Medium Stories of AE Relevance (APPLIED EPISTEMOLOGY)

[Mick Harper]

Applied epistemology applied in an everyday situation.
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In the Pub with M J Harper Dec 26, 2024
What’s he on about this time?

Bloke in Pub: What a load of old bollocks.

M J Harper: Now that is interesting.

BIP: What is?

MJH: I’ve just presented you with a complex idea, completely new to you, yet you were able to reject it in a matter of seconds.

BIP: So?

MJH: That can only mean one of three things.

BIP: Go on.

MJH: One: the idea is so bad anyone can see it’s rubbish straight off. Apart from me. That is profoundly depressing. If everyone can instantly see the flaws except me, it would make me pretty much the dumbest person around.

BIP: Out of the mouths…

MJH: Two: you have such a remarkable brain you can understand, process and reject a complex and unfamiliar idea in seconds. That’s pretty unheard of. OK, my idea might be dumb, which is a nuisance, but your reaction time means one of the world’s sharpest intellects drinks in my local. Not to be sniffed at in this day and age.

BIP: And the third?

MJH: Three: you are an ordinary person behaving in the usual way when confronted with a new and complex idea. It is the brain’s way of keeping its neural networks stable. It has to reject new and complex ideas instantly because choosing between them would require considering all new ideas. Not even my brain is capable of that.

BIP: What a load of old bollocks.

MJH: Now that is interesting.

BIP: What is?

MJH: You have just been presented with three alternatives of a complex nature about something that is completely new to you, yet you were able to reject all three in a matter of seconds. That can only mean one of three things:

One: the three alternatives were so bad anybody could see they were absurd without breaking sweat. Apart from me. I thought they were pretty near definitive. Ergo, I am one of the dumbest people around.

Two: you have such a remarkable brain you could tell the alternatives were absurd in seconds even though an ordinary person, in this case me, thought they were perfectly reasonable and are in fact part of an established procedure. Ergo, I have bought a drink for one of the greatest minds on the planet.

Three: you are an ordinary person behaving in the usual way when presented with a novel choice. See above. Ergo, the search goes on.

BIP: What a load of old bollocks. Can I get you another?

MJH: Please. In a straight glass if you wouldn’t mind.

[Ishmael]

[Ishmael]

[Ishmael]

[Ishmael]

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

A companion piece to the previous
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I believe for every drop of rain that falls
a flower grows Jan 2, 2025

In a previous story https://medium.com/p/65fdf9c97ef9 I explained why, when presented with a novel idea, your first reaction is to reject it. Since the human brain does not have a holding store for ‘new ideas, rejected, but worth revisiting at leisure’ that is the end of the matter.

[Ishmael]

[Ishmael]

I should add that the calendar and pseudo-history phenomenon also clears up all those anachronistic pre-Christian cults that somehow seem to be practicing Christianity in all but name (and all but Christ) but in the wrong time. My thinking is that, wherever one encounters persons in History who appear to be Christians, it is safe to assume they are---and if those persons are existing at a time they shouldn't be, it's the dating that's wrong.

[Mick Harper]

[Wile E. Coyote]

The oldest complete copy of the New Testament is Codex Sinaiticus, a 4th-century Christian manuscript. The proven forger Constantine Simonides (1820–1890), who was well skilled in calligraphy claimed he had forged it, even writing to the Manchester Guardian in 1862 saying it was he.(does this constitute a AE red flag?) Ortho chooses not to beleive him.

[Mick Harper]

Here's some unsorted Hatty material that I must have used at some time. I have certainly denounced the Codex Sinaiticus in my time but I can't find where.
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Wiki article on Sir Thomas P
Sir Thomas Phillipps, 1st Baronet (2 July 1792 – 6 February 1872), was an English antiquary and book collector who amassed the largest collection of manuscript material in the 19th century. He was an illegitimate son of a textile manufacturer and inherited a substantial estate, which he spent almost entirely on vellum manuscripts and, when out of funds, borrowed heavily to buy manuscripts, thereby putting his family deep into debt. Phillipps recorded in an early catalogue that his collection was instigated by reading various accounts of the destruction of valuable manuscripts. Such was his devotion that he acquired some 40,000 printed books and 60,000 manuscripts, arguably the largest collection a single individual has created, and coined the term "vello-maniac" to describe his obsession, which is more commonly termed bibliomania.

During his lifetime, Phillipps attempted to turn over his collection to the British nation and corresponded with the then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Disraeli in order that it should be acquired for the British Museum. Negotiations proved unsuccessful and, ultimately, the dispersal of his collection took over 100 years. Phillipps's will stipulated that his books should remain intact at Thirlestaine House, that no bookseller or stranger should rearrange them and that no Roman Catholic, especially his son-in-law James Halliwell, should be permitted to view them. In 1885, the Court of Chancery declared this too restrictive and thus made possible the sale of the library which Phillipps's grandson Thomas FitzRoy Fenwick supervised for the next fifty years.

