What other choice do I have? I'm a programmer, not an Egyptologist. I've not seen or studied the pyramids, myself.
Which may suggest you haven't grasped the point I was trying to make.
The point you seem to be trying to make is that you don't think it's possible to say who built the pyramids, when they were built, or even if they were built by Egyptians at all.
There's such a thing as keeping an open mind, but you have to accept certain things in order to make sense of the world. The pyramids were designed and built by humans in historical times. The methods and timing are speculation, but dismissal of hundreds of years of research and documentation by archaeologists is irrational...
Well forsnax5, to say and to know are not necessarily the same things. Yes, we do have to accept certain things in order to make sense of the world. But my larger point in this exercise is to draw attention to the main differences between the historical sciences and the natural sciences.
In the natural sciences, you can set up an experiment and test something in real time, by means of direct observation. You cannot do that in the historical sciences. Still, we need to have some sense of the past, and this is the task of the historical sciences, as with any form of history. But the kind of "rigor" you get with the natural sciences is simply not to be expected from the historical sciences.
As I mentioned earlier, the historical sciences are about the construction of "likely stories" or, in the technical language, of myths. That technical language is as old as Plato, who first devised it. So, I'm thinking, if what you have to accept as the "best effort" of an historical science is a likely story, you want to make as sure as possible that it is the most likely story that we can get, given the current state of knowledge.
It is probably very upsetting to the post-modern sensibility to even use the word "myth" in connection with this problem. Today, that term is understood as synonymous with "falsehood." But I have to believe that no myth, no matter how fanciful or improbable it might seem to us today, could have long survived if it didn't have something "true" about it.
So what it all boils down to, for me, is this: If the historical sciences are going to present to us myth or legends under the color of science, at least let them make sure that they have considered all the angles, all the available evidence, and to entertain in good faith potential alternative hypotheses. This approach keeps the problem open, rather than just shutting it down to all further inquiry because it has become a "closed" question.
On that score, of particular concern to me would be to find a way to come up with some kind of objective assessment as to how long it might have taken to build these things (and when the expert consulting firm speaks to this issue, they say ten years; but I'd bet, given my recent experiences with the fruits of expert consulting engineers -- I live in Boston, and have seen the Big Dig -- I find it highly doubtful that even they could meet this schedule); then, I would like to see that finding correlated to what can be known about about average human life expectancy during the relevant period. (From what I have read, this would be something like 35 years, based, I gather, on mummy forensics.) I would also like to know what connection, if any, exists between the pyramids and the Sphinx -- which I have read dates at least 10,000 years older than the pyramids themselves. Does the Sphinx have any kind of bearing on the question of who built the pyramids? Or should we just rule that out, right up-front? Other people might have other questions.
I think there are still thing we need to learn more about before we shut the door on the investigation and simply say that we know something that can never really be known, in principle, at all -- at least not in the manner of the natural sciences.
Do you see what I mean? Thank you so much forsnax5 for writing.
Well forsnax5, to say and to know are not necessarily the same things. Yes, we do have to accept certain things in order to make sense of the world. But my larger point in this exercise is to draw attention to the main differences between the historical sciences and the natural sciences.
In the natural sciences, you can set up an experiment and test something in real time, by means of direct observation. You cannot do that in the historical sciences. Still, we need to have some sense of the past, and this is the task of the historical sciences, as with any form of history. But the kind of "rigor" you get with the natural sciences is simply not to be expected from the historical sciences.
As I mentioned earlier, the historical sciences are about the construction of "likely stories" or, in the technical language, of myths. That technical language is as old as Plato, who first devised it. So, I'm thinking, if what you have to accept as the "best effort" of an historical science is a likely story, you want to make as sure as possible that it is the most likely story that we can get, given the current state of knowledge.
It is probably very upsetting to the post-modern sensibility to even use the word "myth" in connection with this problem. Today, that term is understood as synonymous with "falsehood." But I have to believe that no myth, no matter how fanciful or improbable it might seem to us today, could have long survived if it didn't have something "true" about it.
So what it all boils down to, for me, is this: If the historical sciences are going to present to us myth or legends under the color of science, at least let them make sure that they have considered all the angles, all the available evidence, and to entertain in good faith potential alternative hypotheses. This approach keeps the problem open, rather than just shutting it down to all further inquiry because it has become a "closed" question.
On that score, of particular concern to me would be to find a way to come up with some kind of objective assessment as to how long it might have taken to build these things (and when the expert consulting firm speaks to this issue, they say ten years; but I'd bet, given my recent experiences with the fruits of expert consulting engineers -- I live in Boston, and have seen the Big Dig -- I find it highly doubtful that even they could meet this schedule); then, I would like to see that finding correlated to what can be known about about average human life expectancy during the relevant period. (From what I have read, this would be something like 35 years, based, I gather, on mummy forensics.) I would also like to know what connection, if any, exists between the pyramids and the Sphinx -- which I have read dates at least 10,000 years older than the pyramids themselves. Does the Sphinx have any kind of bearing on the question of who built the pyramids? Or should we just rule that out, right up-front? Other people might have other questions.
I think there are still thing we need to learn more about before we shut the door on the investigation and simply say that we know something that can never really be known, in principle, at all -- at least not in the manner of the natural sciences.
Do you see what I mean? Thank you so much forsnax5 for writing.