piece for his book
> > (http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/000600.php)
> > Professor Rubinstein says that anti-Stratfordian theories face
> > "adamant and virtually unanimous opposition from nearly all
> > established scholars of Shakespeare". He's probably credible on that
> > point, if not on much else.
> It sounds overstated to me. There's no doubt that Shakespearean scholars
> dismiss alter-Shakespeareanism, but "adamant and virtually unanimous
> opposition" makes it sound as though established scholars devote a
> significant amount of time to the authorship 'question,' and most of
> them don't.
Right. I don't know very many scholars personally, but the few that
I know devote about as much time to anti-Stratfordian scenarios as most
mathematicians devote to circle squarers, angle trisectors, and other
assorted mathematics and science cranks. That is, a few mathematicians
patiently explain to cranks who write or visit them where the errors of
the latter lie, generally without much comprehension on the part of the
cranks. It can seem like a waste of time, but it is also an important
public service. Indeed, I know of one physics/astronomy department that
gave one its graduate students (as part of his TA duties) the task of
answering all the department's crackpot mail. Some of the mail received
was rather amusing. I recall one letter that proposed a solution to the
problem of decaying satellite orbits and the dangers posed by their
uncontrolled descent to earth -- the writer suggested that astronauts
rendezvous with the satellite and attach helium balloons to it to float
it back up into a safe orbit! (Question to Art Neuendorffer: Have you
by any chance proposed that solution at NOAA, Art?)
The recognition of crankery is of course far more clear-cut in a
field like mathematics than in literary history, but the approach of the
scholars of whom I'm aware is pretty much the same -- they devote very
little time to the authorship "question," if indeed they devote any time
to it at all. This fact should engender a greater appreciation among
anti-Stratfordians for the patience, forbearance, and generosity with
their time and expertise of the very few scholars like Dave Kathman and
Peter Groves who do take the time and trouble to respond.
> Rubinstein claims that "as a topic of discussion, it is
> strictly taboo. [How can it be opposed if no one can mention it?] Most
> academic conferences and journals concerned with Shakespeare and his
> works automatically ban any discussion of this subject submitted for
> consideration..." He cites no examples of banned such automatically-
> banned submissions, though he does go on to mention the ban on
> authorship discussions at SHAKSPER, which he describes as "the leading
> Shakespeare academic website" -- he somehow forgot that SHAKSPER is a
> mailing list whose moderator banned authorship discussions not because
> of fealty to some academic taboo but because of Richard Kennedy's
> intemperate behavior.
Indeed, the lesser Kennedy's behavior in that instance seems to have
gone well beyond his habitual buffoonery.
> Amusingly, Rubinstein goes on to say that the imaginary taboo on
> authorship discussion "is not as outrageous as it may seem," seeing as
> how "although well-intentioned and often highly intelligent searchers
> after the truth, many anti-Stratfordians have been egregious and
> counterproductive in their persistence as well as in their lack of
> compelling evidence."
Now *there's* an understatement!
David L. Webb
"Mousie" <lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
[...]
> > > Oxfordians propose that Oxford wrote a pro-Catholic
> > > Tempest
Which Oxfordians propose this? No doubt Elizabeth will rejoin that
it's "on record."
> > > just after Regnans In Excelsis excommunicated
> > > the Queen and put a death sentence on her head. That's
> > > the kind of thing that Early Modern scholars would jump
> > > on.
[...]
> > This is news to me.
Elizabeth has a charming way of coming up with "facts" that are news
to everyone. Did you know that Southampton was "overly fond of drag,"
that he used to hang around the theaters hoping to play female roles,
that he was eventually given a few such parts, and that he was quite
convincing as a girl? And did you know that "shake-scene" means "stage
hand" in Elizabethan theater slang? Or that "Verulam" means "state of
truth" in Latin? It is really remarkable what one can learn by reading
Elizabeth's posts!
> > I certainly have never put forward such a
> > proposition nor ever heard of a circa 1570 date of composition for
> > Tempest. Perhaps Lynne will have a comment about it.
> Roger and I think we can possibly redate Tempest to 1604-1605, or
> even--and this would be pushing it--1602. I don't know of any Oxfordian
> who dates The Tempest to the 1570s, or suggests that it is a
> pro-Catholic play, and I thought we'd read all the available
> literature, both Oxfordian and traditional. Perhaps Elizabeth could
> comment further.
You mean, she could supply her source? ELIZABETH??! Surely you've
been reading h.l.a.s. long enough not to hold out much hope of that,
Lynne.
Still, I have no doubt that she could indeed comment further, and I
hope that she will. Indeed, one can't lose -- if Elizabeth is right,
and some Oxfordians do date _The Tempest_ to around 1570, then that
information would furnish some new Oxfordian reading material that
promises to be even more amusing than many of the standard Oxfordian
works with which I am already familiar; if Elizabeth is wrong, then her
erudite commentary promises to be equally entertaining in its own right,
and I look forward to seeing with what new and surprising "facts" she
chooses to regale us next.
> Regards,
> Lynne
>
>
> >
> > Best,
> > KCL
Chess One
"David L. Webb" <David....@Dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
news:David.L.Webb-
>
> Right. I don't know very many scholars personally, but the few that
> I know devote about as much time to anti-Stratfordian scenarios as most
> mathematicians devote to circle squarers, angle trisectors, and other
> assorted mathematics and science cranks.
Do you mean to say that you can't draw the great pyramid with just compass
and straight edge? If you can't do that you also couldn't construct
Chartres. Why are medievel cathedral builders cranks?
> That is, a few mathematicians
> patiently explain to cranks who write or visit them where the errors of
> the latter lie, generally without much comprehension on the part of the
> cranks. It can seem like a waste of time, but it is also an important
> public service. Indeed, I know of one physics/astronomy department that
> gave one its graduate students (as part of his TA duties) the task of
> answering all the department's crackpot mail.
Lockyer was an astronomer - and in his case the university system was the
cranks - they rejected his findings without even looking at them
scientifically. I suppose this just goes to show that one can be a bit smug
about one's sensibleness, to the extent of taking all things which are
novel, and suggesting they are eliminated via work-study.
Even Einstein's theories took a while to get going, no? I suspect for the
same clever reasons you suggest here.
Phil Innes
Art Neuendorffer
<<I don't know very many scholars personally, but the few that
I know devote about as much time to anti-Stratfordian scenarios
as most mathematicians devote to circle squarers, angle trisectors,
and other assorted mathematics and science cranks.>>
Given the unusual nature of the beast successful mathematics "cranks"
are a little hard to come by but there is certainly our beloved
(Baconian) Georg Cantor.
OTOH...successful science "cranks" are a dime a dozen:
1) 2005 Nobel Prize (Medicine) recipients Warren & Marshall
2) Pulsar discoverers Jocelyn Bell & Thomas Gold
3) Cosmic microwave background theorist George Gamow
3) Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
3) Robert Goddard
4) Alfred Wegener
5) Galileo
etc. etc.
David L. Webb wrote:
<<That is, a few mathematicians patiently explain to cranks who write
or visit them where the errors of the latter lie, generally without
much comprehension on the part of the cranks. It can seem like a
waste of time, but it is also an important public service.>>
I have a NOAA ozone colleague who once patiently explained to Japanese
Antarctic ozone scientists that their Antarctic ozone were too low to
be believable. NASA scientists also had rejected their own satellite
ozone measurements as being too low to be believable. Hence, the honor
for discovering the Antarctic ozone hole went to a bunch of underpaid
English Antarctic ozone scientists:
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/Key_Topics/The_Ozone_Hole/anniversary/
David L. Webb wrote:
<<Indeed, I know of one physics/astronomy department that gave one its
graduate students (as part of his TA duties) the task of answering all
the department's crackpot mail. Some of the mail received was rather
amusing. I recall one letter that proposed a solution to the
problem of decaying satellite orbits and the dangers posed by their
uncontrolled descent to earth -- the writer suggested that astronauts
rendezvous with the satellite and attach helium balloons to it to
float it back up into a safe orbit! (Question to Art Neuendorffer:
Have you by any chance proposed that solution at NOAA, Art?)>>
As I once patiently explained to Streitz
(and now must patiently explained to Dwebb)
the problem is one of DRAG not LIFT:
A hypersonic balloon creates far more DRAG than LIFT.
As for NOAA satellites:
The Hubble Telescope flies at 600km. and orbitally decays over a few
decades. NOAA's low flying satellites are up at 840km. where the air
density is 10 times less. Ergo, our satellites orbitally decay over
a few centuries... long after the instruments have failed. However,
with a large enough helium balloon one could drop that down to years.
David L. Webb wrote:
<<The recognition of crankery is of course far more clear-cut
in a field like mathematics than in literary history,>>
So much so that the analogy is ridiculous.
David L. Webb wrote:
<<but the approach of the scholars of whom I'm aware is pretty much
the same -- they devote very little time to the authorship
"question," if indeed they devote any time to it at all.
The reason for that is clear cut:
---------------------------------------------------
Mark Rylance's 'THE TRUTH WILL OUT' 'Foreword' includes:
"...the topic of this book seems to inflame so many intelligent people
into quite uncharacteristic behaviour: repression of debate, denial of
evidence, lack of objectivity, personal slander, wild conspiracy theory
and paranoia, death threats and threats of unemployment in academia, as
one American professor was warned when he shared his scepticism about
the authorship of the works attributed to Shakespeare."
---------------------------------------------------
David L. Webb wrote:
<<This fact should engender a greater appreciation among
anti-Stratfordians for the patience, forbearance, and generosity
with their time and expertise of the very few scholars like
Dave Kathman and Peter Groves who do take the time
and trouble to respond.>>
They seldom take the time and trouble to respond to me.
(There's a soft ball for you, Dave. ;)
Art Neuendorffer
Mike Ward
news:YSc5f.3025$%L.1050@trndny09:
>
> "David L. Webb" <David....@Dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> news:David.L.Webb-
>>
>> Right. I don't know very many scholars personally, but the few
>> that
>> I know devote about as much time to anti-Stratfordian scenarios as
>> most mathematicians devote to circle squarers, angle trisectors, and
>> other assorted mathematics and science cranks.
>
> Do you mean to say that you can't draw the great pyramid with just
> compass and straight edge? If you can't do that you also couldn't
> construct Chartres. Why are medievel cathedral builders cranks?
>
No I'm sure he means exactly what he said.
It is impossible given a circle to construct a square of equal area using
ONLY a compass and a straight edge.
It is likewise impossible given an angle to construct and angle that is
one-third of the given angel using ONLY a compass an straight endge.
And the handful of individuals who insist that these things are possible
are cranks.
Mike
Tom Reedy
news:Xns96F3C2...@204.127.36.1...
And why would you need to trisect an angle to draw the great pyramid? It has
four sides.
TR
Chess One
"Mike Ward" <m@d.w> wrote in message
news:Xns96F3C2...@204.127.36.1...
> news:YSc5f.3025$%L.1050@trndny09:
>
>>
>> "David L. Webb" <David....@Dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
>> news:David.L.Webb-
>>>
>>> Right. I don't know very many scholars personally, but the few
>>> that
>>> I know devote about as much time to anti-Stratfordian scenarios as
>>> most mathematicians devote to circle squarers, angle trisectors, and
>>> other assorted mathematics and science cranks.
>>
>> Do you mean to say that you can't draw the great pyramid with just
>> compass and straight edge? If you can't do that you also couldn't
>> construct Chartres. Why are medievel cathedral builders cranks?
>>
>
> No I'm sure he means exactly what he said.
>
> It is impossible given a circle to construct a square of equal area using
> ONLY a compass and a straight edge.
:)
> It is likewise impossible given an angle to construct and angle that is
> one-third of the given angel using ONLY a compass an straight endge.
>
> And the handful of individuals who insist that these things are possible
> are cranks.
John Michel is such a crank. So I suppose that people who follows his
construction method are too. It's an interesting way to speak of people who
know more than you do. I wonder, did you ever study this writer? Or maybe
Keith Crichlow?
Phil
> Mike
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
is proposing a fallacious relatively complex theory and persisting with
it in the face of all evidence against it.
--Bob G.
Mousie
Bun, storm heading your way. Please take care.
L.
Richard Kennedy
makes one a crank
is proposing a fallacious relatively complex theory and persisting with
it in the face of all evidence against it.
Kennedy. That's the first time that Grumman has admitted it, rather
brave of him after all, so
much time as he's put in on the questiion.
David L. Webb
"Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendor...@comcast.net>
(aneuendor...@comicass.nut) wrote:
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> <<I don't know very many scholars personally, but the few that
> I know devote about as much time to anti-Stratfordian scenarios
> as most mathematicians devote to circle squarers, angle trisectors,
> and other assorted mathematics and science cranks.>>
> Given the unusual nature of the beast successful mathematics "cranks"
> are a little hard to come by but there is certainly our beloved
> (Baconian) Georg Cantor.
But Cantor was not a mathematical crank (not while he was sane, at
any rate), merely a Shakespeare authorship crank. There are certainly
people who are quite accomplished in one field but complete cranks in
others -- despite Shockley's physics Nobel, I have neVER heard anyone
sane who took his opinions on genetics seriously. And of course, there
are numerous people who are very capable in their own fields who are
anti-Stratforfdians.
> OTOH...successful science "cranks" are a dime a dozen:
>
> 1) 2005 Nobel Prize (Medicine) recipients Warren & Marshall
> 2) Pulsar discoverers Jocelyn Bell & Thomas Gold
> 3) Cosmic microwave background theorist George Gamow
> 3) Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
> 3) Robert Goddard
> 4) Alfred Wegener
> 5) Galileo
> etc. etc.
None of these people were cranks, Art. Meeting opposition from some
authority figure is not a sign of crankery _per se_. In the case of
Chandrasekhar, Eddington did not by any means refute his argument;
rather, Eddington opined (on aesthetic grounds) that there ought to be a
law forbidding stellar collapse above the Chandrasekhar limit. Bohr,
Pauli, and other greats supported and encouraged Chandrasekhar, but
nobody really wanted to offend a grand old man like Eddington.
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> <<That is, a few mathematicians patiently explain to cranks who write
> or visit them where the errors of the latter lie, generally without
> much comprehension on the part of the cranks. It can seem like a
> waste of time, but it is also an important public service.>>
> I have a NOAA ozone colleague who once patiently explained to Japanese
> Antarctic ozone scientists that their Antarctic ozone were too low to
> be believable. NASA scientists also had rejected their own satellite
> ozone measurements as being too low to be believable. Hence, the honor
> for discovering the Antarctic ozone hole went to a bunch of underpaid
> English Antarctic ozone scientists:
>
> http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/Key_Topics/The_Ozone_Hole/anniversary/
You're not exactly enhancing my opinion of the staff of NOAA, Art --
true, my tentative opinion was based upon a single data point, but now
you have furnished a second.
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> <<Indeed, I know of one physics/astronomy department that gave one its
> graduate students (as part of his TA duties) the task of answering all
> the department's crackpot mail. Some of the mail received was rather
> amusing. I recall one letter that proposed a solution to the
> problem of decaying satellite orbits and the dangers posed by their
> uncontrolled descent to earth -- the writer suggested that astronauts
> rendezvous with the satellite and attach helium balloons to it to
> float it back up into a safe orbit! (Question to Art Neuendorffer:
> Have you by any chance proposed that solution at NOAA, Art?)>>
>
> As I once patiently explained to Streitz
> (and now must patiently explained to Dwebb)
> the problem is one of DRAG not LIFT:
>
> A hypersonic balloon creates far more DRAG than LIFT.
You certainly don't have to explain it me, Art -- but good luck
explaining anything to Mr. Streitz.
> As for NOAA satellites:
>
> The Hubble Telescope flies at 600km. and orbitally decays over a few
> decades. NOAA's low flying satellites are up at 840km. where the air
> density is 10 times less. Ergo, our satellites orbitally decay over
> a few centuries... long after the instruments have failed. However,
> with a large enough helium balloon one could drop that down to years.
So, were *you* the one who mailed in the helium balloon suggestion
for rescuing Skylab, Art?
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> <<The recognition of crankery is of course far more clear-cut
> in a field like mathematics than in literary history,>>
> So much so that the analogy is ridiculous.
No, it is not ridiculous. Shakespeare cranks very often know as
little (or less) of history, linguistics, etc. as angle trisectors know
of mathematics. Indeed, one such crank thinks that Anne Hathaway was
William Shakespeare's mother!
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> <<but the approach of the scholars of whom I'm aware is pretty much
> the same -- they devote very little time to the authorship
> "question," if indeed they devote any time to it at all.
>
> The reason for that is clear cut:
> ---------------------------------------------------
> Mark Rylance's 'THE TRUTH WILL OUT' 'Foreword' includes:
>
> "...the topic of this book seems to inflame so many intelligent people
> into quite uncharacteristic behaviour: repression of debate, denial of
> evidence, lack of objectivity, personal slander, wild conspiracy theory
> and paranoia,
That's odd -- all of the conspiracy theories I've seen emanate from
anti-Stratfordians!
> death threats
Huh?!
> and threats of unemployment in academia,
Huh?
> as
> one American professor was warned when he shared his scepticism about
> the authorship of the works attributed to Shakespeare."
> ---------------------------------------------------
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> <<This fact should engender a greater appreciation among
> anti-Stratfordians for the patience, forbearance, and generosity
> with their time and expertise of the very few scholars like
> Dave Kathman and Peter Groves who do take the time
> and trouble to respond.>>
> They seldom take the time and trouble to respond to me.
Dave Kathman used to respond to you, Art; howeVER, like the angle
trisectors I have encountered, you just continued propagating the same
ridiculous errors.
> (There's a soft ball for you, Dave. ;)
Thank you, Art -- but I am much too sportsmanlike to take advantage
of it.
> Art Neuendorffer
gangleri
Is this your farewell to Stratfordian Orthodoxy?
Gangleri
gangleri
None of these people were cranks, Art. Meeting opposition from some
authority figure is not a sign of crankery _per se_. In the case of
Chandrasekhar, Eddington did not by any means refute his argument;
rather, Eddington opined (on aesthetic grounds) that there ought to be
alaw forbidding stellar collapse above the Chandrasekhar limit.
Bohr,Pauli, and other greats supported and encouraged Chandrasekhar,
butnobody really wanted to offend a grand old man like Eddington.
Comment:
Chandrasekhar's point reduces to restatement under specified conditions
of Newton's conclusion that, IF things were as he supposed them to be,
universal gravity would cause the whole universe to collapse in on
itself.
As for "nobody really want[ing] to offend a grand old man like
Eddington" - really?
Oppenheimer branded Einstein [in HLAS-speak] a moron in the 1930s.
Art Neuendorffer
> >
> > <<I don't know very many scholars personally, but the few that
> > I know devote about as much time to anti-Stratfordian scenarios
> > as most mathematicians devote to circle squarers, angle trisectors,
> > and other assorted mathematics and science cranks.>>
> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendor...@comcast.net>
> > Given the unusual nature of the beast successful mathematics "cranks"
> > are a little hard to come by but there is certainly our beloved
> > (Baconian) Georg Cantor.
David L. Webb wrote:
> But Cantor was not a mathematical crank (not while he was sane, at
> any rate), merely a Shakespeare authorship crank.
So Cantor's rather pecular mathematical ideas were accepted
immediately?
David L. Webb wrote:
> There are certainly
> people who are quite accomplished in one field but complete cranks in
> others -- despite Shockley's physics Nobel, I have neVER heard anyone
> sane who took his opinions on genetics seriously. And of course, there
> are numerous people who are very capable in their own fields who are
> anti-Stratforfdians.
Or even Stratforfdian.
> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendor...@comcast.net>
> > OTOH...successful science "cranks" are a dime a dozen:
> >
> > 1) 2005 Nobel Prize (Medicine) recipients Warren & Marshall
> > 2) Pulsar discoverers Jocelyn Bell & Thomas Gold
> > 3) Cosmic microwave background theorist George Gamow
> > 3) Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
> > 3) Robert Goddard
> > 4) Alfred Wegener
> > 5) Galileo
> > etc. etc.
David L. Webb wrote:
> None of these people were cranks, Art.
Their ideas were all generally dismissed or ignored
as being too bizarre & nontraditional.
David L. Webb wrote:
> Meeting opposition from some
> authority figure is not a sign of crankery _per se_.
