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Principles of Applied Epistemology (APPLIED EPISTEMOLOGY)
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N R Scott


In: Middlesbrough
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Wile E. Coyote wrote:
You start by believing your world is an island (I) of which you are the centre.

I like this. Not quite as quotable as "all history is myth unless proven otherwise", but definitely another premise I'll be borrowing.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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The starting point is always Central.

The most pernicious application of this principle is in astronomy. If you are the earth, then you are the centre of the universe which revolves about you. The Sun and the Moon are your parents, dad and mum respectively. The planets are named and familiar -- your immediate family -- and the brighter stars ie the ones that you can identify and give names too, are the famous people in your society. Then the unidentifiable and apparently uncountable stars are the rest of humanity. It proved difficult to shake until the advent of SCUM theory.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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On line wrote:
Icknield Way
prehistoric trackway from Norfolk to Dorset, Old English Iccenhilde, Icenhylte (903), which is of unknown meaning and origin. There was a Romano-British Iceni tribe in modern Norfolk. The name was transferred 12c. to the ancient Roman road from Burton on the Water to Templeborough.


It's not unknown to the Wolf. Once you have the Icen view.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Wile E. Coyote wrote:
This is of course why later folks considered California an Island....


Based on my map study, which I conducted about six years ago, it was because they confused the latitudes of California and Vancouver (and, possibly, because whoever was controlling California forbade exploration of latitudes above that of San Francisco).
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Mick Harper
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An interesting (to me) case of expertitis came up the other day. As you know it is my proud record that nobody has ever been able to come up with an error in any of my books though everybody is constantly saying, either to themselves or out loud in reviews, “He’s got that wrong.” It always turns out to be a disagreement and not an error. This is actually rather surprising since I’m not very punctilious as a fact-checker. (Hatty is, so that may be the explanation.) Anyway this latest bit of punch-and-judy came about over a passage in The Unreliable History

The British developed in the opposite direction, starting with whimsy and ending in order. Their best tank of the early years was called the Matilda though not on account of her waltzing ability, having a top speed of eight miles an hour. Their worst tank was called the Churchill which serves them both right.

My interlocutor pointed out that the Churchill has claims to being the best tank of the war, and one would have to say such a vast gulf might indeed qualify as an error rather than a disagreement. But it raises some questions about revisionist history so I thought I’d wax a bit lyrical on this (to most of you) obscurely technical point.

More later
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Mick Harper
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Weapons of war get judged by the harshest of criteria, life or death, win or lose, so one would think there would be a fair measure of agreement about their efficacy. But there really isn’t – either then or now. Mostly this is down to the fact that ‘it all depends’. A Spitfire may be ‘better’ than a Hurricane but it may still be better to build Hurricanes instead of Spitfires for a vast number of other reasons. The Germans thought well of the Spitfire when fighting against it, the Russians thought ill of it when using it against the Germans, Germans shot down Russians in droves. Who should one ask?

Not, it would seem, revisionist historians. Who come in waves. Revisionist historians follow AE rules of orthodoxy just as much as ordinary historians -- and of course every serious historian likes to think he is a revisionist historian anyway. So, for example, since the Spitfire is a revered national brand, the first wave can only say, “Not as good as it was cracked up to be.” Then, when a consensus is achieved, the next wave will say, “Well, actually it was pretty damned good.” Not, you will note, “Hey, guys, it was even worse that we thought.” Revisionism doesn’t operate like that. History swings like a pendulum do.

later: we might get round to tanks
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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So, yes, the Churchill. Best or worst? First off, the context. My claim was made in a humorous chapter not about tanks but about tank names. I had reasonable expectations of some latitude on the part of the reader. This is in addition to the whole book being dubbed ‘Unreliable’ so that I could launch new ideas without having to justify any of them as the finished article -- an important consideration and one which fatally handicaps most writers on important subjects. (And most reviewers of books launching new ideas about important subjects.) None of which justifies actual errors, even errors of judgement, so what is the status of the Churchill? Where on earth did I pick up this idea of the Churchill being, allowing for some licence, a pretty bad tank?

From an academic military historian actually. A lecturer from Sandhurst College no less. He was standing in front of a Churchill at the Bovington Tank Museum and traducing it merrily. There then followed shots of Churchill tanks stranded on the beach after the Dieppe raid of late 1942. The reason this had stuck in my mind was the accompanying commentary (I paraphrase): “The Germans were so bemused at the British using what appeared to be their newest and presumably most secret tank on such a hazardous mission that naturally they sent them off for inspection by their own tank experts. The word came back that they were so poor the British had clearly used some failed prototype which they didn’t mind losing in such numbers, to be left in enemy hands.”

But then came the revisionist backlash which, I have to admit, I hadn't kept up with. Will do so in a twinkling.
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Mick Harper
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Sorry, I started saying 'Cromwell' (another British tank) in that last post instead of 'Churchill' -- which I have now amended. It's highly appropriate I got confused because there is a certain amount of confusion about the name 'Churchill' itself. When the tank turned out to be a dud, it was put about that it wasn't named for the Prime Minister but for John Churchill, his illustrious ancestor. Personally, I would have used 'Marlborough' to avoid any possible confusion but anyway, as we shall see, the Churchill turned out not be such a dud after all so no more was heard on the subject.