Significant portions of the European material were sold to the national collections on the continent including the Royal Library, Berlin, the Royal Library of Belgium, and the Provincial Archives (:nl:Gemeentearchief) in Utrecht as well as the sale of outstanding individual items to the J. Pierpont Morgan and Henry E. Huntington libraries. By 1946, what was known as the "residue" was sold to London booksellers Phillip and Lionel Robinson for £100,000, though this part of the collection was uncatalogued and unexamined. The Robinsons endeavoured to sell these books through their own published catalogues and a number of Sotheby's sales. The final portion of the collection was sold by Christie's on 7 June 2006, lots 18–38. A five-volume history of the collection and its dispersal, Phillipps Studies, by A. N. L. Munby was published between 1951 and 1960.

It’s doubtful that the Ovid ‘missing first nine books’ would have been overlooked – plenty of time between 1946 and 1964 for a forger to produce them.

Thomas Phillips was the victim of a manuscript forger, Simonides
Most gullible of the forger's victims was Sir Thomas Phillips, whom the Grolier Club describes as “the greatest collector of mnauscripts the world has ever known.” Such was Sir Thomas's acquisitive zeal that he ignored the evidence until the very end.

Constantine Simonides (1820 – 1890) was Greek, and links nicely with the Mt Athos forgery centre

He spent several years of his youth from his nineteenth to his twenty-second year, in monasteries on Mount Athos, where he did his best to acquire knowledge and expertise in Greek manuscripts ... maybe his first forgeries, possibly practical exercises in palaeography at the very beginning, are to be dated to here and also his first purchases of Byzantine manuscripts with which he would start trading upon leaving the Holy Mountain. His privileged access to ancient parchments, which he could reuse imitating Byzantine palaeography, took him to Athens 1846-49 where he would try to sell his false manuscripts as if they were authentic; among other treasures he would offer fragments of the Gospels and Homeric poems. Putting forward as evidence his repeated stays at Mount Athos, Simonides claimed that he had found a large number of manuscripts in a secret store, including works by Homer and Hesiod, which he tried to pass off as authentic in Athens. There was, however, no agreement about their authenticity and he left the country. He arrived first to Istanbul around 1850 where he continued with his counterfeiting activity, trying to sell manuscripts to local antiquarians. Simonides then travelled to England, in 1853 where he sold some manuscripts to Sir Thomas Phillips and edited facsimiles of the Gospels whose originals he purported to date to a few years after Christ’s death.

Simonides was denounced several times starting in Istanbul by a German scholar, an expert in manuscripts, in 1853. Simonides purported to have found The Shepherd of Hermas on Mount Athos and to have taken six copies to Europe. His forgeries were sensationally successful. You get the picture.

Interesting article in Wiki
In 1854 and 1855 Simonides tried unsuccessfully to sell some manuscripts for the British Museum and the Bodleian Library. Thomas Phillipps was a less critical purchaser and bought for the Phillipps Library at Cheltenham some manuscripts.
On 13 September 1862, in an article of The Guardian, he claimed that he is the real author of the Codex Sinaiticus and that he wrote it in 1839.According to him it was "the one poor work of his youth". According to Simonides, he visited Sinai in 1852 and saw the codex. Henry Bradshaw, a scholar, didn't believe his claims

P,.S.
A.N.L. Munby
Munby worked in the antiquarian book trade with Bernard Quaritch, Limited (1935–37) and Sotheby & Company (1937–39, 1945–47). He became Librarian at King's College, Cambridge in 1947 and Fellow in 1948; he was J.P.R. Lyell Reader in Bibliography, University of Oxford (1962–63) and Sandars Reader in Bibliography, University of Cambridge (1969–70). He was elected President of the Bibliographical Society in 1974 and died during his term of office

[Ishmael]

[Mick Harper]

Applied epistemology in action
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Climate change: nothing to report January 5, 2025
New Year resolution: it’s old news rather than good news

We have now had long enough — fifty years — to be able to use normal historical and statistical methods to discern trends. They are

* A successful transition of world opinion from ‘there’s nothing to worry about’ to ‘there’s everything to worry about’

* A constant, even a mildly accelerating, implementation of programmes to address the problem

* A constant, even a mildly accelerating, exacerbation of the problem despite the implementation of the programmes

* Nothing new in prospect likely to radically alter this.

In short, we’re heading for the cliff because the actions that put us on this course remain greater than the efforts to alter course, and there is nothing on the horizon to suggest anything will change between now and the cliff.

[Wile E. Coyote]