That's how the authorities perceive it at the time.
David L. Webb wrote:
> In the case of
> Chandrasekhar, Eddington did not by any means refute his argument;
> rather, Eddington opined (on aesthetic grounds) that there ought to be a
> law forbidding stellar collapse above the Chandrasekhar limit.
Terry Ross & Dave Kathman believes that there should be a law
forbidding making educated guesses about history that are at odds with
even the flimsiest sort of documentation.
David L. Webb wrote:
> Bohr, Pauli, and other greats supported
> and encouraged Chandrasekhar, but nobody really
> wanted to offend a grand old man like Eddington.
There is a long list of famous people who encourage anti-Stratfordian
thinking but few want to directly offend the powerful establishment
forces on the other side.
> > David L. Webb wrote:
> >
> > <<That is, a few mathematicians patiently explain to cranks who write
> > or visit them where the errors of the latter lie, generally without
> > much comprehension on the part of the cranks. It can seem like a
> > waste of time, but it is also an important public service.>>
>
> > I have a NOAA ozone colleague who once patiently explained to Japanese
> > Antarctic ozone scientists that their Antarctic ozone were too low to
> > be believable. NASA scientists also had rejected their own satellite
> > ozone measurements as being too low to be believable. Hence, the honor
> > for discovering the Antarctic ozone hole went to a bunch of underpaid
> > English Antarctic ozone scientists:
> >
> > http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/Key_Topics/The_Ozone_Hole/anniversary/
David L. Webb wrote:
> You're not exactly enhancing my opinion of the staff of NOAA, Art --
> true, my tentative opinion was based upon a single data point, but now
> you have furnished a second.
I happen to be married, thank you very much.
> > David L. Webb wrote:
> >
> > <<Indeed, I know of one physics/astronomy department that gave one its
> > graduate students (as part of his TA duties) the task of answering all
> > the department's crackpot mail. Some of the mail received was rather
> > amusing. I recall one letter that proposed a solution to the
> > problem of decaying satellite orbits and the dangers posed by their
> > uncontrolled descent to earth -- the writer suggested that astronauts
> > rendezvous with the satellite and attach helium balloons to it to
> > float it back up into a safe orbit! (Question to Art Neuendorffer:
> > Have you by any chance proposed that solution at NOAA, Art?)>>
> >
> > As I once patiently explained to Streitz
> > (and now must patiently explained to Dwebb)
> > the problem is one of DRAG not LIFT:
> >
> > A hypersonic balloon creates far more DRAG than LIFT.
David L. Webb wrote:
> You certainly don't have to explain it me, Art --
> but good luck explaining anything to Mr. Streitz.
I was just answering your question.
> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendor...@comcast.net>
> > As for NOAA satellites:
> >
> > The Hubble Telescope flies at 600km. and orbitally decays over a few
> > decades. NOAA's low flying satellites are up at 840km. where the air
> > density is 10 times less. Ergo, our satellites orbitally decay over
> > a few centuries... long after the instruments have failed. However,
> > with a large enough helium balloon one could drop that down to years.
David L. Webb wrote:
> So, were *you* the one who mailed in the helium balloon suggestion
> for rescuing Skylab, Art?
It is not an effect method to bring satellites back to earth
because it is not predictable.
> > David L. Webb wrote:
> >
> > <<The recognition of crankery is of course far more clear-cut
> > in a field like mathematics than in literary history,>>
>
> > So much so that the analogy is ridiculous.
David L. Webb wrote:
> No, it is not ridiculous. Shakespeare cranks very often know as
> little (or less) of history, linguistics, etc. as angle trisectors know
> of mathematics. Indeed, one such crank thinks that Anne Hathaway was
> William Shakespeare's mother!
I have constantly mantained that Anne Hathaway was William Wilson's
wife; presumeably her children would be Wilsons.
> > David L. Webb wrote:
> >
> > <<but the approach of the scholars of whom I'm aware is pretty much
> > the same -- they devote very little time to the authorship
> > "question," if indeed they devote any time to it at all.
> >
> > The reason for that is clear cut:
> > ---------------------------------------------------
> > Mark Rylance's 'THE TRUTH WILL OUT' 'Foreword' includes:
> >
> > "...the topic of this book seems to inflame so many intelligent people
> > into quite uncharacteristic behaviour: repression of debate, denial of
> > evidence, lack of objectivity, personal slander, wild conspiracy theory
> > and paranoia,
David L. Webb wrote:
> That's odd -- all of the conspiracy theories
> I've seen emanate from anti-Stratfordians!
Perhaps he means the the Strats were smearing the opposition with
the usual conspiracy theory claims. (Of course, we all know you belong
to the conspiracy.)
> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendor...@comcast.net>
> > death threats
David L. Webb wrote:
> Huh?!
All means necessary...isn't that what the grand master said?
> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendor...@comcast.net>
> > and threats of unemployment in academia,
David L. Webb wrote:
> Huh?
Publish or perish; and anti-Strats soon learn that they can't
publish in mainstream peer reviewed journals. (As Lynne is no doubt
learning now.)
> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendor...@comcast.net>
> > as
> > one American professor was warned when he shared his scepticism about
> > the authorship of the works attributed to Shakespeare."
> > ---------------------------------------------------
> > David L. Webb wrote:
> >
> > <<This fact should engender a greater appreciation among
> > anti-Stratfordians for the patience, forbearance, and generosity
> > with their time and expertise of the very few scholars like
> > Dave Kathman and Peter Groves who do take the time
> > and trouble to respond.>>
>
> > They seldom take the time and trouble to respond to me.
David L. Webb wrote:
> Dave Kathman used to respond to you, Art; howeVER, like the angle
> trisectors I have encountered, you just continued propagating the same
> ridiculous errors.
Hey, I believe in historical documents...ergo Hathaway married
Wilson; case closed.
> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendor...@comcast.net>
> > (There's a soft ball for you, Dave. ;)
David L. Webb wrote:
> Thank you, Art -- but I am much too sportsmanlike to take advantage
> of it.
How kind.
Art Neuendorffer
Elizabeth
Mousie wrote:
> I don't know of any Oxfordian
> who dates The Tempest to the 1570s, or suggests that it is a
> pro-Catholic play, and I thought we'd read all the available
> literature, both Oxfordian and traditional. Perhaps Elizabeth could
> comment further.
A playwright that named the romantic lead of
The Tempest after Aragonese rulers at a time when
England was at war with Spain in The Netherlands would
be risking a thumb. Englishmen were still dying in
the war, Philip II had reinforced his troops in The
Netherlands and was rebuilding the Armada, the treasury
of England was sapped. It wasn't a good time to make
Catholic ruler allusions in a play until after the
Treaty of London was signed in mid-1605.
Cordially,
Elizabeth
Art Neuendorffer
> Bun, storm heading your way. Please take care.
> L.
----------------------------------------------
That's just the Canadian Hurricane center talking.
I wouldn't be too concerned until a detailed calibration
of the instruments and calculations is performed:
----------------------------------------------
Hurricane Wilma Discussion Number 16 Corrected
Statement as of 5:00 am EDT on October 19, 2005
...To use the proper word...relayed...
<<in addition to the spectacular cloud pattern observed on satellite
...An Air Force reconnaissance plane measured 168 knots at 700 mb
and estimated a minimum pressure of 884 mb extrapolated from 700mb.
Unofficially...the meteorologist on board the plane relayed an
extrapolated 881 mb pressure and measured 884 mb with a dropsonde.
This is all in association with a very small eye that has been
oscillating between 2 and 4 N mi during eye penetrations. This is
probably the lowest minimum pressure ever observed in the Atlantic
Basin and is followed by the 888 mb minimum pressure associated
with hurricane Gilbert in 1988. However...one must be very careful
before it is declared a record minimum pressure until a full and
detailed calibration of the instruments and calculations is
performed. So please do not jump into conclusions yet...be patient.
Wilma is a catastrophic category five hurricane that is moving over
very warm waters...typical of the northwestern Caribbean Sea...and
within an environment of light shear. However...despite the
favorable large scale environment...Wilma is near its maximum
potential intensity and further strengthening is not anticipated.
Most likely...the small eye will collapse followed by slight
weakening or some fluctuations in intensity. Eyewall replacement
cycles will likely control the intensity for the next 2 to 3 days
while the hurricane is over the northwestern Caribbean Sea.
Thereafter...once Wilma reaches the southeastern Gulf of Mexico and
encounters the westerlies and high shear...weakening should begin.
The hurricane is moving toward the west-northwest or 295 degrees at
7 knots. It seems that data from the high altitude NOAA jet
ingested by models caused the track guidance envelope to shift
slightly westward for the 2 to 3 day period. However...no change in
track is indicated over the Gulf of Mexico and guidance continues
to turn Wilma sharply to the northeast over Florida. Based on the
latest guidance...the official track forecast has been shifted
slightly westward but is kept on the eastern side of the envelope.
This in case the track guidance shifts back to the east in the next
run.
In summary...the official forecast brings the core of this
catastrophic hurricane northward through the Yucatan Channel and
then sharply turns a weaker hurricane to the northeast toward
Florida with an increase in forward speed.>>
------------------------------------------
Art N.
Chess One
<bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote in message
news:1129684421.1...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Phil, being wrong is not what makes one a crank; what makes one a crank
> is proposing a fallacious relatively complex theory and persisting with
> it in the face of all evidence against it.
I think that is one condition of crankdom. But Einstein was a crank before
people got around to appreciating his genius. And who were the cranks who
persisted in specualting about Troy? Until that German bloke went and dug it
up?
So flinging the term crank at what is not understood is no pure prescription
of crankness. Flinging the term crank at a person without studying the
subject is at least as strange a behavior as one's accusation, no?
I see I already repeated this commentary earlier this morning:
...And take upon's the mystery of things
As if we were God's spies; and we'll wear out
In a walled prison, pacts and sects of great ones
That ebb and flow by th'moon
/King Lear, v:2
Cordially, Phil
> --Bob G.
>
Chess One
"Mousie" <lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:1129684726....@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Just try and relax Lynne, and don't burn their books before you've read 'em?
We can only prohibit that which we can name.
/George Steiner, After Babel, 1973.
And what shall I say of those more properly called
traitors than translators, since they betray those
whom they aim to reveal, tarnishing their glory,
and seducing ignorant readers by reading white
for black?
/Joachim du Bellay, 1549
Cordially, Phil
> L.
>
Mark Cipra
news:Q0r5f.9292$da1.5668@trndny04...
>
> <bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote in message
> news:1129684421.1...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> > Phil, being wrong is not what makes one a crank; what makes one a crank
> > is proposing a fallacious relatively complex theory and persisting with
> > it in the face of all evidence against it.
>
> I think that is one condition of crankdom. But Einstein was a crank before
> people got around to appreciating his genius. And who were the cranks who
You've said this twice, so I guess it needs correcting. Webb would do a
better job, but he doesn't seem to be responding.
Einstein's theories were *never* as far as I know, considered crankery.
They were published in mainstream (although small circulation) journals. A
few people immediately recognized their significance, and nearly all others
recognized that they might be *wrong*, but deserved testing. Why? Because
his theories, improbable as some of them must have seemed, were in
accordance with known facts, explained things well, and were testable.
I don't know if pre-Schliemann "Trojans" were called cranks or not, but any
charges of crankery that might have been tossed about were put to rest by
evidence. Before someone actually produced some, unfounded speculation on
the reality of Troy *would* have been crankery. If you can produce
evidence, people will go your way.
Likewise, if any mainstream academic could produce a convincing case against
William of Stratford's authorship, he would never have to teach another
English 101 in his life.
You'll do better with other examples. Von Daniken?
> persisted in specualting about Troy? Until that German bloke went and dug
it
> up?
>
> So flinging the term crank at what is not understood is no pure
prescription
> of crankness. Flinging the term crank at a person without studying the
> subject is at least as strange a behavior as one's accusation, no?
>
> I see I already repeated this commentary earlier this morning:
>
> ...And take upon's the mystery of things
> As if we were God's spies; and we'll wear out
> In a walled prison, pacts and sects of great ones
> That ebb and flow by th'moon
> /King Lear, v:2
>
> Cordially, Phil
>
> > --Bob G.
> >
>
>
--
"A lie is a sort of myth, and a myth is a sort of truth." - Cyrano
(Play Indiana Jones! Hide the "ark" in my address to reply by e-mail!)
Peter Groves
news:Pjr5f.552$Lv....@newssvr24.news.prodigy.net...
> "Chess One" <inn...@verizon.net> wrote in message
> news:Q0r5f.9292$da1.5668@trndny04...
> >
> > <bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote in message
> > news:1129684421.1...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> > > Phil, being wrong is not what makes one a crank; what makes one a
crank
> > > is proposing a fallacious relatively complex theory and persisting
with
> > > it in the face of all evidence against it.
> >
> > I think that is one condition of crankdom. But Einstein was a crank
before
> > people got around to appreciating his genius. And who were the cranks
who
>
> You've said this twice, so I guess it needs correcting. Webb would do a
> better job, but he doesn't seem to be responding.
>
> Einstein's theories were *never* as far as I know, considered crankery.
Mark, I hope you're not suggesting that Phil might be giving vent to
ill-considered, half-baked or insufficiently researched opinions. Because
I, for one, would be shocked. Phil has shown us the way in so many areas: I
had never realised (for example) that Shakespeare was a speaker of the
aboriginal Celtic "British language" (as well, of course, as his native Old
English).
Peter G.
Mark Cipra
news:vyr5f.22359$U51....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
> "Mark Cipra" <cipr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
> news:Pjr5f.552$Lv....@newssvr24.news.prodigy.net...
> > "Chess One" <inn...@verizon.net> wrote in message
> > news:Q0r5f.9292$da1.5668@trndny04...
> > >
> > > <bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote in message
> > > news:1129684421.1...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> > > > Phil, being wrong is not what makes one a crank; what makes one a
> crank
> > > > is proposing a fallacious relatively complex theory and persisting
> with
> > > > it in the face of all evidence against it.
> > >
> > > I think that is one condition of crankdom. But Einstein was a crank
> before
> > > people got around to appreciating his genius. And who were the cranks
> who
> >
> > You've said this twice, so I guess it needs correcting. Webb would do a
> > better job, but he doesn't seem to be responding.
> >
> > Einstein's theories were *never* as far as I know, considered crankery.
>
> Mark, I hope you're not suggesting that Phil might be giving vent to
> ill-considered, half-baked or insufficiently researched opinions. Because
Perhaps I spoke too soon. I would never do that!
Stephanie Caruana
> dialector wrote:
> > Elizabeth wrote:
> > >
> > > Oxfordians propose that Oxford wrote a pro-Catholic
> > > Tempest just after Regnans In Excelsis excommunicated
> > > the Queen and put a death sentence on her head. That's
> > > the kind of thing that Early Modern scholars would jump
> > > on.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Cordially,
> > >
> > > Elizabeth
> >
> > This is news to me. I certainly have never put forward such a
> > proposition nor ever heard of a circa 1570 date of composition for
> > Tempest. Perhaps Lynne will have a comment about it.
>
> Roger and I think we can possibly redate Tempest to 1604-1605, or
> even--and this would be pushing it--1602. I don't know of any Oxfordian
> who dates The Tempest to the 1570s, or suggests that it is a
> pro-Catholic play, and I thought we'd read all the available
> literature, both Oxfordian and traditional. Perhaps Elizabeth could
> comment further.
>
(1297 pages) devotes 2 chapters to The Tempest, dating it as follows:
"From the time of his imprisonment in the Tower, April-June 1581, until
his return to favor in June 1583, [Oxford] seems to have written eleven
plays. Of these the only ones which can justly be called comedies...are
As You Like It, Much Ado, and The Tempest; none of these is
light-hearted: the first has overtones of sadness, with banishment its
dominant note, the second is satirical, and The Tempest, based on
banishment again, is anything but merry." [p.357]. The Ogburns suggest
that the play is not so much pro-Catholic, as it is anti-Calvinist. And
that it is among the most "autobiographical" of "Shakespeare's" plays.
[Not Shaksper's biography, of course, but Oxford's].
Stephanie Caruana
Chess One
"Mark Cipra" <cipr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:Pjr5f.552$Lv....@newssvr24.news.prodigy.net...
> news:Q0r5f.9292$da1.5668@trndny04...
>>
>> <bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote in message
>> news:1129684421.1...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>> > Phil, being wrong is not what makes one a crank; what makes one a crank
>> > is proposing a fallacious relatively complex theory and persisting with
>> > it in the face of all evidence against it.
>>
>> I think that is one condition of crankdom. But Einstein was a crank
>> before
>> people got around to appreciating his genius. And who were the cranks who
>
> You've said this twice, so I guess it needs correcting. Webb would do a
> better job, but he doesn't seem to be responding.
>
> Einstein's theories were *never* as far as I know, considered crankery.
Einstein's theories were at first not considered at all.
> They were published in mainstream (although small circulation) journals.
> A
> few people immediately recognized their significance, and nearly all
> others
> recognized that they might be *wrong*, but deserved testing. Why?
> Because
> his theories, improbable as some of them must have seemed, were in
> accordance with known facts, explained things well, and were testable.
Are we discussing an hypothesis which is not testable, or hypothesies which
are not tested? David Webb has not responded to the subject of Lockyer
either. These ideas upon testing proved to be discomfitting to the
establishment to the extent that actual tests were delayed 100 years. [This
reminds me of Rowse's ennui... see below]
I am rather making the point that if there is no sincere investigation then
inevitably there will be no result - half-assed flip commentary being no
fair substitution for concentrated investigation - but acceptance of any
apparent strangeness is a subject of its own, and is met in all areas of
life. Acceptance of the New is not always the result of failing to look at
what is indicated, but is often in the evaluation of what is indicated.
These is more social science, but in a popular way you might look at Robert
Hughes's title, Shock of the New, which addressed the initial popular
pyschologial responses to Impressionism. There was nothing but mockery from
the establishment. This is somewhat at odds from our current acceptance of
Impressionism. As a study, it is illustrative.
> I don't know if pre-Schliemann "Trojans" were called cranks or not, but
> any
> charges of crankery that might have been tossed about were put to rest by
> evidence.
I think you must more candidly address a mocking attitude by the
establishment to the possibility of the New hypothesis, as a contributory
factor in inhibiting its emergence. This is certainly true in all other
fields of endeavor!
In fact Rowse, perhaps sick and tired of the entire issue, proposed that no
real advances in Shakespearean studies would really happen for 50 years
since it seemed evident to him that there was no one receptive to the
leading edge of thought in his own time, although there were many
enthusiasts of all stripes.
> Before someone actually produced some, unfounded speculation on
> the reality of Troy *would* have been crankery. If you can produce
> evidence, people will go your way.
This would be a populist response - that one must produce evidence in order
to sway /other/ people. But this is a different subject entirely to whether
anything might be investigated by /ourselves/. How happy are we with our
current theorums? Are they really so convincing? We have some doubts, no? If
not, do we not suspect that we are rather strange in not having doubts where
doubts seem indicated? What moves us to examine new things?
These are not generally populist activities, and if we were reliant on them,
instead of a more experimental and indeed risky attitude - which may as well
be non-rational too, we cannot [ratio] measure the New before we wander off
into the dark to explore its extent - then we would all still be living in
caves.
> Likewise, if any mainstream academic could produce a convincing case
> against
> William of Stratford's authorship, he would never have to teach another
> English 101 in his life.
I have not met a single person who could enunciate why the matter of
authorship would make the slightest difference to their appreciation of the
texts.
I am sorry not to be able to conclude as you do.
> You'll do better with other examples. Von Daniken?
It is unnecessary to speculate on my behalf, there are plenty of people
willing to do that, rather than specualte on their own behalf - since...
that would mean they took on some sense of responsibility they are currently
unwilling to own?
We must let the contradictions stand as they
are, make them understood as contradictions, and
grasp what lies beneath them.
/Hannah Arendt, Love and Saint Augustine.
Cordially, Phil Innes
Stephanie Caruana
Stephanie Caruana wrote:
> Mousie wrote:
> > dialector wrote:
> > > This is news to me. I certainly have never put forward such a
> > > proposition nor ever heard of a circa 1570 date of composition for
> > > Tempest. Perhaps Lynne will have a comment about it.