All this is slightly apocryphal and I should like to hear more from anyone who knows the full (or as may be, actual) story. Now back to our story.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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So we have arrived at an interesting AE position: we have four sets of experts plus me re the merits of the Churchill tank

1. Academics (negative)
2. Revisionists (positive)
3. British tank evaluators (positive)
4. German tank evaluators (negative)
5. Me (evolving)

It is important to understand that I am not an expert. I could presumably become one if I chose but the theory is that it is better I remain an expert AE-ist rather than an expert on Second World War tanks. If only because being an expert on Second World War tanks does not seem to help. However mine is not the only position that is evolving

1. It is a fair bet that academics would now be less negative, they tend to follow the revisionists
2. It is a fair bet that revisionists will in the future be less positive, they always switch positions if it is practical to do so
3. British tank evaluators were known to have had severe reservations about the Churchill (my correspondent informed me of that)
4. German tank evaluators would (if they had any sense, which they mostly did) have revised their opinion subsequently
5. Only my position is not evolving – it is doubtful if I will take much interest in the Churchill tank henceforth.

However, as we shall see, it is only my opinion that is unique to me.
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Mick Harper
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People always think in packs. There is nothing wrong with this – it is the most efficient way of propagating knowledge – except for the ‘always’ part. Consider that Sandhurst lecturer. Did he uniquely come to his position? No, he was expressing the then consensus view of the Churchill. He may have been individually expressing it with uncommon stridency but it is very unlikely that he was single-handedly reversing a once rosy view of the Churchill tank. You would not, I think, be a Sandhurst lecturer very long if you got that sort of reputation.

Similarly, my correspondent (a buff, not an academic) is expressing the current position of revisionists. Perhaps with individual enthusiasm but it is unlikely that he individually woke up one morning and said to himself, “I am going to be the first person in the world to rescue the Churchill from its ill-gotten reputation.” Maybe someone actually did do this and, if so, we would very much like to recruit them to our own AE ranks.

But the professional evaluators are more complicated.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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You get a spec from the government, you design a tank to or near that spec, you build a prototype, you run tests, you mess around with the design, you build a few amended prototypes, the army runs tests, bit of to-ing and fro-ing, thumbs up from army, thumbs up from government, you go into serial production.

A highly rational procedure but also a highly subjective one. You only get, as it were, an objective evaluation when it goes into action. But here's the rub. A tank is only as good as its crew, its tactical doctrine, its support infrastructure, the quality of the opposition, where it's being deployed and so and and so on ... almost ad infinitum. Above all, in a war, a below average tank in the hand is worth two above average tanks on the drawing board. It truly is a nightmare and everyone gets it wrong. To some extent or other and it is quite inevitable. The old AE adage "suck it and see" is sort of being used but it sort of doesn't work because the feedback loop takes too long and the message coming back is ambivalent.

It is only when the smoke has cleared and the historians and the buffs get to work that we can dimly make out .... what exactly?
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Mick Harper
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Coupla suggestions for our World Record lists

1. Name a priest who died while conducting a mass. (Natural causes only, any denomination, possibly any sacrament.)
2. Name a priest who gave his name to a style of artistic endeavour.

The Rev James Granger (1723–1776) fits the bill for both but they're only world records if you can't come up with other examples.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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And here's another one

LitteraCarolina I call for aid! Does anyone have any images of the Missal of Silos, allegedly the first paper #manuscript made in Europe? I'd love to show it to my students next week but simply can't find it anywhere.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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The Missal of Silos aka the Mozarabic Missal is dated 11th century on the grounds that it contains the 'Mozarabic liturgy' which was abolished in 1089.

Wiki says
The missal is held in the library of the Monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos near Burgos, Spain as Codex 6. It is one of a number of liturgical manuscripts of the Mozarabic rite which have been preserved in the Silos library, despite the suppression of the rite by Pope Gregory VII in 1089. However, rather than being produced at the scriptorium there, it originated from the monastery of Santa María la Real of Nájera. Nájera was in Christian territory at the time the document was created, but the paper for the missal is believed to have been manufactured in the Islamic world, possibly Islamic Spain.

The monastery of Najera was on the lucrative Camino de Santiago pilgrim route but its popularity had declined in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

120 of the missal's 157 pages are parchment, only the first thirty-seven are paper. There's no mention of scientific tests though parchment is generally more durable than paper. Either way, the Mozarabic rite was still in use long after the ban so can't be relied on as a dating tool

After experiencing a period of decline during the Reconquista, when it was superseded by the Roman Rite in the Christian states of Iberia as part of a wider programme of liturgical standardization within the Catholic Church, efforts were taken in the 16th century to revive the rite and ensure its continued presence in the city of Toledo, where it is still performed today.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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It's another world record! For imbecility. They'll have to share it though.
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