marc9000 writes:
Uh, no. Written history, particularly corroborated with other writers, lives on indefinitely beyond the lives of its writers.
Yeah sure, unless religious nuts burn it. Does the Library at Alexandria after four such pillages, still have all the extant works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides? Complete works of any pre-Socratic Greek philosopher like Parminides or Heraclitus. What of the history of Suetonius? Indeed what of the Roman Chronicles? Do we have all but six of the Mayan Codex's?
Yet we know of their works, as in way too many others, through a casual and vastly incomplete mention in other sources.
That works, if you WORSHIP science, if you believe it's the only source of knowledge. My worldview tells me that written history is far more accurate than those who try to discredit it by looking through microscopes.
History as more accurate than observation? Not only is it at least 90% incomplete, but what little was allowed to last is also horribly inaccurate. But don't take my word for it, just show us the gold hoarding ants, the flying snakes, and the Sun driven by chariots of Herodotus. Or perhaps a post Christian version of people turning into bears and owls at night as in Froissart.
Don't forget the witchcraft.
Yes please go ahead and impress all scientists with the infallibility of all historic accounts.
Then why did I see it in a mid-sixties SCIENCE TEXTBOOK?
Most likely it was the Time-Life chart of evolution first published in 1966 (?) and republished in 1972.
Have you considered a more recent version of the straw man? Oh, that's right, history is absolute even with leeches and Zeus, while science is always wrong, despite moon landings and nuclear power.
You are lucky I did not show this post to my daughter, a direct descendant of Freyr, according to history, as she would call for Thor, Freyr's brother, to strike you down with lightning for your heresy - that is if she wasn't too busy studying chemistry, biology, English and anthropology as truly befits a student of truth.
Edited by anglagard, : last line after dash.
The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.
Salman Rushdie
This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. - the character Rorschach in Watchmen
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