> >
> > Roger and I think we can possibly redate Tempest to 1604-1605, or
> > even--and this would be pushing it--1602. I don't know of any Oxfordian
> > who dates The Tempest to the 1570s, or suggests that it is a
> > pro-Catholic play, and I thought we'd read all the available
> > literature, both Oxfordian and traditional. Perhaps Elizabeth could
> > comment further.
> >
> This is puzzling. "This Star of England," the Ogburns' magnum opus
> (1297 pages) devotes 2 chapters to The Tempest, dating it as follows:
> "From the time of his imprisonment in the Tower, April-June 1581, until
> his return to favor in June 1583, [Oxford] seems to have written eleven
> plays. Of these the only ones which can justly be called comedies...are
> As You Like It, Much Ado, and The Tempest; none of these is
> light-hearted: the first has overtones of sadness, with banishment its
> dominant note, the second is satirical, and The Tempest, based on
> banishment again, is anything but merry." [p.357]. The Ogburns suggest
> that the play is not so much pro-Catholic, as it is anti-Calvinist. And
> that it is among the most "autobiographical" of "Shakespeare's" plays.
> [Not Shaksper's biography, of course, but Oxford's].
>
Tempest after Oxford's demise--specifically, William Stanley, Earl of
Derby, Oxford's son-in-law via Derby's marriage to Elizabeth Vere,
Oxford's oldest daughter. They suggest that Ferdinando, Miranda's
suitor, memorialized William's brother, who died. And thereby made it
possible for William and Elizabeth to marry, in the merry old English
upper-class tradition that the daughter of an Earl couldn't very well
go about marrying a title-less lad, cadet son and all that. The
Spaniards don't come into this riff. According to the Ogburns, it's all
about Oxford (Prospero), "Marina" (the plays, and also, Elizabeth
Vere), Caliban (the Calvinists, who ought to be banned), and the
plotters (Oxford's enemies), on whom Oxford (Prospero) strongly desires
to wreak revenge.
Stephanie Caruana
David L. Webb
"Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendor...@comcast.net>
(aneuendor...@comicass.nut) wrote:
> > > David L. Webb wrote:
> > >
> > > <<I don't know very many scholars personally, but the few that
> > > I know devote about as much time to anti-Stratfordian scenarios
> > > as most mathematicians devote to circle squarers, angle trisectors,
> > > and other assorted mathematics and science cranks.>>
> > "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendor...@comcast.net>
>
> > > Given the unusual nature of the beast successful mathematics "cranks"
> > > are a little hard to come by but there is certainly our beloved
> > > (Baconian) Georg Cantor.
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > But Cantor was not a mathematical crank (not while he was sane, at
> > any rate), merely a Shakespeare authorship crank.
> So Cantor's rather pecular mathematical ideas were accepted
> immediately?
If you've read any of Cantor's biography, Art, you should be aware
that Cantor had many mathematical supporters and admirers, among them
Dedekind and Mittag-Leffler, Heine, Hurwitz, and Klein, and only one
major detractor (Kronecker). Despite his opposition, Kronecker actually
*published* the paper that Cantor submitted to Crelle's journal. Even
Kronecker's opposition does not necessarily mean that Kronecker viewed
Cantor as a crank. This may be news to you, Art, but even scientists of
great power and originality often have their submissions rejected by
good journals, not because their work is crankery or even because it is
wrong, but because in the opinion of the referee or the editor, it is
not sufficiently interesting or important. Indeed, Cantor enjoyed
sufficient respect that a very strange paper of his was published,
probably after the mental problems that were to plague him began to
surface; the paper verifies Goldbach's conjecture for even integers less
than 1,000 -- but Goldbach's conjecture was *already known* to hold for
all even integers less than 10,000, and indeed had been known for nearly
a half century! Incidentally, Art, one of Cantor's biographers writes
that during the celebration of the 500th anniVERsary of the University
of St. Andrews in Scotland, Cantor's mental health began to deteriorate:
"During the visit he apparently began to behave eccentrically,
talking at great length on the Bacon-Shakespeare question...."
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > There are certainly
> > people who are quite accomplished in one field but complete cranks in
> > others -- despite Shockley's physics Nobel, I have neVER heard anyone
> > sane who took his opinions on genetics seriously. And of course, there
> > are numerous people who are very capable in their own fields who are
> > anti-Stratforfdians [sic].
> Or even Stratforfdian.
> > "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendor...@comcast.net>
>
> > > OTOH...successful science "cranks" are a dime a dozen:
> > >
> > > 1) 2005 Nobel Prize (Medicine) recipients Warren & Marshall
> > > 2) Pulsar discoverers Jocelyn Bell & Thomas Gold
> > > 3) Cosmic microwave background theorist George Gamow
> > > 3) Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
> > > 3) Robert Goddard
> > > 4) Alfred Wegener
> > > 5) Galileo
> > > etc. etc.
>
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > None of these people were cranks, Art.
> Their ideas were all generally dismissed or ignored
> as being too bizarre & nontraditional.
By no means. About the only exception is Wegener, whose furnished no
plausible mechanism for continental drift. And, as I already noted,
Chandrasekhar was supported and encouraged by the likes of Pauli and
Bohr.
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > Meeting opposition from some
> > authority figure is not a sign of crankery _per se_.
> That's how the authorities perceive it at the time.
No, Art. Nobody -- not even Eddington -- labeled Chandrasekhar as a
crank. Cranks are people who do not even know the rudiments of the
discipline, and are oblivious to the objections of those who do -- like
angle trisectors, Velikovskians, and anti-Stratfordians.
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > In the case of
> > Chandrasekhar, Eddington did not by any means refute his argument;
> > rather, Eddington opined (on aesthetic grounds) that there ought to be a
> > law forbidding stellar collapse above the Chandrasekhar limit.
> Terry Ross & Dave Kathman believes that there should be a law
> forbidding making educated guesses about history that are at odds with
> even the flimsiest sort of documentation.
I have neVER seen either of them express anything of the kind.
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > Bohr, Pauli, and other greats supported
> > and encouraged Chandrasekhar, but nobody really
> > wanted to offend a grand old man like Eddington.
> There is a long list of famous people who encourage anti-Stratfordian
> thinking
...none of whom is an expert in the field in question. I need
scarcely remind you that both Bohr and Pauli were, among many other
distinctions, Nobel laureates in physics, and they were by no means
Chandrasekhar's sole supporters. To my knowledge, there is *nobody* of
that stature (or even remotely close) in Elizabethan literary history
who encourages anti-Stratfordian "thinking."
> but few want to directly offend the powerful establishment
> forces on the other side.
> > > David L. Webb wrote:
> > >
> > > <<That is, a few mathematicians patiently explain to cranks who write
> > > or visit them where the errors of the latter lie, generally without
> > > much comprehension on the part of the cranks. It can seem like a
> > > waste of time, but it is also an important public service.>>
> >
> > > I have a NOAA ozone colleague who once patiently explained to Japanese
> > > Antarctic ozone scientists that their Antarctic ozone were too low to
> > > be believable. NASA scientists also had rejected their own satellite
> > > ozone measurements as being too low to be believable. Hence, the honor
> > > for discovering the Antarctic ozone hole went to a bunch of underpaid
> > > English Antarctic ozone scientists:
> > >
> > > http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/Key_Topics/The_Ozone_Hole/anniversary/
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > You're not exactly enhancing my opinion of the staff of NOAA, Art --
> > true, my tentative opinion was based upon a single data point, but now
> > you have furnished a second.
> I happen to be married, thank you very much.
Does George Mason know?
> It is not an effect method [sic] to bring satellites back to earth
> because it is not predictable.
Is English your native tongue, Art?
> > > David L. Webb wrote:
> > >
> > > <<The recognition of crankery is of course far more clear-cut
> > > in a field like mathematics than in literary history,>>
> > > So much so that the analogy is ridiculous.
>
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > No, it is not ridiculous. Shakespeare cranks very often know as
> > little (or less) of history, linguistics, etc. as angle trisectors know
> > of mathematics. Indeed, one such crank thinks that Anne Hathaway was
> > William Shakespeare's mother!
> I have constantly mantained that Anne Hathaway was William Wilson's
> wife; presumeably [sic] her children would be Wilsons.
You have also maintained that Virgil predated Herodotus. If you are
actually suggesting that you know more of history and linguistics than
angle trisectors know of mathematics, then I can easily supply plentiful
counterexamples from your burgeoning _oeuVRE_, Art.
> > > David L. Webb wrote:
> > >
> > > <<but the approach of the scholars of whom I'm aware is pretty much
> > > the same -- they devote very little time to the authorship
> > > "question," if indeed they devote any time to it at all.
> > >
> > > The reason for that is clear cut:
> > > ---------------------------------------------------
> > > Mark Rylance's 'THE TRUTH WILL OUT' 'Foreword' includes:
> > >
> > > "...the topic of this book seems to inflame so many intelligent people
> > > into quite uncharacteristic behaviour: repression of debate, denial of
> > > evidence, lack of objectivity, personal slander, wild conspiracy theory
> > > and paranoia,
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > That's odd -- all of the conspiracy theories
> > I've seen emanate from anti-Stratfordians!
> Perhaps he means the the Strats were smearing the opposition with
> the usual conspiracy theory claims.
If you don't think that Mr. Crowley's references to "goVERnment
agents" constitute a conspiracy theory, then perhaps you need to look up
the word, Art.
> (Of course, we all know you belong
> to the conspiracy.)
I?! What conspiracy, Art?
> > "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendor...@comcast.net>
>
> > > death threats
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > Huh?!
> All means necessary...isn't that what the grand master said?
Of course not, Art -- the Grand Master is much more subtle than that!
Why resort to anything as messy as homicide when it is so easy to make
one's opponent look like a moron?
> > "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendor...@comcast.net>
>
> > > and threats of unemployment in academia,
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > Huh?
> Publish or perish;
The Rev. Prof. Daniel Wright, Ph.D. looks well-fed and prosperous to
me; I don't see any sign that he is in any danger of perishing.
> and anti-Strats soon learn that they can't
> publish in mainstream peer reviewed journals.
They can if their work is of sufficient quality to pass peer REView.
Even angle trisectors can publish in mainstream mathematics journals
provided that they submit something that meets the basic criteria of
proof in the discipline.
I know, Art; I'm just a softie at heart.
> Art Neuendorffer
gangleri
They were published in mainstream (although small circulation)
journals. A few people immediately recognized their significance, and
nearly all others recognized that they might be *wrong*, but deserved
testing. Why? Because his theories, improbable as some of them must
have seemed, were in accordance with known facts, explained things
well, and were testable.
Comment:
Einstein "anticipated a lively, if critical, response to his work
[special relativity paper published in September 1905 in Annalen der
Physik - insert], but to his dismay there was none, either positive or
negative. No one seemed even mildly curious about his extraordinary
new view of the universe." (Denis Brian, 'Einstein - A Life', 1996, p.
67)
"... Einstein submitted his application to Bern [in 1907 - insert],
together with his special relativity thesis and seventeen other
published works. To his dismay, the department head, Aime Forster,
turned him down flat, dismissing the relativity paper as
"incomprehensible". Einstein blamed his rejection on ignorance." (Op.
cit., p. 70)
"He had been brought to the Institute for Advanced Study to prove what
a forward-looking place it was, but virtually his first significant act
there as a physicist was an attempt to overturn the theory [QM -
insert] that seemed to be the wave of the future. It was as if he were
taking physics back to the Dark Ages, and other physicists were a bit
distressed. J. Robert Oppenheimer visited the Institute in 1935, the
same year that Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen were coming out with their
paradox. "Einstein is completely cuckoo," Oppie said at the time."
(Ed Regis, 'Who Got Einstein's Office', 1987, p. 24)
Tom Veal
and on about all the great scientists to whom that label was once
applied.
Mark Cipra
[snip]
> >
> > Einstein's theories were *never* as far as I know, considered crankery.
>
> Einstein's theories were at first not considered at all.
I was not aware of this. Source?
>
> > They were published in mainstream (although small circulation) journals.
> > A
> > few people immediately recognized their significance, and nearly all
> > others
> > recognized that they might be *wrong*, but deserved testing. Why?
> > Because
> > his theories, improbable as some of them must have seemed, were in
> > accordance with known facts, explained things well, and were testable.
>
> Are we discussing an hypothesis which is not testable, or hypothesies
which
> are not tested? David Webb has not responded to the subject of Lockyer
I'm not talking about either. I'm talking about your two specific cases:
1) Was Einstein considered a crank? No, I don't think so - his papers on
relativity were published rapidly (on the scientific-publication time scale)
and were widely accepted as valid scientific theories, if perhaps wrong.
You *do* think he was considered a crank. Where am I wrong?
2) Was Schliemann considered a crank, or were his predecessors? I don't
know. I *do* know that anyone proposing the reality of a city of Troy and
the Trojan war before Schliemann's digs, purely on the basis of a poem,
*deserved* to be called a crank. It was Schliemann who established the
validity of using myth and legend as a source for scholarly investigation.
Note the careful choice of the word "source". A poem is not evidence, it's
a hint about where to look for evidence.
> either. These ideas upon testing proved to be discomfitting to the
> establishment to the extent that actual tests were delayed 100 years.
[This
> reminds me of Rowse's ennui... see below]
>
> I am rather making the point that if there is no sincere investigation
then
> inevitably there will be no result - half-assed flip commentary being no
The anti-Stratfordians have had 150 years or so to make investigations in a
field where amateurs can and do make significant contributions. I don't
think a lot of new stuff has turned up since the Ogburns and what they
turned up wasn't enough to raise more than a ripple in the scholarly
community; and what's come up since has done even less. If you want to get
people interested, come up with a convincing argument; or give it up.
Otherwise, you're a crank. You might be a nice crank, an
otherwise-well-informed crank, a genial crank, you name it, but a crank.
> fair substitution for concentrated investigation - but acceptance of any
> apparent strangeness is a subject of its own, and is met in all areas of
> life. Acceptance of the New is not always the result of failing to look at
> what is indicated, but is often in the evaluation of what is indicated.
>
> These is more social science, but in a popular way you might look at
Robert
> Hughes's title, Shock of the New, which addressed the initial popular
> pyschologial responses to Impressionism. There was nothing but mockery
from
> the establishment. This is somewhat at odds from our current acceptance of
> Impressionism. As a study, it is illustrative.
I suppose you can call Hughes work social science, but the art he discussed
wasn't. If Hughes is dismissed as a crank, you've got a metaphor; but the
difference between proposing a radical scholarly/scientific theory (his
wasn't radical, as far as I know) and creating new art forms is so great as
to make them incomparable.
>
> > I don't know if pre-Schliemann "Trojans" were called cranks or not, but
> > any
> > charges of crankery that might have been tossed about were put to rest
by
> > evidence.
>
> I think you must more candidly address a mocking attitude by the
> establishment to the possibility of the New hypothesis, as a contributory
> factor in inhibiting its emergence. This is certainly true in all other
> fields of endeavor!
>
> In fact Rowse, perhaps sick and tired of the entire issue, proposed that
no
> real advances in Shakespearean studies would really happen for 50 years
> since it seemed evident to him that there was no one receptive to the
> leading edge of thought in his own time, although there were many
Meaning his own leading-edge thought, I presume.
> enthusiasts of all stripes.
>
> > Before someone actually produced some, unfounded speculation on
> > the reality of Troy *would* have been crankery. If you can produce
> > evidence, people will go your way.
>
> This would be a populist response - that one must produce evidence in
order
> to sway /other/ people. But this is a different subject entirely to
whether
This is populism? I thougth it was scientific method.
> anything might be investigated by /ourselves/. How happy are we with our
> current theorums? Are they really so convincing? We have some doubts, no?
If
> not, do we not suspect that we are rather strange in not having doubts
where
> doubts seem indicated? What moves us to examine new things?
If we are unhappy with the current "theorems" regarding Shakespeare, we
should indeed propose alternatives. Propose an alternative, back it up, and
if it makes sense, I'll listen to it.
>
> These are not generally populist activities, and if we were reliant on
them,
> instead of a more experimental and indeed risky attitude - which may as
well
> be non-rational too, we cannot [ratio] measure the New before we wander
off
> into the dark to explore its extent - then we would all still be living in
> caves.
>
> > Likewise, if any mainstream academic could produce a convincing case
> > against
> > William of Stratford's authorship, he would never have to teach another
> > English 101 in his life.
>
> I have not met a single person who could enunciate why the matter of
> authorship would make the slightest difference to their appreciation of
the
> texts.
I know you've been posting here for quite a while. Don't you also read the
postings of others?
>
> I am sorry not to be able to conclude as you do.
>
> > You'll do better with other examples. Von Daniken?
>
> It is unnecessary to speculate on my behalf, there are plenty of people
> willing to do that, rather than specualte on their own behalf - since...
> that would mean they took on some sense of responsibility they are
currently
> unwilling to own?
I know I'll regret saying this, but "What?" If you are calling for some
response, can you clarify what you mean here?
[further snippage]
David L. Webb
"Elizabeth" <elizabe...@mail.com> wrote:
...none of which makes even the slightest attempt to substantiate the
claim that some Oxfordians date _The Tempest_ to the 1570s.
Bianca Steele
Art Neuendorffer wrote:
> > OTOH...successful science "cranks" are a dime a dozen:
> > 5) Galileo
> > etc. etc.
>
> None of these people were cranks, Art. Meeting opposition from some
> authority figure is not a sign of crankery _per se_.
This sounds like Galileo was considered a crank by the "qualified"
scientists of his time:
"Galileo Galilei, Paduan mathematician, came to us at Bologna, bringing
his telescope with which he saw four feigned planets [the moons of
Jupiter]. I never slept on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth of April,
day or night, but I tested this instrument of Galileo's in a thousand
ways, both on things here below and on those above. Below, it works
wonderfully; in the sky it deceives one, as some fixed stars are seen
double. I have as witnesses most excellent men and noble doctors ...
and all have admitted the instrument to deceive. Galileo fell
speechless, and on the twenty-sixth ... departed sadly."
I think most people would read it that way, don't you? The more
quotations you read, the stronger the impression becomes. Nobody in
modern times would dismiss the results of an experiment so
high-handedly.
Of course, eventually the man was vindicated. And everyone knows
there's a difference between innovation and pseudo-science. Galileo's
problem was that the orthodoxy of his time was pseudo-science, whatever
Karl Popper might say (and if Popper, who studied physics as an
undergraduate, really believed Galileo was wrong in comparison to
Cardinal Bellarmine, it doesn't reflect all that well on the science
education of his time, imho -- possibly he felt constrained not to
contradict the religious orthodoxies of his contemporaries?).
Oxfordians' arguments too often seem like someone arguing Galileo was
wrong, and only cranks accept Galileo, because there are all these
credible statements saying that he was.
----
Bianca Steele
gangleri
"That the sun is in the centre of the world, and totally immovable as
to locomotion."
- of two propositions they were asked to consider:
"Censure: All say that the said proposition is foolish and absurd in
Philosophy, and formally heretical inasmuch as it contradicts the
express opinion of Holy Scriptures in many places, according to the
words themselves and according to the common exposition and meanings of
the Church Fathers and doctors of theology."
Stillman Drake, from whose essay on Galileo in the Past Masters series
the citation is taken, puts the Galileo episode in perspective in the
first paragraph of his Preface as follows:
"The silencing and punishment of Galileo twoard the end of a life
devoted to scientific inquiry was an event of profound significance for
our cultural history. Its full understanding requires much more than
an assumption of inevitable conflict between science and religion - a
cliche which originated largely from the case of Galileo that it is
widely used to explain. If any simple explanation existed, it would
rather be in terms of the customary ruthlessness of societal authority
in suppressing minority opinion, and in Galileo's case with
Aristotelianism rather than Christianity in authority."
Customary ruthlessness?
Customary perhaps, but ruthlessness is not the proper term for the firm
determination of sober-minded agents of societal authority, who are -
or feel - called to protect the status of right opinion by suppressing
foolish and absurd opinion by assorted upstart looneys.
Looneys, who arrogate to themselves the right to abuse their freedom of
thought and expresssion.
