17th October 2011, 03:31 PM
Ah - that old chestnut! I refer the honourable gentlemen to the answer I gave some moments ago:
http://www.diggingthedirt.com/2009/08/14...xperiment/
...an attempt to explain epistomology - or how we know what we know - to a non specialist audience who suspect that we might be making it all up (for good reason it would seem, given how many archaeologists insist that they are story telling artists, with artefactual props). From the post ' the unrepeatable experiment':
"The problem with archaeology is that our conclusions can never be proven in a laboratory. This has played directly into the hands of the flat-earth people, who believe that because nothing can be know with certainty, all interpretations are equally valid. But just as there are many different scientific subjects, there?s more than one way to do science, and it?s this that gets confused by ?the unrepeatable experiment.?
Archaeology is a historical science (like astronomy or geology), rather than an experimental science (like physics or chemistry), and the difference lies in how those two branches reason with their evidence. Experimental science uses a ?w-n?, or why-necessarily approach to its subject matter. Why does something happen? It necessarily happens in this specific way ? something that other scientists can independently verify. But a historical science can?t be tested in the traditional manner. It has to account for as much evidence as possible while remaining true to our expectations of how the world works today.
This can be extremely difficult, especially when moving back into the further reaches of prehistory where we find objects and behaviours with no modern parallels. Rather than a ?w-n? methodology, archaeologists must adopt a ?h-p?, or how-possibly approach to the evidence. How did it happen? It possibly happened like this, and by drawing on many different independent strands of evidence ? artefacts, ecofacts and scientific analysis such as radiocarbon dating ? statements can be verified by how well they conform to our expectations of what might be humanly possible based on the results of other excavations."
http://www.diggingthedirt.com/2009/08/14...xperiment/
...an attempt to explain epistomology - or how we know what we know - to a non specialist audience who suspect that we might be making it all up (for good reason it would seem, given how many archaeologists insist that they are story telling artists, with artefactual props). From the post ' the unrepeatable experiment':
"The problem with archaeology is that our conclusions can never be proven in a laboratory. This has played directly into the hands of the flat-earth people, who believe that because nothing can be know with certainty, all interpretations are equally valid. But just as there are many different scientific subjects, there?s more than one way to do science, and it?s this that gets confused by ?the unrepeatable experiment.?
Archaeology is a historical science (like astronomy or geology), rather than an experimental science (like physics or chemistry), and the difference lies in how those two branches reason with their evidence. Experimental science uses a ?w-n?, or why-necessarily approach to its subject matter. Why does something happen? It necessarily happens in this specific way ? something that other scientists can independently verify. But a historical science can?t be tested in the traditional manner. It has to account for as much evidence as possible while remaining true to our expectations of how the world works today.
This can be extremely difficult, especially when moving back into the further reaches of prehistory where we find objects and behaviours with no modern parallels. Rather than a ?w-n? methodology, archaeologists must adopt a ?h-p?, or how-possibly approach to the evidence. How did it happen? It possibly happened like this, and by drawing on many different independent strands of evidence ? artefacts, ecofacts and scientific analysis such as radiocarbon dating ? statements can be verified by how well they conform to our expectations of what might be humanly possible based on the results of other excavations."