Bianca Steele
>
> <<Even Kronecker's opposition does not necessarily mean that Kronecker
> viewed Cantor as a crank. This may be news to you, Art, but even
> rejected by good journals, not because their work is crankery or
> even because it is wrong, but because in the opinion of the referee
> or the editor, it is not sufficiently interesting or important.>>
Right -- like a lawyer might decline to pursue a lawsuit, not because
the case is a bad one, but because it's not worth the effort to pursue.
(As I understand it, a case might be logical, but offer too little
return for the amount of time and trouble it would take to argue it.)
But I don't really have anything to add to this part of the thread.
Carry on. :)
----
Bianca Steele
Art Neuendorffer
> > >
>>>> <<I don't know very many scholars personally, but the few that
>>>> I know devote about as much time to anti-Stratfordian scenarios
>>>> as most mathematicians devote to circle squarers, angle
>>>> trisectors, and other assorted mathematics and science cranks.>>
>>> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>>>> Given the unusual nature of the beast successful mathematics
>>>> "cranks" are a little hard to come by but there is certainly
>>>> our beloved (Baconian) Georg Cantor.
>> David L. Webb wrote:
>>> But Cantor was not a mathematical crank (not while he was
>>> sane, at any rate), merely a Shakespeare authorship crank.
> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>> So Cantor's rather peculiar mathematical ideas
>> were accepted immediately?
David L. Webb wrote:
<<If you've read any of Cantor's biography, Art, you should be
aware that Cantor had many mathematical supporters & admirers,
among them Dedekind & Mittag-Leffler, Heine, Hurwitz, & Klein,
and only one major detractor (Kronecker).
Despite his opposition, Kronecker actually *published*
the paper that Cantor submitted to Crelle's journal.>>
-----------------------------------------------------
So Kronecker was more fair & responsible than, say, Eddington or
the sleaze balls who will prevent Roger & Lynne from publishing.
-----------------------------------------------------
David L. Webb wrote:
<<Even Kronecker's opposition does not necessarily mean that Kronecker
viewed Cantor as a crank. This may be news to you, Art, but even
scientists of great power & originality often have their submissions
rejected by good journals, not because their work is crankery or
even because it is wrong, but because in the opinion of the referee
or the editor, it is not sufficiently interesting or important.>>
-----------------------------------------------------
Did Kronecker's misgivings about Cantor's paper mean that it
was not sufficiently interesting or not sufficiently important?
-----------------------------------------------------
David L. Webb wrote:
<<Indeed, Cantor enjoyed sufficient respect that a very strange paper
of his was published, probably after the mental problems that were to
plague him began to surface; the paper verifies Goldbach's conjecture
for even integers less than 1,000 -- but Goldbach's conjecture was
*already known* to hold for all even integers less than 10,000,
and indeed had been known for nearly a half century!>>
-----------------------------------------------------
No doubt Cantor actually had A PROOF involving Goldbach's
conjecture applicable to integers less than 1,000
that DID NOT simply involve TRIAL & ERROR.
-----------------------------------------------------
David L. Webb wrote:
<<Incidentally, Art, one of Cantor's biographers writes that
during the celebration of the 500th anniVERsary of the
University of St. Andrews in Scotland, Cantor's mental
health began to deteriorate:
"During the visit he apparently began to behave eccentrically,
talking at great length on the Bacon-Shakespeare question..">>
-----------------------------------------------------
Are either you or Cantor's biographer
psychiatrically qualified to make such an assessment?
-----------------------------------------------------
>> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>>>> OTOH...successful science "cranks" are a dime a dozen:
>>>>
>>>> 1) 2005 Nobel Prize (Medicine) recipients Warren & Marshall
>>>> 2) Pulsar discoverers Jocelyn Bell & Thomas Gold
>>>> 3) Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
>>>> 4) Robert Goddard
>>>> 5) Alfred Wegener
>>>> 6) Galileo
>>>> etc. etc.
>> David L. Webb wrote: None of these people were cranks, Art.
> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>> Their ideas were all generally dismissed or ignored
>> as being too bizarre & nontraditional.
David L. Webb wrote: By no means.
-----------------------------------------------------
By all means necessary...
-----------------------------------------------------
David L. Webb wrote:
<<About the only exception is Wegener, whose furnished
no plausible mechanism for continental drift. And,
as I already noted, Chandrasekhar was supported
and encouraged by the likes of Pauli and Bohr.>>
-----------------------------------------------------
A lot of good that did him.
-----------------------------------------------------
>> David L. Webb wrote:
>>> Meeting opposition from some
>>> authority figure is not a sign of crankery _per se_.
> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>> That's how the authorities perceive it at the time.
David L. Webb wrote:
> No, Art. Nobody -- not even Eddington
> -- labeled Chandrasekhar as a crank.
That's because Eddington had more class than Stratfordians do.
David L. Webb wrote:
> Cranks are people who do not even know the rudiments of the
> discipline, and are oblivious to the objections of those who do
> -- like angle trisectors, Velikovskians, and anti-Stratfordians.
Stratfordians are certainly obsessed with discipline
>> David L. Webb wrote:
>>> In the case of Chandrasekhar,
>>> Eddington did not by any means refute his argument; rather,
>>> Eddington opined (on aesthetic grounds) that there ought to be
>>> a law forbidding stellar collapse above the Chandrasekhar limit.
> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>> Terry Ross & Dave Kathman believe that there should be a law
>> forbidding the making of educated guesses about history that
>> are at odds with even the flimsiest sort of documentation.
David L. Webb wrote:
> I have neVER seen either of them express anything of the kind.
-----------------------------------------------------
Then, my dear Dwebb, you simply can not SEE (VEDERE, It.)
-----------------------------------------------------
> David L. Webb wrote:
>>> Bohr, Pauli, and other greats supported
>>> and encouraged Chandrasekhar, but nobody really
>>> wanted to offend a grand old man like Eddington.
> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>> There is a long list of famous people
>> who encourage anti-Stratfordian thinking
David L. Webb wrote:
> ...none of whom is an expert in the field in question.
-----------------------------------------------------
Did Darwin or George Gamow need to be experts
in the traditional biblical version of genesis?
(How can they reject the traditional biblical version
unless they thoroughly understand it?)
-----------------------------------------------------
David L. Webb wrote:
<<I need scarcely remind you that both Bohr and Pauli were, among many
other distinctions, Nobel laureates in physics, and they were by no
means Chandrasekhar's sole supporters. To my knowledge, there is
*nobody* of that stature (or even remotely close) in Elizabethan
literary history who encourages anti-Stratfordian "thinking.">>
There is *nobody* even remotely close to
that stature in Elizabethan literary history
Elizabethan literary history scholars are
(mostly white) *DWARVES* in comparison.
-------------------------------------------------------
King John Act 5, Scene 2
BASTARD: This apish and unmannerly approach,
This harness'd MASQUE and unadvised REVEL,
This unhair'd sauciness and boyish troops,
The king doth smile at; and is well prepared
To whip this *DWARFISH* war, these pigmy arms,
From out the circle of his territories.
-------------------------------------------------------
King Henry VIII Act 1, Scene 1
NORFOLK: EVERy man that stood
Show'd like a mine. Their *DWARFISH* pages were
As cherubins, all guilt: the madams too,
Not used to toil, did almost sweat to bear
The pride upon them, that their VERy labour
Was to them as a painting: now this MASQUE
Was cried incomparable; and the ensuing night
Made it a fool and beggar.
-------------------------------------------------------
> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>> but few want to directly offend the powerful
>> establishment forces on the other side.
<<I have a NOAA ozone colleague who once patiently explained to
Japanese Antarctic ozone scientists that their Antarctic ozone were
too low to be believable. NASA scientists also had rejected their own
satellite ozone measurements as being too low to be believable. Hence,
the honor for discovering the Antarctic ozone hole went to a bunch of
underpaid English Antarctic ozone scientists:
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/Key_Topics/The_Ozone_Hole/anniversary/
>> David L. Webb wrote:
>>> You're not exactly enhancing my opinion of the staff of NOAA,
>>> Art -- true, my tentative opinion was based upon a single data
>>> point, but now you have furnished a second.
> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>> I happen to be married, thank you very much.
David L. Webb wrote:
> Does George Mason know?
We're just good friends.
>>> David L. Webb wrote:
>>>
>>> <<The recognition of crankery is of course far more clear-cut
>>> in a field like mathematics than in literary history,>>
>> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>>> So much so that the analogy is ridiculous.
>> David L. Webb wrote:
>>> Shakespeare cranks very often know as little (or less) of
>>>history, linguistics, etc. as angle trisectors know
>>> of mathematics. Indeed, one such crank thinks that
>>> Anne Hathaway was William Shakespeare's mother!
> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>> I have constantly mantained that Anne Hathaway was William
>> Wilson's wife; presumably her children would be Wilsons.
David L. Webb wrote:
> You have also maintained that Virgil predated Herodotus.
-------------------------------------------------------
Actually, I had to point that fact out TO YOU, Dave.
-------------------------------------------------------
David L. Webb wrote:
<<If you are actually suggesting that you know more of history
and linguistics than angle trisectors know of mathematics,
then I can easily supply plentiful counterexamples
from your burgeoning _oeuVRE_, Art.>>
-------------------------------------------------------
I know enough, and MIT taught me how to think logically.
-------------------------------------------------------
>>> David L. Webb wrote:
>>>
>>> <<the approach of the scholars of whom I'm aware is pretty much
>>>> the same -- they devote very little time to the authorship
>>>> "question," if indeed they devote any time to it at all.
>>>> The reason for that is clear cut:
>>>> ---------------------------------------------------
>>>> Mark Rylance's 'THE TRUTH WILL OUT' 'Foreword' includes:
>>>>
>>>> "...the topic of this book seems to inflame so many intelligent
>>>> people into quite uncharacteristic behaviour: repression of
>>>> debate, denial of evidence, lack of objectivity, personal
>>>> slander, wild conspiracy theory and paranoia,
>> David L. Webb wrote:
>>> That's odd -- all of the conspiracy theories
>>> I've seen emanate from anti-Stratfordians!
> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>> Perhaps he means the the Strats were smearing the opposition
>> with the usual conspiracy theory claims.
David L. Webb wrote:
<<If you don't think that Mr. Crowley's references to "goVERnment
agents" constitute a conspiracy theory, then perhaps you need
to look up the word, Art.>>
Hey! I AM a "goVERnment agent!"
> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>> (Of course, we all know you belong to the conspiracy.)
David L. Webb wrote:
> I?! What conspiracy, Art?
Well, that's the $64 question, isn't it!
>>> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>>>> death threats
>> David L. Webb wrote: Huh?!
> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>> All means necessary...isn't that what the grand master said?
> David L. Webb wrote: Huh?!
> Of course not, Art -- the Grand Master is much more subtle
> than that! Why resort to anything as messy as homicide
> when it is so easy to make one's opponent look like a moron?
That my philosophy.
(Which is the real reason that Ross & Kathman avoid me &
they have to send a hired Yankee gun like Jack Wilson.)
--------------------------------------------------
Folio: Enter Prince, Leonato, Claudio, and Iacke Wilson.
Quarto: Enter prince, Leonato, Claudio, Musicke.
Much Ado About Nothing Act 2 Scene.3
--------------------------------------------------
Quotes from Shane (1953)
--------------------------------------------------
Rufus Ryker: I'll kill him if I have to.
Jack Wilson: You mean I'll kill him if you have to.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Frank 'Stonewall' Torrey: You're a low-down lyin' Yankee!
Wilson: Prove it.
--------------------------------------------------------
Shane: So you're Jack Wilson.
Jack Wilson: What's that mean to you, Shane?
Shane: I've heard about you.
Jack Wilson: What have you heard, Shane?
Shane: I've heard that you're a low-down Yankee liar.
Jack Wilson: Prove it.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Joey: Was that him, Shane? Was that Wilson?
Shane: That was Wilson, alright, and he was fast, fast on the draw.
----------------------------------------------------------------
>>> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>>>> and threats of unemployment in academia,
>> David L. Webb wrote: Huh?
> "Art Neuendorffer": Publish or perish;
David L. Webb wrote:
> The Rev. Prof. Daniel Wright, Ph.D. looks well-fed and prosperous
> to me; I don't see any sign that he is in any danger of perishing.
Well, Concordia is a unique situation to say the least.
> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>> and anti-Strats soon learn that they can't
>> publish in mainstream peer reviewed journals.
>> (As Lynne is no doubt learning now.)
David L. Webb wrote:
> They can if their work is of sufficient quality to pass peer
> REView. Even angle trisectors can publish in mainstream
> mathematics journals provided that they submit something
> that meets the basic criteria of proof in the discipline.
Right! :-)
There is good proof that classical angle trisection is
impossible; however, there is no good evidence OF ANY SORT
to make one believe that the Stratman wrote Shake-speare.
> > "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>>> as one American professor
>>> was warned when he shared his scepticism about
>>> the authorship of the works attributed to Shakespeare."
>>> ---------------------------------------------------
>>>> David L. Webb wrote:
>>>
>>>> <<This fact should engender a greater appreciation among
>>>> anti-Stratfordians for the patience, forbearance, and generosity
>>>> with their time and expertise of the very few scholars like
>>>> Dave Kathman and Peter Groves who do take the time
>>>> and trouble to respond.>>
>>> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>>>> They seldom take the time and trouble to respond to me.
> David L. Webb wrote:
>>> Dave Kathman used to respond to you, Art; howeVER,
>>> like the angle trisectors I have encountered,
>>> you just continued propagating the same ridiculous errors.
> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>> Hey, I believe in historical documents
>> ...ergo Hathaway married Wilson; case closed.
---------------------------------------------------------
Actual lines of dialogue were written for Wilson the Volleyball,
in the Tom Hanks's movie _Cast Away_ (2000) to help Hanks
(C. Noland) have a natural interaction with the volleyball.
.........................................................
C. Noland: HEY, you want to hear something funny?
My dentist's name is James Spalding.
C. Noland: Don't worry Wilson, I'll do all the paddling.
You just hang on.
-----------------------------------------------------------
>>> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>>>> (There's a soft ball for you, Dave. ;)
>> David L. Webb wrote:
>>> Thank you, Art -- but I am much too sportsmanlike
>>> to take advantage of it.
> "Art Neuendorffer": How kind.
David L. Webb: I know, Art; I'm just a softie at heart.
You're pretty soft other places as well, Dave.
But don't worry, I'll do all the paddling.
You just hang on.
Art Neuendorffer
Mousie
Pardon?
I meant Hurricane Wilma.
L.
>
>
> > L.
> >
David L. Webb
"Mousie" <lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
Nabokov on translation is better:
"What is translation? On a platter
A poet's pale and glaring head,
A parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter,
And profanation of the dead.
The parasites you were so hard on
Are pardoned if I have your pardon,
O Pushkin, for my stratagem:
I travelled down your secret stem,
And reached the root, and fed upon it;
Then, in a language newly learned,
I grew another stalk and turned
Your stanza patterned on a sonnet,
Into my honest roadside prose--
All thorn, but cousin to your rose.
"Reflected words can only shiver
Like elongated lights that twist
In the black mirror of a river
Between the city and the mist.
Elusive Pushkin! Persevering,
I still pick up your damsel's earring,
Still travel with your sullen rake,
I find another man's mistake;
I analyze alliterations
That grace your feasts and haunt the great
Fourth stanza of your Canto Eight.
This is my task: a poet's patience
And scholiastic passion blent --
Dove-droppings on your monument."
> >
> > Cordially, Phil
> Pardon?
Careful, Lynne -- in the poem above, Nabokov rhymed "pardon" with
"hard on." It is unwise to afford Mr. Innes the slightest possibility
of misunderstanding, since he will assuredly take advantage of it.
> I meant Hurricane Wilma.
Yes, but you didn't use the British language, so there was some
miscommunication.
David L. Webb
"Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendor...@comcast.net>
(aneuendor...@comicass.nut) wrote:
> > > > David L. Webb wrote:
> > > >
> >>>> <<I don't know very many scholars personally, but the few that
> >>>> I know devote about as much time to anti-Stratfordian scenarios
> >>>> as most mathematicians devote to circle squarers, angle
> >>>> trisectors, and other assorted mathematics and science cranks.>>
> >>> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
> >
> >>>> Given the unusual nature of the beast successful mathematics
> >>>> "cranks" are a little hard to come by but there is certainly
> >>>> our beloved (Baconian) Georg Cantor.
> >> David L. Webb wrote:
> >
> >>> But Cantor was not a mathematical crank (not while he was sane,
> >>> at any rate), merely a Shakespeare authorship crank.
> > "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>
> >> So Cantor's rather peculiar mathematical ideas
> >> were accepted immediately?
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> <<If you've read any of Cantor's biography, Art, you should be
> aware that Cantor had many mathematical supporters & admirers,
> among them Dedekind & Mittag-Leffler, Heine, Hurwitz, & Klein,
> and only one major detractor (Kronecker).
>
> Despite his opposition, Kronecker actually *published*
> the paper that Cantor submitted to Crelle's journal.>>
> -----------------------------------------------------
> So Kronecker was more fair & responsible than, say, Eddington or
> the sleaze balls who will prevent Roger & Lynne from publishing.
The last I heard, their paper was still not complete, although they
had sent out a draft to various people who might be intersted; if the
paper was not complete, then Lynne and Dr. Stritmatter can scarcely have
been prevented from publishing -- although the fact that submission is a
necessary precondition for publication may well be news to you, Art. It
is true that, according to Lynne, they have been refused as speakers at
a major conference, but that is a completely different matter from being
unable to publish. For that matter, it is my understanding that they
*are* speaking at another major conference. Your "Petulant Paranoid"
persona is always so entertaining, Art!
> -----------------------------------------------------
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> <<Even Kronecker's opposition does not necessarily mean that Kronecker
> viewed Cantor as a crank. This may be news to you, Art, but even
> scientists of great power & originality often have their submissions
> rejected by good journals, not because their work is crankery or
> even because it is wrong, but because in the opinion of the referee
> or the editor, it is not sufficiently interesting or important.>>
> -----------------------------------------------------
> Did Kronecker's misgivings about Cantor's paper mean that it
> was not sufficiently interesting or not sufficiently important?
Who knows? In any event, Kronecker published it, so the basis for
his opposition is not recorded.
As an amusing aside, one of my colleagues tells me that when
Lefschetz was editing _Annals of Mathematics_, he once sent a manuscript
that had been submitted to that journal to a referee with the following
instructions (I'm paraphrasing):
"Dear ____, Please reject this paper. Sincerely, Solomon Lefschetz."
(This incident is known because Lefschetz's letter to the referee was
inadvertently sent to the author of the paper along with the referee's
negative report.)
> -----------------------------------------------------
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> <<Indeed, Cantor enjoyed sufficient respect that a very strange paper
> of his was published, probably after the mental problems that were to
> plague him began to surface; the paper verifies Goldbach's conjecture
> for even integers less than 1,000 -- but Goldbach's conjecture was
> *already known* to hold for all even integers less than 10,000,
> and indeed had been known for nearly a half century!>>
> -----------------------------------------------------
> No doubt Cantor actually had A PROOF involving Goldbach's
> conjecture applicable to integers less than 1,000
> that DID NOT simply involve TRIAL & ERROR.
"No doubt"?! In fact, if you had read either the paper or one of
Cantor's biographers, you would know that the paper merely listed all
the ways that each even number less than 1,000 can be written as a sum
of two primes. In fact, that's exactly why I said that the paper was
VERy strange, Art. As at least one of Cantor's biographers has noted,
the paper was perhaps an indication of the impending mental breakdown
that became apparent to eVERyone when Cantor started babbling about
Bacon as Shakespeare. Note, howeVER, that although the paper was VERy
strange, and although Cantor was on the VERge of a nERVous breakdown,
his paper is *still* not crankery, because it is *correct* -- it may be
of VERy limited interest and scant originality, but it is correct.
> -----------------------------------------------------
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> <<Incidentally, Art, one of Cantor's biographers writes that
> during the celebration of the 500th anniVERsary of the
> University of St. Andrews in Scotland, Cantor's mental
> health began to deteriorate:
>
> "During the visit he apparently began to behave eccentrically,
> talking at great length on the Bacon-Shakespeare question..">>
> -----------------------------------------------------
> Are either you or Cantor's biographer
> psychiatrically qualified to make such an assessment?
Of course -- talking at length about Bacon as Shakespeare is nothing
if not eccentric, Art. Just look at Elizabeth Weird, for example.
> -----------------------------------------------------
> >> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
> >
> >>>> OTOH...successful science "cranks" are a dime a dozen:
> >>>>
> >>>> 1) 2005 Nobel Prize (Medicine) recipients Warren & Marshall
> >>>> 2) Pulsar discoverers Jocelyn Bell & Thomas Gold
> >>>> 3) Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
> >>>> 4) Robert Goddard
> >>>> 5) Alfred Wegener
> >>>> 6) Galileo
> >>>> etc. etc.
> >> David L. Webb wrote:
> >
> >>> None of these people were cranks, Art.
>
> > "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>
> >> Their ideas were all generally dismissed or ignored
> >> as being too bizarre & nontraditional.
> > By no means.
> -----------------------------------------------------
> By all means necessary...
> -----------------------------------------------------
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> <<About the only exception is Wegener, whose furnished
> no plausible mechanism for continental drift. And,
> as I already noted, Chandrasekhar was supported
> and encouraged by the likes of Pauli and Bohr.>>
> -----------------------------------------------------
> A lot of good that did him.
Plainly, you are unfamiliar with Chandrasekhar's career, Art. He
went straight to the University of Chicago, one of the VERy best in the
world, where he remained for his entire career, although this fact is
evidently news to you. He also won the Nobel Prize, although that fact
is probably news to you as well. Chandrasekhar did just fine, Art.
> >> David L. Webb wrote:
> >
> >>> Meeting opposition from some
> >>> authority figure is not a sign of crankery _per se_.
> > "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>
> >> That's how the authorities perceive it at the time.
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > No, Art. Nobody -- not even Eddington
> > -- labeled Chandrasekhar as a crank.
> That's because Eddington had more class than Stratfordians do.
No, that's because Chandrasekhar was not a crank, as many
anti-Stratfordians are.
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > Cranks are people who do not even know the rudiments of the
> > discipline, and are oblivious to the objections of those who do
> > -- like angle trisectors, Velikovskians, and anti-Stratfordians.
> Stratfordians are certainly obsessed with discipline
Without it, you get angle trisectors, circle squarers, "proofs" that
pi is rational (not merely algebraic, but *rational*), Velikovskians,
alien abduction buffs, and anti-Stratfordians.
> >> David L. Webb wrote:
> >
> >>> In the case of Chandrasekhar,
> >>> Eddington did not by any means refute his argument; rather,
> >>> Eddington opined (on aesthetic grounds) that there ought to be
> >>> a law forbidding stellar collapse above the Chandrasekhar limit.
> > "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>
> >> Terry Ross & Dave Kathman believe that there should be a law
> >> forbidding the making of educated guesses about history that
> >> are at odds with even the flimsiest sort of documentation.
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > I have neVER seen either of them express anything of the kind.
> -----------------------------------------------------
> Then, my dear Dwebb, you simply can not SEE (VEDERE, It.)
Can you cite a post by either one of them that says anything of the
kind, Art? I thought not.
> -----------------------------------------------------
> > David L. Webb wrote:
> >
> >>> Bohr, Pauli, and other greats supported
> >>> and encouraged Chandrasekhar, but nobody really
> >>> wanted to offend a grand old man like Eddington.
> > "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>
> >> There is a long list of famous people
> >> who encourage anti-Stratfordian thinking
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > ...none of whom is an expert in the field in question.
> -----------------------------------------------------
> Did Darwin or George Gamow need to be experts
> in the traditional biblical version of genesis?
>
> (How can they reject the traditional biblical version
> unless they thoroughly understand it?)
It was not difficult for men like Gamow to understand the Biblical
account, howeVER hard it may have been for you, Art.
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> <<I need scarcely remind you that both Bohr and Pauli were, among many
> other distinctions, Nobel laureates in physics, and they were by no
> means Chandrasekhar's sole supporters. To my knowledge, there is
> *nobody* of that stature (or even remotely close) in Elizabethan
> literary history who encourages anti-Stratfordian "thinking.">>
>
> There is *nobody* even remotely close to
> that stature in Elizabethan literary history
>
> Elizabethan literary history scholars are
> (mostly white) *DWARVES* in comparison.
Not even the Ogburns, Sobran, Anderson, Streitz, _et al_, Art?!
[VERborrea del borracho borrado]
> <<I have a NOAA ozone colleague who once patiently explained to
> Japanese Antarctic ozone scientists that their Antarctic ozone were
> too low to be believable. NASA scientists also had rejected their own
> satellite ozone measurements as being too low to be believable. Hence,
> the honor for discovering the Antarctic ozone hole went to a bunch of
> underpaid English Antarctic ozone scientists:
>
> http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/Key_Topics/The_Ozone_Hole/anniversary/ >>
>
> >> David L. Webb wrote:
> >
> >>> You're not exactly enhancing my opinion of the staff of NOAA,
> >>> Art -- true, my tentative opinion was based upon a single data
> >>> point, but now you have furnished a second.
> > "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>
> >> I happen to be married, thank you very much.
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > Does George Mason know?
> We're just good friends.
That's what they all say.
> >>> David L. Webb wrote:
> >>>
> >>> <<The recognition of crankery is of course far more clear-cut
> >>> in a field like mathematics than in literary history,>>
> >> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>
> >>> So much so that the analogy is ridiculous.
> >> David L. Webb wrote:
> >
> >>> Shakespeare cranks very often know as little (or less) of
> >>>history, linguistics, etc. as angle trisectors know
> >>> of mathematics. Indeed, one such crank thinks that
> >>> Anne Hathaway was William Shakespeare's mother!
> > "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>
> >> I have constantly mantained that Anne Hathaway was William
> >> Wilson's wife; presumably her children would be Wilsons.
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > You have also maintained that Virgil predated Herodotus.
> Actually, I had to point that fact out TO YOU, Dave.
No, Art -- it is *not* a fact. Indeed, Herodotus flourished some
four centuries BCE, during the conflict of Greece with Persia. Virgil
was a contemporary of Augustus, who banished him to what is now Moldova,
and as I suspect that even you know, Art (although perhaps I'm giving
you too much credit), Augustus lived at the time of the birth of Christ,
some four centuries later. Your notion of what constitutes a "fact" is,
howeVER, pretty typical for anti-Stratfordians.
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> <<If you are actually suggesting that you know more of history
> and linguistics than angle trisectors know of mathematics,
> then I can easily supply plentiful counterexamples
> from your burgeoning _oeuVRE_, Art.>>
> I know enough,
You do?! The notion that someone who thinks that Virgil predated
Herodotus, that Anne Hathaway was Shakespeare's mother, that "moniment"
meant "laughingstock" in Elizabeth England, that Aleksandr Nevskii was
"tsar," etc. knows enough history is most amusing!
> and MIT taught me how to think logically.
Really?! What course at MIT permitted you to conclude that Peter Gay
the eminent Emeritus Yale historian *must* be the same person as Peter
Gay the Raytheon industrial plant manager, despite the fact that the
former is a quarter century older than the latter? The course in which
you learned about the pigeonhole principle? And what MIT-nurtured
logical chain of inference led you to conclude that, because the
historian Peter Gay was supported by the Mellon Foundation and because
there is a Mellon Bank in Manhattan, Peter Gay must have been traveling
to New York to pick up his Mellon Grant check *in person*? Are you
aware that there is an inexpensive means of deliVERy called the U.S.
Postal SERVice, Art? And are you aware that the Mellon Bank in any case
has branches outside Manhattan? No, I suppose not. Do you imagine that
I travel to Washington, D.C. eVERy month to pick up my NSF grant check,
Art? Surely you must realize that if I did, I would certainly pay you
and George Mason a courtesy call!
And what number theory course at MIT stressed that the number
nineteen is remarkable in that it is both the sum of two consecutive
integers and the difference of their squares? (Here's a challenge for
you, Art: what number is both the difference of two consecutive integers
and the sum of their squares? This one *might* not exceed your
capability.)
> >>> David L. Webb wrote:
> >>>
> >>> <<the approach of the scholars of whom I'm aware is pretty much
> >>>> the same -- they devote very little time to the authorship
> >>>> "question," if indeed they devote any time to it at all.
> >>>> The reason for that is clear cut:
> >>>> ---------------------------------------------------
> >>>> Mark Rylance's 'THE TRUTH WILL OUT' 'Foreword' includes:
> >>>>
> >>>> "...the topic of this book seems to inflame so many intelligent
> >>>> people into quite uncharacteristic behaviour: repression of
> >>>> debate, denial of evidence, lack of objectivity, personal
> >>>> slander, wild conspiracy theory and paranoia,
> >> David L. Webb wrote:
> >
> >>> That's odd -- all of the conspiracy theories
> >>> I've seen emanate from anti-Stratfordians!
> > "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>
> >> Perhaps he means the the Strats were smearing the opposition
> >> with the usual conspiracy theory claims.
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> <<If you don't think that Mr. Crowley's references to "goVERnment
> agents" constitute a conspiracy theory, then perhaps you need
> to look up the word, Art.>>
> Hey! I AM a "goVERnment agent!"
You don't by any chance work for FEMA, do you, Art?
> > "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>
> >> (Of course, we all know you belong to the conspiracy.)
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > I?! What conspiracy, Art?
> Well, that's the $64 question, isn't it!
It will cost you more than $64, Art.
> >> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
> >
> >>> death threats
> > David L. Webb wrote:
> >
> >> Huh?!
> > All means necessary...isn't that what the grand master said?
>
> > Of course not, Art -- the Grand Master is much more subtle
> > than that! Why resort to anything as messy as homicide
> > when it is so easy to make one's opponent look like a moron?
...particularly since you do almost all the work yourself.
> That my philosophy [sic].
Is English your native tongue, Art?
> (Which is the real reason that Ross & Kathman avoid me.)
You mean, Dave and Terry don't wish to make you look like a moron out
of kindness, Art? That's possible -- both of them are VERy kind -- but
I doubt it; for one thing, you would look like a moron whether or not
they responded to you. (As noted, you do almost all the work yourself.)
> >>> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
> >
> >>>> and threats of unemployment in academia,
> > David L. Webb wrote:
> >
> >>> Huh?
> > "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>
> >> Publish or perish;
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > The Rev. Prof. Daniel Wright, Ph.D. looks well-fed and prosperous
> > to me; I don't see any sign that he is in any danger of perishing.
> Well, Concordia is a unique situation to say the least.
Then the Rev. Prof. Daniel Wright, Ph.D., should feel right at home.
> > "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>
> >> and anti-Strats soon learn that they can't
> >> publish in mainstream peer reviewed journals.
> >> (As Lynne is no doubt learning now.)
As I said, the last I heard the paper had not even been completed,
let alone submitted for peer REView, Art.
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > They can if their work is of sufficient quality to pass peer
> > REView. Even angle trisectors can publish in mainstream
> > mathematics journals provided that they submit something
> > that meets the basic criteria of proof in the discipline.
> Right! :-)
It's possible that some angle trisector, when not under the influence
of his obsession, might do something worthwhile. After all, Rollett has
produced some worthwhile scholarship despite his invalid "decipherment."
> There is good proof that classical angle trisection is
> impossible;
Heh. Try telling that to Mr. Innes!
> however, there is no good evidence OF ANY SORT
> to make one believe that the Stratman wrote Shake-speare.
There is plenty of evidence to induce someone sane to consider it
likely, Art.
[VERborrea del borracho borrado]
gangleri
anti-Stratfordians are.
Question:
Was Laplace a crank?
Looks like it to me.
Was there anyone in the 19th century physics community who called his
bluff?
I can't think of any.
Was the 19th century physics community a conclave of cranks by your
lights?
Looks like it to me.
Is it possible that today's Orthodox Stratfordians may become
tomorrrow's Laplaces?
Looks like it to me.
seaker
I discovered the following comment by Dr. Stritmatter.
Yes, we ought to be clear about this, Tom:
It is not necessary for the Oxfordians that Robert's analysis is
correct, although it may well be, and it certainly deserves further
consideration.
It is, on the other hand, absolutely necessary for the Stratfordians to
be correct when they insist that Meres is proof that the two names were
used to signify two different persons.
As Ken indicates, your own reasoning invalidates the Stratfordian
proposition in this case, since you admit that certainy about Meres'
intent does not exist.
Overall I'm not really surprised, but Roger's comment, about the
Oxenfordians don't need analysis to be correct, is a rare admission by
one of your crowd. I take this to mean that anything written by someone
of your ilk doesn't have to be correct. It doesn't matter as long as
Oxenfordian writings stink up the joint to distract people from the
fact that everything from Looney to Anderson to your presentation, it
would be foolish to call it a paper since it appears you haven't
written it, is a pile of crap!
Lynne sugar, the name Mousie doesn't fit you; Litter Box Cat is more
like it!
Mark Cipra
news:1129730402....@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Einstein's theories were *never* as far as I know, considered crankery.
> They were published in mainstream (although small circulation)
> journals. A few people immediately recognized their significance, and
> nearly all others recognized that they might be *wrong*, but deserved
> testing. Why? Because his theories, improbable as some of them must
> have seemed, were in accordance with known facts, explained things
> well, and were testable.
>
> Comment:
>
> Einstein "anticipated a lively, if critical, response to his work
> [special relativity paper published in September 1905 in Annalen der
> Physik - insert], but to his dismay there was none, either positive or
> negative. No one seemed even mildly curious about his extraordinary
> new view of the universe." (Denis Brian, 'Einstein - A Life', 1996, p.
> 67)
I'll accept this one as relevant, but no one seems to be calling him a
crank, just irrelevant.
>
> "... Einstein submitted his application to Bern [in 1907 - insert],
> together with his special relativity thesis and seventeen other
> published works. To his dismay, the department head, Aime Forster,
> turned him down flat, dismissing the relativity paper as
> "incomprehensible". Einstein blamed his rejection on ignorance." (Op.
> cit., p. 70)
Nope, being dismissed by an ignorant department head doesn't qualify you for
crankdom.
>
> "He had been brought to the Institute for Advanced Study to prove what
> a forward-looking place it was, but virtually his first significant act
> there as a physicist was an attempt to overturn the theory [QM -
> insert] that seemed to be the wave of the future. It was as if he were
> taking physics back to the Dark Ages, and other physicists were a bit
> distressed. J. Robert Oppenheimer visited the Institute in 1935, the
> same year that Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen were coming out with their
> paradox. "Einstein is completely cuckoo," Oppie said at the time."
> (Ed Regis, 'Who Got Einstein's Office', 1987, p. 24)
>
I don't think we were talking about his later work opposing QM, which I
agree some saw privately as crankery, but which was always, as far as I
know, received with respect publicly.
Anyway, I'll stand down on this issue.
Mark Cipra
news:1129738410.0...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> David L. Webb wrote:
> Art Neuendorffer wrote:
> > > OTOH...successful science "cranks" are a dime a dozen:
>
> > > 5) Galileo
> > > etc. etc.
> >
> > None of these people were cranks, Art. Meeting opposition from some
> > authority figure is not a sign of crankery _per se_.
>
> This sounds like Galileo was considered a crank by the "qualified"
> scientists of his time:
>
> "Galileo Galilei, Paduan mathematician, came to us at Bologna, bringing
> his telescope with which he saw four feigned planets [the moons of
> Jupiter]. I never slept on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth of April,
> day or night, but I tested this instrument of Galileo's in a thousand
> ways, both on things here below and on those above. Below, it works
> wonderfully; in the sky it deceives one, as some fixed stars are seen
> double. I have as witnesses most excellent men and noble doctors ...
> and all have admitted the instrument to deceive. Galileo fell
> speechless, and on the twenty-sixth ... departed sadly."
>
> I think most people would read it that way, don't you? The more
> quotations you read, the stronger the impression becomes. Nobody in
> modern times would dismiss the results of an experiment so
> high-handedly.
>
> Of course, eventually the man was vindicated. And everyone knows
The point, to me, isn't even "eventually" - but fairly rapidly. There is no
doubt that some valid and valuable scientific ideas were dismissed
initially, and no doubt that some scientists were probably called cranks or
the equivalent. Even my arguments elsewhere about Einstein and Schliemann
weren't to say that this couldn't happen - merely that I thought they were
bad examples (and I may have been wrong even there).
But are there any examples where *150 years* later the scientist was still
universally called a crank, then in the 151st year, he was vindicated?
> there's a difference between innovation and pseudo-science. Galileo's
> problem was that the orthodoxy of his time was pseudo-science, whatever
> Karl Popper might say (and if Popper, who studied physics as an
> undergraduate, really believed Galileo was wrong in comparison to
> Cardinal Bellarmine, it doesn't reflect all that well on the science
> education of his time, imho -- possibly he felt constrained not to
> contradict the religious orthodoxies of his contemporaries?).
>
> Oxfordians' arguments too often seem like someone arguing Galileo was
> wrong, and only cranks accept Galileo, because there are all these
> credible statements saying that he was.
>
> ----
> Bianca Steele
>
ignoto
How about Democritus' atomic theory?
Mark Cipra
news:1129815583.0...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Was it dismissed as "crankery"? I don't know. I thought, perhaps, simply
not verified for ... oh a couple milennia. I happened to check this the
other day, and it seems there were a few philosophers on to the idea of
atoms at that time. Doesn't seem like "crankery", but I could be wrong.
I suddenly remember why I looked it up. Andrews was debating Crowley about
the existence of a middle class, and Crowley was making his usual assertion
that if they didn't have a word for it, it didn't exist. I was going to
say, "Of course, we don't know what the universe was made of before 5th C
BCE, but we know it wasn't atoms". But that moment passed; thanks for
reintroducing it :)
Bianca Steele
> "Bianca Steele" <bianca...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1129738410.0...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> > David L. Webb wrote:
> > Art Neuendorffer wrote:
> > > > OTOH...successful science "cranks" are a dime a dozen:
> >
> > > > 5) Galileo
> > > > etc. etc.
> > >
> > > None of these people were cranks, Art. Meeting opposition from some
> > > authority figure is not a sign of crankery _per se_.
> > Of course, eventually the man was vindicated. And everyone knows
>
> The point, to me, isn't even "eventually" - but fairly rapidly.
I was going to say, "Are you kidding?" But I guess your point must be
that Galileo's case immediately broke the hold of the Catholic Church
on scientific inquiry, and academic inquiry more generally. In other
words, everybody saw that Galileo had been right and Rome had been
wrong, and that Rome had acted unjustly in the "silencing and
punishment" of Galileo (as gangleri's source has it), and from then on
they rejected Rome's suggestions as to how they should think about
science. That's one way of telling the story. But it's not really
what happened. Luther, too, seems to have thought his ideas were so
rational that the church hierarchy would obviously accept them. There
should have been other ways to deal with the problem Galileo's
telescope posed; no one serious who understood what was at stake could
have approved of the way it was done unless he'd thought a lesson was
going to be learned, or believed he had no choice whatever.
>There is no
> doubt that some valid and valuable scientific ideas were dismissed
> initially, and no doubt that some scientists were probably called cranks or
> the equivalent. Even my arguments elsewhere about Einstein and Schliemann
> weren't to say that this couldn't happen - merely that I thought they were
> bad examples (and I may have been wrong even there).
No, they were very nicely formulated examples, as you presented them.
I wonder if we've even been reading the same books.
>
> But are there any examples where *150 years* later the scientist was still
> universally called a crank, then in the 151st year, he was vindicated?
I believe Mendel was probably considered a crank, more or less, by
those few who were aware of his work, given that literally nobody paid
any attention to it for forty years. Maybe there were people (God
knows who) who read it, and discussed some amusing ways in which he
seemed to have gone wrong, but that is not the same thing -- there was
nobody who was knowledgeable and qualified to think about what he'd
written who used the material (much less disparaged it) until around
1895, when a handful of scientists independently discovered the papers
in an obscure journal nobody actually working in the field read. In
Mendel's case, the way his work was received seems to have had no ill
effects, either on the science he founded or on the study of its
history, but perhaps in Mendel's case, we were lucky.
So it seems reasonable to guess that to his fellow monks, he was a
genial crank who had permission to carry out his odd studies, though
they were of no conceivable use. What those who accepted his papers
for publication thought is anyone's guess, but they forgot him quickly
enough.
----
Bianca Steele
David L. Webb
"gangleri" <gunnar....@verizon.net> wrote:
> No, that's because Chandrasekhar was not a crank, as many
> anti-Stratfordians are.
>
> Question:
>
> Was Laplace a crank?
>
> Looks like it to me.
Why would you conclude that? I think that your calculations must be
in error: the cipher value of "Laplace" is 2514, while that of "crank"
is 2361.
> Was there anyone in the 19th century physics community who called his
> bluff?
To what "bluff" are you referring?
> I can't think of any.
>
> Was the 19th century physics community a conclave of cranks by your
> lights?
No.
> Looks like it to me.
That's probably because your understanding of both physics and its
history is rudimentary at best.
> Is it possible that today's Orthodox Stratfordians may become
> tomorrrow's Laplaces?
>
> Looks like it to me.
That's probably because your understanding of literary history is
rudimentary at best.
David L. Webb
"Bianca Steele" <bianca...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > David L. Webb wrote:
> >
> > <<Even Kronecker's opposition does not necessarily mean that Kronecker
> > viewed Cantor as a crank. This may be news to you, Art, but even
> > scientists of great power & originality often have their submissions
> > rejected by good journals, not because their work is crankery or
> > even because it is wrong, but because in the opinion of the referee
> > or the editor, it is not sufficiently interesting or important.>>
> Right -- like a lawyer might decline to pursue a lawsuit, not because
> the case is a bad one, but because it's not worth the effort to pursue.
> (As I understand it, a case might be logical, but offer too little
> return for the amount of time and trouble it would take to argue it.)
Yes, that's a good analogy. Also, it's not unheard of for a paper to
be rejected by one journal, only to be accepted thereafter by a better
journal -- this just underscores the point that journal editors' tastes
and opinions concerning what constitutes interesting and important work
differ. By the same token, one lawyer might be uninterested in taking a
case, while another equally qualified lawyer might see possibilities and
take it.
gangleri
> Looks like it to me.
Why would you conclude that?
> Was there anyone in the 19th century physics community who called his
> bluff?
To what "bluff" are you referring?
> I can't think of any.
> Was the 19th century physics community a conclave of cranks by your
> lights?
No.
> Looks like it to me.
That's probably because your understanding of both physics and its
history is rudimentary at best.
Comment:
Sorry to raise issues beyond your ken.
Laplacian crankery (scientific determinism), which went unquestioned
in 19th century physics, went the way of the dodo with the advent of
quantum mechanics in the physics community of the 20th century.
David L. Webb
"gangleri" <gunnar....@verizon.net> wrote:
> > Was Laplace a crank?
>
> > Looks like it to me.
> Why would you conclude that?
> > Was there anyone in the 19th century physics community who called his
> > bluff?
> To what "bluff" are you referring?
> > I can't think of any.
>
> > Was the 19th century physics community a conclave of cranks by your
> > lights?
> No.
> > Looks like it to me.
> That's probably because your understanding of both physics and its
> history is rudimentary at best.
>
> Comment:
>
> Sorry to raise issues beyond your ken.
There are so many misunderstandings and errors in your caricature
that it is difficult to know where to begin. First, if you are
referring to Laplace's claim that one need only know the initial
conditions in order to predict the future of the universe, I don't know
of anyone, including Laplace, who took that as literally as your
simplistic, cartoonish conception suggests. Laplace was well aware (as
is anyone who has any experience at all with differential equations)
that if one perturbs the initial conditions of even the most tractable
evolution equations, then the solution curves can drift *very* far away
from those of the unperturbed equation as time elapses; thus one would
need an absolutely *exact* measurement of the initial conditions in
order to make such a prediction over an appreciable time scale, *even*
if one could solve the differential equations analytically. Second, as
Laplace knew as well as anyone, very few differential equations admit
explicit analytic solutions in any case, nor is perfect knowledge of the
initial conditions a remotely reasonable expectaion. Laplace's remark
should be viewed as the hyperbolic musings of one impressed by the
enormous and quite surprising power of differential equations to
describe a bewildering variety of natural phenomena. The utility of
differential equations in understanding fundamental physics has not
changed with the introduction of quantum mechanics.
> Laplacian crankery (scientific determinism), which went unquestioned
> in 19th century physics, went the way of the dodo with the advent of
> quantum mechanics in the physics community of the 20th century.
On the contrary -- the unitary time evolution of the wave function
governed by the Schrodinger equation is still *perfectly* deterministic;
only the measurement of an observable causes the wave function to
collapse into an eigenstate of that observable.
In fact, the most surprising departure from what you call "scientific
determinism" arises not from quantum mechanics but from classical
mechanics -- that came with the realization that for many nonlinear
differential equations, the solution curves could be exponentially
sensitive to perturbations, but that it is nevertheless possible to gain
some qualitative understanding of the solutions in some circumstances.
Third, Laplace's whimsical idealization does not constitute crankery,
for an obvious reason: first, cranks are generally unfamiliar with the
rudiments of the subject of their crankery, whereas Laplace was a
master; second, cranks persist obliviously in their delusions despite
being shown clear-cut refutations (circle squarers, angle trisectors,
and some anti-Stratfordians are good examples).
In fact, nineteenth century physics was astoundingly successful both
at explaining virtually all the fundamental phenomena that were amenable
to precise observation at the time and at predicting as yet unobserved
phenomena via a fairly small collection of fundamental differential
equations; one of the few exceptions was the perihelion of Mercury, an
anomaly explained by Einstein's general relativity, a completely
deterministic theory. Moreover, nineteenth century classical mechanics
and electrodynamics are *still* in constant use as limiting cases of
more elaborate theories that afford better agreement with observation in
realms (small scales, high velocities, etc.) that were not accessible to
nineteenth century observational and experimental techniques.
Incidentally, some of Laplace's most important work was in the theory
of probability -- rather an odd pursuit for the dogmatic determinist of
your silly caricature.
gangleri
it is difficult to know where to begin.
[...]
Incidentally, some of Laplace's most important work was in the theory
of probability -- rather an odd pursuit for the dogmatic determinist of
your silly caricature.
Comment:
I'm sorry in spades this time for raising issues beyond your ken - the
author of the "silly caricature" is arguably more knowledgeable about
physics and the history of physics than yourself.
Here, for example, is how the author, Stephen Hawking, summarized the
facts of the matter in Ch. 4 of his 'A Brief History of Time':
The success of scientific theories, particularly Newton's theory of
gravity, led the French scientist the Marquis de Laplace at the
beginning of the nineteenth century to argue that the universe was
completely deterministic. Laplace suggested that there should be a set
of scientific laws that would allow us to predict everything that would
happen in the universe, if only we knew the complete state of the
universe at one time. For example, if we knew the positions and speeds
of the sun and the planets at one time, then we could use Newton's
laws to calculate the state of the Solar System at any other time.
Determinism seems fairly obvious in this case, but Laplace went further
to assume that there were similar laws governing everything else,
including human behavior.
The doctrine of scientific determinism was strongly resisted by many
people, who felt that it infringed God's freedom to intervene in the
world, but it remained the standard assumption of science until the
early years of this century. [...]
The uncertainty principle had profound implications for the way in
which we view the world. Even after more than seventy years they have
not been fully appreciated by many philosophers, and are still the
subject of much controversy. The uncertainty principle signaled an end
to Laplace's dream of a theory of science, a model of the universe
that would be completely deterministic: one certainly cannot predict
future events exactly if one cannot even measure the present state of
the universe precisely!
Art Neuendorffer
>>
>>>>> Cantor was not a mathematical crank (not while he was sane,
>>>>> at any rate), merely a Shakespeare authorship crank.
>>> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>
>>>> So Cantor's rather peculiar mathematical ideas
>>>> were accepted immediately?
>> David L. Webb wrote:
>>
>> <<If you've read any of Cantor's biography, Art, you should be
>> aware that Cantor had many mathematical supporters & admirers,
>> among them Dedekind & Mittag-Leffler, Heine, Hurwitz,
>> & Klein, and only one major detractor (Kronecker).
>>
>> Despite his opposition, Kronecker actually *published*
>> the paper that Cantor submitted to Crelle's journal.>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------
> "Art Neuendorffer" wrote:
>> So Kronecker was more fair & responsible than, say, Eddington or
>> the sleaze balls who will prevent Roger & Lynne from publishing.
-----------------------------------------------------
> David L. Webb wrote:
<<The last I heard, their paper was still not complete, although they
had sent out a draft to various people who might be intersted; if the
paper was not complete, then Lynne and Dr. Stritmatter can scarcely
have been prevented from publishing -- although the fact that
submission is a necessary precondition for publication may well be
news to you, Art. It is true that, according to Lynne, they have
been refused as speakers at a major conference, but that is a
completely different matter from being unable to publish.>>
-----------------------------------------------------
The same sleaze balls who prevented Roger & Lynne from speaking at
that major conference will also prevent Roger & Lynne from publishing.
-----------------------------------------------------
David L. Webb wrote:
> For that matter, it is my understanding that
> they *are* speaking at another major conference.
Of course...they have yet to mention Oxford.
(That will be the real test.)
(Once Roger discovers that he can give papers galor
and thus get promoted in acadamia simply by abiding
by the simple rule of *NOT* discussing authorship...)
>> -----------------------------------------------------
>> David L. Webb wrote: <<Even Kronecker's opposition
>> does not necessarily mean that Kronecker viewed Cantor
>> as a crank. This may be news to you, Art, but even scientists
>> of great power & originality often have their submissions
>> rejected by good journals, not because their work is crankery or
>> even because it is wrong, but because in the opinion of the referee
>> or the editor, it is not sufficiently interesting or important.>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------
> "Art Neuendorffer" wrote:
>> Did Kronecker's misgivings about Cantor's paper mean that it
>> was not sufficiently interesting or not sufficiently important?
-----------------------------------------------------
David L. Webb wrote:
> Who knows? In any event, Kronecker published it,
> so the basis for his opposition is not recorded.
-----------------------------------------------------
<<As an amusing aside, one of my colleagues tells me that when
Lefschetz was editing _Annals of Mathematics_, he once sent
a manuscript that had been submitted to that journal to
a referee with the following instructions (I'm paraphrasing):
"Dear ____, Please reject this paper.
Sincerely, Solomon Lefschetz."
(This incident is known because Lefschetz's letter to the
referee was inadvertently sent to the author of the paper
along with the referee's negative report.)>>
-----------------------------------------------------
I'm sure that the Shakespeare Quarterly editor has a similar
form letter to send to referees of anti-Stratfordian submittals.
-----------------------------------------------------
David L. Webb wrote:
<<Cantor enjoyed sufficient respect that a very strange paper of
his was published, probably after the mental problems that were to
plague him began to surface; the paper verifies Goldbach's conjecture
for even integers less than 1,000 -- but Goldbach's conjecture was
*already known* to hold for all even integers less than 10,000,
and indeed had been known for nearly a half century!>>
----------------------------------------------------
> "Art Neuendorffer" wrote:
>>No doubt Cantor actually had A PROOF involving Goldbach's
>> conjecture applicable to integers less than 1,000
>> that DID NOT simply involve TRIAL & ERROR.
-----------------------------------------------------
David L. Webb wrote:
<<"No doubt"?! In fact, if you had read either the paper or one of
Cantor's biographers, you would know that the paper merely listed all
the ways that each even number less than 1,000 can be written as a sum
of two primes. In fact, that's exactly why I said that the paper was
VERy strange, Art. As at least one of Cantor's biographers has noted,
the paper was perhaps an indication of the impending mental
breakdown that became apparent to eVERyone when Cantor started
babbling about Bacon as Shakespeare.>>
--------------------------------------------------------------
*GABBLE* , v. i. [Freq. of GAB.]
1. To talk fast or without meaning; to prate; to jabber.
2. To utter inarticulate sounds with rapidity; --
used of fowls as well as people; as, gabbling geese.
----------------------------------------------------
"I detect, like me, you're endowed with the gift of GAB."
-- (O Brother, Where Art Thou?)
The gift of the GAB: Fluency of speech; or, rather,
the gift of boasting. (French, GABer, to gasconade;
Danish & Scotch, GAB, the mouth; Gaelic, GOB;
Irish, cab; whence our gap & gape, GABble & GOBble. )
"There was a good man named Job
Who lived in the land of Uz,
He had a good gift of the GOB,
The same thing happened us,"
- Book of Job, by Zach. Boyd.
The GAB-LE of a house is its BEAK.
The BILL: The *NOSE*, also called the BEAK.
Hence, 'BILLy' is slang for a pocket-handkerchief.
................................................
NEV: BEAK, BILL, spout. (Faroese)
------------------------------------------------------
"GE[NEV]A BIBLE"
_____ [G]
_____ [A]
_____ [B]
_____ [B]
N E V I [L] E
_____ [E]
------------------------------------------------------
The Tempest Act 1, Scene 2
PROSPERO: Know thine own meaning, but wouldst *GABBLE*
like A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes
With words that made them known. But thy *VILE* race,
Though thou didst learn, had that in't which good natures
Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou
DEsERVEDly confined into this rock,
Who hadst DEsERVED more than a prison.
------------------------------------------------------
All's Well That Ends Well Act 4, Scene 1
Second Lord: He must think us some band of strangers i' the
adVERrsary's entertainment. Now he hath a smack of
all neighbouring languages; therefore we must EVERy
one be a man of his own fancy, not to know what we
speak one to another; so we seem to know, is to
know straight our purpose: choughs' language,
*GABBLE* enough, and good enough. As for you,
interpreter, you must seem VERy politic. But couch,
ho! here he comes, to beguile two hours in a sleep,
and then to return and swear the lies he forges.
------------------------------------------------------
Twelfth Night Act 2, Scene 3
MALVOLIO: My masters, are you mad? or what are you? Have ye
no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to *GABBLE* like *TINKERS*
at this time of night? Do ye make an alehouse of my lady's
house, that ye squeak out your coziers' catches without
any mitigation or remorse of voice?
Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?
---------------------------------------------------------------
A Midsummer Night's Dream Act 1, Scene 2
QUINCE: *TOM SNOUT* , the *TINKER*
WALL: That I, one SNOUT by name, present a WALL;
--------------------------------------------------------------
*NEV* : BILL, nozzle, SPOUT (Faroese, Faeroese)
--------------------------------------------------------------
______________________ P
______________________ TOM SNOUT
______________________ A
______________________ H
.
TINKER/metalworker: "SOUTHAMPTON"
--------------------------------------------------------------
PTAH (ptä): patron of METALWORKERS
<<PTAH was often portrayed as a BEARDED, BALD male
figure with an ELABORATELY DECORATED NECKCOLLAR.>>
.
The *HIEROGLYPHS* representing his name meant "SCULPTOR."
------------------------------------------------------------------
<<The Memphis triad consisted of the universal architect god, PTAH,
patron of *MASONS* , his consort Sekhmet, the lion-headed one
(sometimes Bast the cat goddess), and Nefertum/Imhotep, their son.
http://www.dermon.com/Ptah.htm
As the high god of Memphis, PTAH was declared the master of DESTINY
who imparts to the phenomenal world the character of an established
order, valid for all time. In Abydos, in the temple of SETI I,
he is called 'he who has created MAAT' - that is, divine order.>>
-------------------------------------------------------
>> David L. Webb wrote:
<<Incidentally, Art, one of Cantor's biographers writes that
during the celebration of the 500th anniVERsary of the
University of St. Andrews in Scotland, Cantor's mental
health began to deteriorate:
"During the visit he apparently began to behave eccentrically,
talking at great length on the Bacon-Shakespeare question..">>
-----------------------------------------------------
> "Art Neuendorffer" wrote:
>>> Are either you or Cantor's biographer
>> psychiatrically qualified to make such an assessment?
-----------------------------------------------------
David L. Webb wrote:
> Of course -- talking at length about Bacon
> as Shakespeare is nothing if not eccentric, Art.
-----------------------------------------------------
That is NOT what you are claiming, Dave.
I repeat: Are either you or Cantor's biographer
psychiatrically qualified to make such an assessment?
>-----------------------------------------------------
>>> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>>
>>>>> OTOH...successful science "cranks" are a dime a dozen:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1) 2005 Nobel Prize (Medicine) recipients Warren & Marshall
>>>>> 2) Pulsar discoverers Jocelyn Bell & Thomas Gold
>>>>> 3) Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
>>>>> 4) Robert Goddard
>>>>> 5) Alfred Wegener
>>>>> 6) Galileo
>>>>> etc. etc.
-----------------------------------------------------
>>> David L. Webb wrote:
>>
>>>> None of these people were cranks, Art.
> -----------------------------------------------------
>> "Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendorffer114...@comcast.net>
>
>>> Their ideas were all generally dismissed or ignored
>>> as being too bizarre & nontraditional.
> -----------------------------------------------------
>> David L. Webb wrote: <<By no means.
>>
>>> About the only exception is Wegener, whose furnished
>>> no plausible mechanism for continental drift. And,
>>> as I already noted, Chandrasekhar was supported
>>> and encouraged by the likes of Pauli and Bohr.>>
>>----------------------------------------------------
> "Art Neuendorffer" wrote:
>> A lot of good that did him.
-----------------------------------------------------
David L. Webb wrote:
<<Plainly, you are unfamiliar with Chandrasekhar's career, Art. He
went straight to the University of Chicago, one of the VERy best in
the world, where he remained for his entire career, although this fact
is evidently news to you. He also won the Nobel Prize, although that
fact is probably news to you as well. Chandrasekhar did just fine.>>
-----------------------------------------------------
Coulda done better:
-----------------------------------------------------
Eugene N. Parker, University of Chicago
From: Physics Today, November 1995, pp. 107-108
<<Arthur Eddington, made no comment in private
but publicly denounced Chandra's result, declaring,
"I think there should be a law of nature
to prevent a star from behaving in this absurd way."
Later, Eddington argued that the Pauli exclusion
principle could not be applied to relativistic systems.
Eddington's cocksure faith in his own whims was unshaken, and the
astronomical community largely accepted his authority. Thus arose the
50-year delay in Chandra's receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics in
1983. Eddington's authoritative wishful thinking on the mass limit of
the white dwarf prevented Chandra from obtaining a proper position
in England. In spite of the difficulties that Eddington's mulish
attacks had created for him, Chandra ranked Eddington next to
Karl Schwarzschild as the greatest astronomer of his time when
he presented an obituary address for Eddington in 1944.>>
------------------------------------------------------------------
<<Chandrasekhar was invited to give a talk on this subject at the
Royal Astronomical Society in January 1935. But after his lecture,
Eddington stood up and rejected Chandra's results...by ridiculing the
combination of special relativity theory with quantum statistics.
Chandra was devastated. It took decades before the Chandrasekhar
limit was accepted by the astrophysics community. [Later] Chandra
was invited to join the Los Alamos laboratory, but because
of lengthy clearance problems, this did not come to pass.
His feeling of duty was despite many indignities that he &
Lalitha suffered because of their dark skin.>> - Hans A. Bethe
-------------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
David L. Webb
"gangleri" <gunnar....@verizon.net> wrote:
> There are so many misunderstandings and errors in your caricature that
> it is difficult to know where to begin.
>
> [...]
>
> Incidentally, some of Laplace's most important work was in the theory
> of probability -- rather an odd pursuit for the dogmatic determinist of
> your silly caricature.
>
> Comment:
>
> I'm sorry in spades this time for raising issues beyond your ken
Since my research concerns mathematical problems arising in quantum
theory, you need have no fears on that score.
> - the
> author of the "silly caricature" is arguably more knowledgeable about
> physics and the history of physics than yourself.
No, the knowledge of the author of the silly caricature appears to
derive entirely from popularizations of the underlying science.
> Here, for example, is how the author, Stephen Hawking, summarized the
> facts of the matter in Ch. 4 of his 'A Brief History of Time':
>
> The success of scientific theories, particularly Newton's theory of
> gravity, led the French scientist the Marquis de Laplace at the
> beginning of the nineteenth century to argue that the universe was
> completely deterministic. Laplace suggested that there should be a set
> of scientific laws that would allow us to predict everything that would
> happen in the universe, if only
Your "if only" is what makes the whole enterprise a purely
hypothetical one that could not conceivably be realized. If you can
find some writing of Laplace in which he asserts the feasibility of
exact determination of the initial conditions, then you might be taken
seriously.
> we knew the complete state of the
> universe at one time. For example, if we knew the positions and speeds
> of the sun and the planets at one time,
If frogs had wings, they could fly.
> then we could use Newton's
> laws to calculate the state of the Solar System at any other time.
> Determinism seems fairly obvious in this case, but Laplace went further
> to assume that there were similar laws governing everything else,
> including human behavior.
Oh, I have no problem whatever with your labeling such speculations
concerning psychology for which no evidence was available as crankery;
however, we were discussing *physics*, not psychology.
> The doctrine of scientific determinism was strongly resisted by many
> people, who felt that it infringed God's freedom to intervene in the
> world,
Modern physicists *still* do not generally include God's freedom to
intervene in the universe in their physical theories, although that fact
may be news to you.
> but it remained the standard assumption of science until the
> early years of this century. [...]
>
> The uncertainty principle had profound implications for the way in
> which we view the world. Even after more than seventy years they have
> not been fully appreciated by many philosophers, and are still the
> subject of much controversy. The uncertainty principle signaled an end
> to Laplace's dream of a theory of science, a model of the universe
> that would be completely deterministic: one certainly cannot predict
> future events exactly if one cannot even measure the present state of
> the universe precisely!
One the contrary -- as I already noted, the Schrödinger equation is
completely deterministic, and the probabilistic aspects of quantum
mechanics do not arise from the uncertainty principle. In that sense,
conventional quantum theory says that one can predict a quantum system's
future state exactly, provided one has exact information of the initial
conditions (which, as I noted, was *already* hopelessly infeasible in
Laplace's Newtonian clockwork world), and *provided* one is willing to
forego any observation of the outcome. Since your familiarity with
these matters is evidently confined to the level of popularizations, I
refer you to Penrose's account of the unitary time evolution in quantum
mechanics:
"Regarding [psi] [the wave function] as describing the 'reality' of
the world, we have none of this indeterminism that is supposed to be
a feature inherent in the quantum theory -- so long as [phi] is
governed by the deterministic Schrödinger evolution. Let us call
this evolution process U. However, whenever we 'make a measurement,'
magnifying quantum effects to the classical level, we change the
rules. Now we do *not* use U, but instead adopt the completely
different procedure, which I refer to as R, of forming squared
moduli of quantum amplitudes to obtain classical probabilities! It
is the procedure R, and *only* R, that introduces uncertainties and
probabilities into quantum theory." (p. 250)
It is only when one *measures* a quantum system that probabilities
enter. Of course, trying to do science without measurement or
observation is an unsatisfactory state of affairs, so scientists are
very naturally led to measure quantum systems and thereby to induce a
collapse of the wavefunction of the system to an eigenstate of the
observable being measured (this is Penrose's "procedure R," although as
he remarks in a footnote, these two evolutions -- deterministic unitary
time evolution (U) and "reduction of state vector" (R) are already
explicitly identified in von Neumann's work).
Quantum mechanics did not overthrow a completely deterministic
universe, which was a chimera to start with because of the hopeless
infeasibility of perfect determination of initial conditions; rather,
quantum mechanics introduced a limit beyond which measurements could not
even be improved *in principle*. It is the measurement problem, *not*
an inherent indeterminism in the governing equations, that introduces
the probabilistic character in quantum mechanics. Indeed, the governing
equations are every bit as deterministic as those used by Laplace,
provided one forgoes measurement. It is the measurement problem in
quantum mechanics, not the uncertainty principle, that is insufficiently
understood and that lies at the root of controversies; the uncertainty
principle is a mathematical theorem (about a function and its Fourier
transform) that is well understood and not controversial at all.
However, the main point is that Laplace was definitely not a physics
crank for postulating the efficacy of techniques that had proved and
would continue to prove to be spectacularly successful, when no
observations were clearly violated by the theory. As I already said,
cranks are those who (1) do not know the rudiments of the subject in the
first place, and (2) continue undaunted in their delusions, utterly
oblivious to all refutations. Laplace does not fit either criterion.
Circle squarers, angle trisectors, Velikovskians, and certain
anti-Stratfordians do.
Bianca Steele
That's true, too -- researchers hardly wed themselves to single
journals or even small groups of journals, but rather are free to
publish themselves anywhere they like. But what's with the Kronecker
obsession?
>-- this just underscores the point that journal editors' tastes
> and opinions concerning what constitutes interesting and important work
> differ. By the same token, one lawyer might be uninterested in taking a
> case, while another equally qualified lawyer might see possibilities and
> take it.
>
----
Bianca Steele
P.S. How long have you been using a Macintosh, David?
Paul Crowley
> > > But are there any examples where *150 years* later the scientist
> > > was still universally called a crank, then in the 151st year, he
> > > was vindicated?
> >
> > How about Democritus' atomic theory?
>
> Was it dismissed as "crankery"? I don't know. I thought, perhaps, simply
> not verified for ... oh a couple milennia. I happened to check this the
> other day, and it seems there were a few philosophers on to the idea of
> atoms at that time. Doesn't seem like "crankery", but I could be wrong.
The 'Copernican theory' was proposed by
various Greeks (or other Eastern-Mediterranean
astronomers) around 100 A.D. The theory was
certainly dismissed as crankery whenever it was
re-stated -- especially when Copernicus did so.
> I suddenly remember why I looked it up. Andrews was debating Crowley about
> the existence of a middle class, and Crowley was making his usual assertion
> that if they didn't have a word for it, it didn't exist.
It's not a general rule, but I think it would
apply here. The aristocracy have left plenty
of descriptions of the 'lower-classes' and their
groupings, as they viewed them. They'd have
noticed the emergence of a 'middle-class' almost
as soon as it raised its ugly head. No doubt
only a tiny proportion of their observations
got into published texts. However, social class
is so pervasive and so important that IMHO
there would have been some records.
The first record in the OED (for 1766) is in a
private letter of an exiled Queen. The absence
of the term is fairly good evidence (if far from
conclusive) that there was not much of a
recognisable middle-class (as a class) in the
country before about 1700.
A rough equivalent is the French 'bourgeois'
Bourgeois OED
1. orig. A (French) citizen or freeman of a city or burgh,
as distinguished from a peasant on the one hand,
and a gentleman on the other; now often taken as
the type of the mercantile or shopkeeping middle
class of any country.
a1674 Clarendon Hist. Reb. III. xii. 241 He liv'd in a jolly familiarity
with the Bourgeois and their Wives.
1704 Addison Italy (1733) 281 Body of the Burgeois.
1794 J. Courtenay Pres. State Manners of France & Italy ii. 25
Here the pretty Bourgeoise, drest in smiles and in charms.
But again, note the restriction of the sense
to someone of wealth and standing in a city
or town. It's nothing like our sense of 'middle-
class' now. It is far better to simply avoid the
use of the term when talking about people in
Shake-speare's day.
Paul.
gangleri
derive entirely from popularizations of the underlying science.
Comment:
Stephen W. Hawking, author of the "silly caricature" and certifiable
crank by your lights, "holds Newton's chair as Lucasian Professor of
Mathematics at Cambridge University, is widely regarded as the most
brilliant theoretical physicist since Einstein," according to the blurb
on 'A Brief History of Time'.
Chess One
"Peter Groves" <Montiverdi...@bigpond.com> wrote in message
news:vyr5f.22359$U51....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...> news:Pjr5f.552$Lv....@newssvr24.news.prodigy.net...
>> "Chess One" <inn...@verizon.net> wrote in message
>> news:Q0r5f.9292$da1.5668@trndny04...
>> >
>> > <bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote in message
>> > news:1129684421.1...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>> > > Phil, being wrong is not what makes one a crank; what makes one a
> crank
>> > > is proposing a fallacious relatively complex theory and persisting
> with
>> > > it in the face of all evidence against it.
>> >
> before
>> > people got around to appreciating his genius. And who were the cranks
> who
>>
>> You've said this twice, so I guess it needs correcting. Webb would do a
>> better job, but he doesn't seem to be responding.
>>
>> Einstein's theories were *never* as far as I know, considered crankery.
>
> ill-considered, half-baked or insufficiently researched opinions.
Indeed not, since I directly report he recently broadcast NOVA program on
PBS in the USA. Not notably half-baked or crankerous.
> Because
> I, for one, would be shocked.
Do you mean that you are personally shocked because there was initial
resistance to Einstein's theorums? What do you mean?
> Phil has shown us the way in so many areas: I
> had never realised (for example) that Shakespeare was a speaker of the
> aboriginal Celtic "British language" (as well, of course, as his native
> Old
> English).
You probably never 'realised' that Chaucer was also an atavist. But what has
that to do with it? What this poster has now done is paraphrase what I have
said so that the Author was was the speaker of the "British Language"
[whatever that means as a quotation in inverted commas] rather than a writer
who attained its mythos, elements of language, and imaginative expression,
which was my own indication.
What does it mean to say 'little Latin and less Greek', if not to indicate
something else? if not Latin and Greek , then... ? doh???
Only a total pedant would say that Jonson 'did not say' that the author
coined on earlier British language - which would be literally true, and
entirely misleading. Jonson said where not to look.
The reader should use their own judgement on what language the author
coined, and these surely juvenile references by Peter Groves apart - how
should anyone employed in these studies make of them? - Will they make up
their own minds if the Author was interested in Albion - a term he
ressurected in anticipation of Blake, or will they not regard any evidence
and accept a rhetorical demurrer a-la-Groves?
Phil Innes
> Peter G.
>
>> They were published in mainstream (although small circulation) journals.
> A
>> few people immediately recognized their significance, and nearly all
> others
>> recognized that they might be *wrong*, but deserved testing. Why?
> Because
>> his theories, improbable as some of them must have seemed, were in
>> accordance with known facts, explained things well, and were testable.
>>
>> I don't know if pre-Schliemann "Trojans" were called cranks or not, but
> any
>> charges of crankery that might have been tossed about were put to rest by
>> evidence. Before someone actually produced some, unfounded speculation
>> on
>> the reality of Troy *would* have been crankery. If you can produce
>> evidence, people will go your way.
>>
>> Likewise, if any mainstream academic could produce a convincing case
> against
>> William of Stratford's authorship, he would never have to teach another
>> English 101 in his life.
>>
>> You'll do better with other examples. Von Daniken?
>>
>> > persisted in specualting about Troy? Until that German bloke went and
> dug
>> it
>> > up?
>> >
>> > So flinging the term crank at what is not understood is no pure
>> prescription
>> > of crankness. Flinging the term crank at a person without studying the
>> > subject is at least as strange a behavior as one's accusation, no?
>> >
>> > I see I already repeated this commentary earlier this morning:
>> >
>> > ...And take upon's the mystery of things
>> > As if we were God's spies; and we'll wear out
>> > In a walled prison, pacts and sects of great ones
>> > That ebb and flow by th'moon
>> > /King Lear, v:2
>> >
>> > Cordially, Phil
>> >
>> > > --Bob G.
Sweetie Cat
Nice name. I might make a permanent change. Not sure what you have
against me personally, seaker, unless it's that I once pointed out you
hadn't read the material you were critiquing. It couldn't be that I'm
an Oxfordian, surely? That would be very intolerant of you.
Regards,
Litter-Box-Cat
seaker
squat when it comes to Shakespeare and the entire Elizabethan period.
If the food is rotten, why keep eating? I have a low opinion of bogus
scholarship.
Sweetie Cat
> Mousie -
Oh, I'm back to Mousie, am I?
Robert,
The very first time I met Mark (quite by accident), he was studying in
the Smith Library. He's lucky enough to live in an area where there are
several very good universities, including U Mass and Amherst, and he's
spent an enormous amount of time researching. I may not agree with
everything he's written, but I have enormous respect for him and am
proud to call him my friend. I am proud to call other scholars my
friends also, whether they're Oxfordians or Traditionalists. All they
have to do to earn my respect is show that they know what they're
talking about.
It's very easy to stand on the sidelines and cry foul, especially when
you've only managed to read part of the introduction of a rather large
book--which is all you had read at the time, and that's being generous.
So far your posts haven't revealed that you have much scholarship at
all--though it appears there's some stagecraft in there somewhere--so
it's hard for me to take what you say seriously.
Why not be a mensch, relax, and take a decent part in the proceedings?
It would work much better for you than insulting perfectly reasonable
people. Failing that, maybe you could go find a play to direct.
Regards,
Lynne
seaker
gangleri, Chess One, Art Neuendorffer, Elizabeth, Stephanie Caruana,
Mousie, Roger Stritmatter? I don't think so. Stick to kiddie books,
they probably don't tax your mind!
seaker
behind your paper on The Tempest. You and Roger are desperate to prove
that it was written before Eddie died in 1604, so you will distort,
misread and ignore anything that disproves your predetermined
conclusion. In my book, this is dishonest scholarship. Why should I
be surprised, this is common practice among Oxenfordians.
David L. Webb
"gangleri" <gunnar....@verizon.net> wrote:
I was referring, of course, to *your* silly caricature, based upon
your misunderstandings of popularizations. As I said before, we are
talking about Laplace's physics, a field of he was at the time a master
and in which he made valuable contributions which did not contradict
empirical observations at the time. That distinguishes him markedly
from cranks, who, as I said, generally do not know the pertinent field
(indeed, their misunderstandings, which are often fundamental, are
usually the root of their errors) and who moreover are blithely
oblivious to even definitive refutation (often because they do not
understand the field well enough even to understand the refutation).
Neither being ignorant nor being wrong makes one a crank; continuing
in ignorance and error after having been shown decisively where one's
mistake lies is the hallmark of a crank. These features characterize
almost all angle trisectors and circle squarers, as well as some
anti-Stratfordians.
Sweetie Cat
You were insulting Mark Anderson, actually, whose book, even now, you
haven't read.
I wouldn't sneer at "kiddie books" either, if I were you, although
actually I write award-winning young adult novels and poetry. What have
you written?
Regards,
Lynne
Stephanie Caruana
Stoopid dufusses(I was going to use a more reprehensible epithet) like
seaker aren't capable of writing anything except abuse.
Stephanie
gangleri
your misunderstandings of popularizations.
Comment:
Of course!
Sweetie Cat
I have been quick to admit when there are problems with anything I'm
doing. We've noted problematic ambiguities in our footnotes.
I always feel an honest approach is best. At least two non-Oxfordians
on hlas have access to our essays. Neither so far has suggested that
we've distorted, misread, or ignored anything. Nor am I desperate to
prove that The Tempest was written before 1604. I am an Oxfordian, it's
true, but rather different from most people on either side of the
controversy in that I'm interested in whatever might turn up that I
might find fascinating or persuasive. Others here will tell you that
I've always felt that Shakespeareans of all stripes are more alike than
different, and that reasonable people can help one another search for
the truth.
Regards,
Lynne
ignoto
I'm sure that there would have been a large group of people who would
have rejected it as 'bizzare' or manifestly absurd- but i'd have to
check.
I don't have time to develop this point but I might just quickly add
that I think there is a substantive difference between crankery in
science and crankery in history. The former being somewhat more
palatable than the latter.
> I suddenly remember why I looked it up. Andrews was debating Crowley about
> the existence of a middle class, and Crowley was making his usual assertion
> that if they didn't have a word for it, it didn't exist. I was going to
> say, "Of course, we don't know what the universe was made of before 5th C
> BCE, but we know it wasn't atoms". But that moment passed; thanks for
> reintroducing it :)
There are actually a couple of good reasons (logical and empirical) for
rejecting the idea that atoms are the 'ultimate' building blocks of the
universe... does that make me a crank? Or merely a guarded sceptic?
gangleri
rejecting the idea that atoms are the 'ultimate' building blocks of the
universe... does that make me a crank? Or merely a guarded sceptic?
Comment:
Atom = Monad.
There can be nothing more 'ultimate' than Monad.
David L. Webb
"Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendor...@comcast.net>
(aneuendor...@comicass.nut) wrote:
[...]
> >> So Kronecker was more fair & responsible than, say, Eddington or
> >> the sleaze balls who will prevent Roger & Lynne from publishing.
> -----------------------------------------------------
> > David L. Webb wrote:
>
> <<The last I heard, their paper was still not complete, although they
> had sent out a draft to various people who might be intersted; if the
> paper was not complete, then Lynne and Dr. Stritmatter can scarcely
> have been prevented from publishing -- although the fact that
> submission is a necessary precondition for publication may well be
> news to you, Art. It is true that, according to Lynne, they have
> been refused as speakers at a major conference, but that is a
> completely different matter from being unable to publish.>>
> -----------------------------------------------------
> The same sleaze balls who prevented Roger & Lynne from speaking at
> that major conference will also prevent Roger & Lynne from publishing.
Not unless they were foolhardy. The identities of the persons in
charge of the conference are known to them, and the editorial boards of
professional journals are public knowledge; Lynne and Dr. Stritmatter
need only select a journal whose editors are not among their conference
antagonists. I have no doubt that both Lynne and Dr. Stritmatter are
smart enough to have figured out not to submit their paper to the same
person who rejected their application to speak at the conference,
although I concede that this simple expedient would neVER have occurred
to you, Art.
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > For that matter, it is my understanding that
> > they *are* speaking at another major conference.
>
> Of course...they have yet to mention Oxford.
> (That will be the real test.)
They had not mentioned Oxford when they applied to speak at the first
conference either, Art.
> (Once Roger discovers that he can give papers galor [sic]
A galor is someone who holds periodic rent payments, Art; is English
your native tongue?
> and thus get promoted in acadamia [sic]
Huh? Did you mean "macadamia," Art? Are you insinuating that Dr.
Stritmatter is some kind of nut? Or you suggesting that he would sell
out? Neither alternative is especially flattering, and both are unfair.
MoreoVER, while your hand-wringing about the failure of publication
of a document that has not even been submitted is already most amusing,
it is even more so coming from someone who was practically accusing
Lynne and Dr. Stritmatter of plagiarizing Volker Multhopp's article not
long ago in the Fellowship forum! Of course, your suggestion that their
article owed much to Mr. Multhopp's piece is even less flattering to
Lynne and to Dr. Stritmatter than your suggestion that Dr. Stritmatter
would sell out.
> simply by abiding
> by the simple rule of *NOT* discussing authorship...)
> >> David L. Webb wrote: <<Even Kronecker's opposition
> >> does not necessarily mean that Kronecker viewed Cantor
> >> as a crank. This may be news to you, Art, but even scientists
> >> of great power & originality often have their submissions
> >> rejected by good journals, not because their work is crankery or
> >> even because it is wrong, but because in the opinion of the referee
> >> or the editor, it is not sufficiently interesting or important.>>
> >> -----------------------------------------------------
> > "Art Neuendorffer" wrote:
>
> >> Did Kronecker's misgivings about Cantor's paper mean that it
> >> was not sufficiently interesting or not sufficiently important?
> -----------------------------------------------------
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > Who knows? In any event, Kronecker published it,
> > so the basis for his opposition is not recorded.
> -----------------------------------------------------
> <<As an amusing aside, one of my colleagues tells me that when
> Lefschetz was editing Annals of Mathematics , he once sent
> a manuscript that had been submitted to that journal to
> a referee with the following instructions (I'm paraphrasing):
>
> "Dear , Please reject this paper.
> Sincerely, Solomon Lefschetz."
>
> (This incident is known because Lefschetz's letter to the
> referee was inadvertently sent to the author of the paper
> along with the referee's negative report.)>>
> -----------------------------------------------------
> I'm sure that the Shakespeare Quarterly editor has a similar
> form letter to send to referees of anti-Stratfordian submittals.
"Submittals"? Is "submissions" the word that you were seeking, Art?
Or did you mean to write "committal"? The latter seems more probable in
an anti-Stratfordian context. Your "Petulant Paranoid" persona is
always amusing, Art.
> [G]
> [A]
> [B]
> [B]
> N E V I [L] E
> [E]
First, that is not an anagram. Second, there are not enough "l"s to
spell "Neville." Third, the INPNC score is unimpressive.
[Lunatic logorrhea snipped]
> A Midsummer Night's Dream Act 1, Scene 2
>
> QUINCE: *TOM SNOUT* , the *TINKER*
>
> WALL: That I, one SNOUT by name, present a WALL;
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> *NEV* : BILL, nozzle, SPOUT (Faroese, Faeroese)
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> P
> TOM SNOUT
> A
> H
> .
> TINKER/metalworker: "SOUTHAMPTON"
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> PTAH (ptä): patron of METALWORKERS
>
> <<PTAH was often portrayed as a BEARDED, BALD male
> figure with an ELABORATELY DECORATED NECKCOLLAR.>>
Sounds like the guy in the bottom two photos here:
<http://www2.localaccess.com/marlowe/Gallery.htm>.
> The *HIEROGLYPHS* representing his name meant "SCULPTOR."
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> <<The Memphis triad consisted of the universal architect god, PTAH,
> patron of *MASONS* , his consort Sekhmet, the lion-headed one
> (sometimes Bast the cat goddess), and Nefertum/Imhotep, their son.
>
>
> http://www.dermon.com/Ptah.htm
>
>
> As the high god of Memphis, PTAH was declared the master of DESTINY
> who imparts to the phenomenal world the character of an established
> order, valid for all time. In Abydos, in the temple of SETI I,
> he is called 'he who has created MAAT' - that is, divine order.>>
> -------------------------------------------------------
> >> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> <<Incidentally, Art, one of Cantor's biographers writes that
> during the celebration of the 500th anniVERsary of the
> University of St. Andrews in Scotland, Cantor's mental
> health began to deteriorate:
>
> "During the visit he apparently began to behave eccentrically,
> talking at great length on the Bacon-Shakespeare question..">>
> -----------------------------------------------------
> > "Art Neuendorffer" wrote:
>
> >>> Are either you or Cantor's biographer
> >> psychiatrically qualified to make such an assessment?
There is no question that Cantor suffered mental health problems at
various times in his career, with an especially seVERe episode near the
end; his own correspondence complains of his mental state.
> -----------------------------------------------------
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > Of course -- talking at length about Bacon
> > as Shakespeare is nothing if not eccentric, Art.
> -----------------------------------------------------
> That is NOT what you are claiming, Dave.
>
> I repeat: Are either you or Cantor's biographer
> psychiatrically qualified to make such an assessment?
There is no question that Cantor suffered mental health problems at
various times in his career, with an especially seVERe episode near the
end; his own correspondence complains of his mental state.
It's hard to do much better than an endowed professorship at the
UniVERsity of Chicago and a Nobel Prize, Art.
Mark Cipra
> Mark Cipra wrote:
> > "Bianca Steele" <bianca...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > news:1129738410.0...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> > > David L. Webb wrote:
> > > Art Neuendorffer wrote:
> > > > > OTOH...successful science "cranks" are a dime a dozen:
> > >
> > > > > 5) Galileo
> > > > > etc. etc.
> > > >
> > > > None of these people were cranks, Art. Meeting opposition from
some
> > > > authority figure is not a sign of crankery _per se_.
> [...]
> > > Of course, eventually the man was vindicated. And everyone knows
> >
> > The point, to me, isn't even "eventually" - but fairly rapidly.
>
> I was going to say, "Are you kidding?" But I guess your point must be
> that Galileo's case immediately broke the hold of the Catholic Church
> on scientific inquiry, and academic inquiry more generally. In other
No, of course not, but the idea of using the telescope to explore the
heavens wasn't opposed by the Church per se, as far as I know, just
Galileo's conclusions about the movement of heavenly bodies. If I recall
correctly, he was permitted to continue his studies, but forbidden to
publish. The Catholic Church's hold on scientific inquiry was not universal
at that time, anyway.
The specific example I was responding to attempted to claim that Galileo was
treated as a crank, in the same way that anti-Stratfordians are today. My
point was that his discoveries rapidly entered the mainstream of scientific
thought - at least that portion not under the thumb of the Church.
> words, everybody saw that Galileo had been right and Rome had been
> wrong, and that Rome had acted unjustly in the "silencing and
> punishment" of Galileo (as gangleri's source has it), and from then on
> they rejected Rome's suggestions as to how they should think about
> science. That's one way of telling the story. But it's not really
> what happened. Luther, too, seems to have thought his ideas were so
> rational that the church hierarchy would obviously accept them. There
> should have been other ways to deal with the problem Galileo's
> telescope posed; no one serious who understood what was at stake could
> have approved of the way it was done unless he'd thought a lesson was
> going to be learned, or believed he had no choice whatever.
>
> >There is no
> > doubt that some valid and valuable scientific ideas were dismissed
> > initially, and no doubt that some scientists were probably called cranks
or
> > the equivalent. Even my arguments elsewhere about Einstein and
Schliemann
> > weren't to say that this couldn't happen - merely that I thought they
were
> > bad examples (and I may have been wrong even there).
>
> No, they were very nicely formulated examples, as you presented them.
> I wonder if we've even been reading the same books.
I had to give up reading books for Lent. It's still Lent, isn't it?
>
> >
> > But are there any examples where *150 years* later the scientist was
still
> > universally called a crank, then in the 151st year, he was vindicated?
>
> I believe Mendel was probably considered a crank, more or less, by
Plausible, but I don't know. Actually, I don't belong in this discussion at
all. Don't really know enough about the history of science.
> those few who were aware of his work, given that literally nobody paid
> any attention to it for forty years. Maybe there were people (God
> knows who) who read it, and discussed some amusing ways in which he
> seemed to have gone wrong, but that is not the same thing -- there was
> nobody who was knowledgeable and qualified to think about what he'd
> written who used the material (much less disparaged it) until around
> 1895, when a handful of scientists independently discovered the papers
> in an obscure journal nobody actually working in the field read. In
> Mendel's case, the way his work was received seems to have had no ill
> effects, either on the science he founded or on the study of its
> history, but perhaps in Mendel's case, we were lucky.
>
> So it seems reasonable to guess that to his fellow monks, he was a
> genial crank who had permission to carry out his odd studies, though
> they were of no conceivable use. What those who accepted his papers
> for publication thought is anyone's guess, but they forgot him quickly
> enough.
>
> ----
> Bianca Steele
>
--
Bianca Steele
I think you are kidding.
My point, anyway, was that (a) those who did support Galileo were
apparently too cowardly to speak up, or thought the point was too
obvious to need to be said, and (b) the way Galileo was treated had
repercussions for the subsequent development of science.
----
Bianca Steele
ignoto
Comment:
Split atom= *BOOM*
If a 'monad' can be split into constituent parts it is not 'ultimate'.
David L. Webb
"Bianca Steele" <bianca...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Art seems to think that the mathematical establishment regarded
Cantor as a crank merely because Kronecker had some reservations about
publishing *one* of Cantor's papers -- this despite the fact that
Kronecker *did* publish Cantor's paper, that Cantor routinely published
mathematical papers throughout his career without interference by Art's
_bête noire_, the mathematical establishment, and that Cantor had many
distinguished supporters and admirers, among them Hilbert, Dedekind,
Heine, Klein, Hurwitz, Hadamard, Mittag-Leffler, and others. But then
Art doesn't seem to understand that even very good papers get rejected
all the time, not because they are wrong (far less because they are
crankery), but merely because journal editors don't view them as
sufficiently interesting or important. As noted, other journal editors'
tastes may differ, as the case of Cantor (among many others) illustrates.
gangleri
And eternal to boot.
Alias Monad!
The BOOM variety is physically divisible, hence transient.
Same name -different thing!
Mark Cipra
No, I'm not kidding, and I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying ... I
think we're talking about two different things - remember, this discussion
is about crankery, not suppression of the truth. The assertion was made
that Galileo was a good model for the soon-to-be-vindicated
anti-Stratfordian cranks. He's not. The Catholic Church didn't consider
him a crank; in fact, I seem to recall that some of the higher ups didn't
even think he was *wrong* - they considered him a dangerous heretic. They
didn't - again, as far as know - prevent him from continuing his studies,
only from publishing, and his work work was known and appreciated in the
parts of Europe which were not under the thumb of the Vatican (including
some parts of Catholic Europe). What happened to Galileo wasn't good, and
it retarded the growth of science, but it wasn't about crankery.
> My point, anyway, was that (a) those who did support Galileo were
> apparently too cowardly to speak up, or thought the point was too
> obvious to need to be said, and (b) the way Galileo was treated had
> repercussions for the subsequent development of science.
>
> ----
> Bianca Steele
>
Art Neuendorffer
<< the idea of using the telescope to explore the heavens wasn't
opposed by the Church per se, as far as I know, just Galileo's
conclusions about the movement of heavenly bodies. If I recall
correctly, he was permitted to continue his studies,
but forbidden to publish.>>
---------------------------------------------------------
Sorta like this situation with anti-Stratfordians today.
---------------------------------------------------------
Mark Cipra wrote:
<<I was responding to attempted to claim that Galileo was treated as
a crank, in the same way that anti-Stratfordians are today. My point
was that his discoveries rapidly entered the mainstream of scientific
thought - at least that portion not under the thumb of the Church.>>
---------------------------------------------------------
Mainstream of scientific thought was underground at the time.
Mainstream of Shakespearean thought is under the thumb of the
Birthplace Trust today.
---------------------------------------------------------
> "Bianca Steele" <biancas842...@yahoo.com> wrote
>> I believe Mendel was probably considered a crank, more or less,
---------------------------------------------------------
<<The theories of heredity attributed to Gregor Mendel, based on his
work with pea plants, are well known to students of biology. But his
work was so brilliant and unprecedented at the time it appeared that
it took thirty-four years for the rest of the scientific community
to catch up to it.>>
------------------------------------------------------
___ *POISNOUS* : (French) *PEA to US*
------------------------------------------------------
Dedication to Oxford in Fairie Queene (1590)
----------------------------------------------------
To the right Honourable the Earle of Oxenford,
Lord high Chamberlayne of England. &c.
REceiue most Noble Lord in gentle gree,
The vnripe fruit of an vnready WIT:
Which by thy countenaunce doth craue to bee
Defended from foule *ENUIES POISNOUS* bit.
(W)hich so to doe may thee right well befit,
(S)ith th'antique glory of thine auncestry
*Vnder a shady VELE is therein writ* ,
[VELLE = L., to WILL]
And eke thine owne long *liuing MEMORY* ,
Succeeding them in *TRUE* nobility: -- E.S.
----------------------------------------------------
_____ *ENVY* : (Manx)__ *TROO* (begrudging, grudge).
------------------------------------------------------
"A lie is a sort of myth, and a myth is a sort of truth." - Cyrano
Art Neuendorffer
Jeremy Henderson
ask that you no longer crosspost this conversation to the comic book
newsgroups? We're much too busy over there pondering far weightier
subjects than the authorship of Shakespeare's works, such as who would
win a fight between Superman and Martian Manhunter.
Thank you.
Bianca Steele
> "Bianca Steele" <bianca...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> I think you are kidding.
>>
>
> No, I'm not kidding, and I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying ... I
> think we're talking about two different things - remember, this discussion
> is about crankery, not suppression of the truth. The assertion was made
> that Galileo was a good model for the soon-to-be-vindicated
> anti-Stratfordian cranks. He's not.
You were responding, I thought, to my statement that he was vindicated
eventually, and you disagreed, seeming to say that the conviction had
no real significance at all. I was responding to David Webb's
implication that Galileo had met only some mild "opposition by an
authority figure." Most of Art's examples were people within recent
memory, who did in fact meet opposition from their peers (he didn't
list anyone who met opposition and was eventually proved wrong, but
those people exist too), and Art seems to think their careers suffered
unjustly as a result. I agree with you that scientific progress is not
a good model for literary history and biography.
>The Catholic Church didn't consider
> him a crank; in fact, I seem to recall that some of the higher ups didn't
> even think he was *wrong* - they considered him a dangerous heretic.
It is possible to read the denunciations of his work as _actually_
acknowledging that it had some validity. It is possible to read even
the conviction, as gangleri posted it here, as acknowledging that he is
right. Big deal. (I hope you aren't assuming post-1979 or post-1992
arguments to be typical of what was said at the time.)
The quotation I gave, and other contemporary quotations, show that he
was treated as a crank. The usefulness of the telescope in observing
the heavenly bodies was denied; sometimes the fact that it worked at
all, even on the ground, was denied; sometimes the fact that it seemed
to work was called a trick of the Devil. His ability to describe and
to interpret what he saw through the telescope was ridiculed. His
assertion that what he did see had anything to do with what we call the
"sun" and the "planets" was claimed to display his ignorance of "real"
astronomy. Some people refused to look through the telescope at all (I
think Cardinal Bellarmine because it was diabolical, someone else
because "those devices give me a headache").
>They
> didn't - again, as far as know - prevent him from continuing his studies,
> only from publishing,
Experts were sent to him to evaluate his work. He was required to
travel to Rome twice to be tried by the Inquisition. He lost his
academic positions and was told that nobody with an academic post
accepted the validity of his work. He was convicted of crimes. He was
imprisoned. He was informed that his work was prohibited by his
religion, though whatever real effect that had on him, I don't really
know. What work he did produce after his conviction was required to
conform to what he'd been told was doctrine. True, maybe through all
that, he was secretly studying and thinking exactly as he wished.
>and his work work was known and appreciated in the
> parts of Europe which were not under the thumb of the Vatican (including
> some parts of Catholic Europe).
Exactly: he was vindicated *eventually*. He never knew about that, nor
did anyone near him, nor did anyone who knew his story. For centuries,
anyone who might have to worry about what the Catholic Church would
think, had to avoid the subject. And even in the Western European
modern scientific community, it took a couple of centuries to work out
a way of doing science in the face of opposition from Rome. Moreover,
if his case motivated the Vatican to crack down, it would have become
more and more difficult for others in Catholic Europe to work, and more
and more unlikely that anything they did work on could be heard about
elsewhere.
But also, part of my point is that there were _already_, as you
suggest, parts even of Catholic Europe that could operate without
Vatican control. The Vatican and the church hierarchy surely were not
capable of controlling all social activities from the top down. For
example, obviously the Vatican did not care about the use of telescopes
in the navy or in surveying work. They should _not_ have cared about
the movement of the sun and the planets. But they already had a
tradition of interpreting Greek and Latin books about the movement of
the heavenly bodies, and they considered everything written part of
their own realm. Galileo himself might have thought he was operating
in an arena in which the Vatican was not interested, and if so, he
discovered that he had been wrong; so did anyone who thought similarly
to him.
>What happened to Galileo wasn't good, and
> it retarded the growth of science,
You seemed to imply that it didn't retard the growth of science, that
it merely separated science, or at least some "modern" aspect of
science, out from the kinds of things that were studied by the doctors
of the church.
>but it wasn't about crankery.
If he somehow imagined he was vindicated, at the same time everyone
around him was telling him the opposite, there is some similarity
between his attitude and that of a crank. If those around him, who
didn't understand his work, thought he couldn't be right because the
authorities said he wasn't right, there is some similarity between his
situation and that of a crank. Which I think was Art's point (and
gangleri's, though Laplace might not be the best example to focus on):
we should remember Clarke's Law.
There is, in fact, little difference between the way some successful
scientific innovators in history were treated and the way people
attempting to innovate are often treated by the establishment (I tend
to assume most people know how difficult it is to innovate in an
established field, but that may be wrong). Nobody in modern science
any longer uses the rhetoric that was used against Galileo, though, not
for merely polemical purposes -- that _is_ a successful effect of what
happened to him.
----
Bianca Steele
Bianca Steele
> "Bianca Steele" <bianca...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> I think you are kidding.
>>
>
> No, I'm not kidding, and I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying ... I
> think we're talking about two different things - remember, this discussion
> is about crankery, not suppression of the truth. The assertion was made
> that Galileo was a good model for the soon-to-be-vindicated
> anti-Stratfordian cranks. He's not.
You were responding, I thought, to my statement that he was vindicated
eventually, and you disagreed, seeming to say that the conviction had
no real significance at all. I was responding to David Webb's
implication that Galileo had met only some mild "opposition by an
authority figure." Most of Art's examples were people within recent
memory, who did in fact meet opposition from their peers (he didn't
list anyone who met opposition and was eventually proved wrong, but
those people exist too), and Art seems to think their careers suffered
unjustly as a result. I agree with you that scientific progress is not
a good model for literary history and biography.
>The Catholic Church didn't consider
> him a crank; in fact, I seem to recall that some of the higher ups didn't
> even think he was *wrong* - they considered him a dangerous heretic.
It is possible to read the denunciations of his work as _actually_
acknowledging that it had some validity. It is possible to read even
the conviction, as gangleri posted it here, as acknowledging that he is
right. Big deal. (I hope you aren't assuming post-1979 or post-1992
arguments to be typical of what was said at the time.)
The quotation I gave, and other contemporary quotations, show that he
was treated as a crank. The usefulness of the telescope in observing
the heavenly bodies was denied; sometimes the fact that it worked at
all, even on the ground, was denied; sometimes the fact that it seemed
to work was called a trick of the Devil. His ability to describe and
to interpret what he saw through the telescope was ridiculed. His
assertion that what he did see had anything to do with what we call the
"sun" and the "planets" was claimed to display his ignorance of "real"
astronomy. Some people refused to look through the telescope at all (I
think Cardinal Bellarmine because it was diabolical, someone else
because "those devices give me a headache").
>They
> didn't - again, as far as know - prevent him from continuing his studies,
> only from publishing,
Experts were sent to him to evaluate his work. He was required to
travel to Rome twice to be tried by the Inquisition. He lost his
academic positions and was told that nobody with an academic post
accepted the validity of his work. He was convicted of crimes. He was
imprisoned. He was informed that his work was prohibited by his
religion, though whatever real effect that had on him, I don't really
know. What work he did produce after his conviction was required to
conform to what he'd been told was doctrine. True, maybe through all
that, he was secretly studying and thinking exactly as he wished.
>and his work work was known and appreciated in the
> parts of Europe which were not under the thumb of the Vatican (including
> some parts of Catholic Europe).
Exactly: he was vindicated *eventually*. He never knew about that, nor
did anyone near him, nor did anyone who knew his story. For centuries,
anyone who might have to worry about what the Catholic Church would
think, had to avoid the subject. And even in the Western European
modern scientific community, it took a couple of centuries to work out
a way of doing science in the face of opposition from Rome. Moreover,
if his case motivated the Vatican to crack down, it would have become
more and more difficult for others in Catholic Europe to work, and more
and more unlikely that anything they did work on could be heard about
elsewhere.
But also, part of my point is that there were _already_, as you
suggest, parts even of Catholic Europe that could operate without
Vatican control. The Vatican and the church hierarchy surely were not
capable of controlling all social activities from the top down. For
example, obviously the Vatican did not care about the use of telescopes
in the navy or in surveying work. They should _not_ have cared about
the movement of the sun and the planets. But they already had a
tradition of interpreting Greek and Latin books about the movement of
the heavenly bodies, and they considered everything written part of
their own realm. Galileo himself might have thought he was operating
in an arena in which the Vatican was not interested, and if so, he
discovered that he had been wrong; so did anyone who thought similarly
to him.
>What happened to Galileo wasn't good, and
> it retarded the growth of science,
You seemed to imply that it didn't retard the growth of science, that
it merely separated science, or at least some "modern" aspect of
science, out from the kinds of things that were studied by the doctors
of the church.
>but it wasn't about crankery.
If he somehow imagined he was vindicated, at the same time everyone
John W. Kennedy
> No, of course not, but the idea of using the telescope to explore the
> heavens wasn't opposed by the Church per se, as far as I know, just
> Galileo's conclusions about the movement of heavenly bodies. If I recall
> correctly, he was permitted to continue his studies, but forbidden to
> publish.
Actually, he was only forbidden to claim that Copernicanism was a proven
fact. It was OK to show that it agreed with the observations (though, in
the form used by both Copernicus and Galileo, which depended on complex
combinations of circles, instead of the ellipses that were the real
answer, it was only a little better than Ptolemy's system).
And at the very same time that he was being found guilty, one of the
churchmen involved wrote in a letter that, if Galileo /had/ proved his
case (which he didn't even try to do, having limited his defense to the
claim that his accusers were too stupid to understand the truth), the
Church would naturally have to take a long, hard look at its views,
inasmuch it would be wrong for her to persist in upholding a position
that science had disproved.
Which is indeed what happened.
--
John W. Kennedy
"...when you're trying to build a house of cards, the last thing you
should do is blow hard and wave your hands like a madman."
-- Rupert Goodwins
David L. Webb
Jeremy Henderson <hel...@tampabay.BABYJESUSHATESSPAM.rr.com> wrote
[following up one of Art's effusions of lunatic logorrhea]:
Art has found his natural venue at last!