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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Proto-Semitic, was WAYYIQTOL

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Karl Randolph <kwrandolph AT email.com>
  • Cc: Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Proto-Semitic, was WAYYIQTOL
  • Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 04:28:20 -0800

On 15/03/2004 01:07, Karl Randolph wrote:

Peter:

If this is what Huxley really said, he was more ignorant than I thought. And not below making an ad homonym attack (even if the bishop asked for it).


Yes, it was an ad hominem attack, and yes, the bishop asked for it. These were not Huxley's actual words, but Huxley approved this version of the story many years later for publication in the official biography of Darwin. I took this from the discussion by Stephen Jay Gould (mentioned below), in "Bully for Brontosaurus".

On what basis do you call Huxley ignorant? Do you know better than he did (although he had just listened to the bishop's speech) about the bishop's acquaintance with the scientific questions under discussion? Certainly you don't know better than Huxley about the nature of the bishop's speech. You may disagree with Huxley on many issues, as I also do, but he did know what he was talking about.

...

Admitting that evolution is not a scientific theory does not falsify it, it merely acknowledges that it is a metaphysical theory, which is a 50? word for religious theory.


I don't want to go into evolution either. But the issue of science and evidence is one that applies in very similar ways to history, including historical linguistics, which itself includes interpretation of texts in ancient languages. It also applies, although partly for different reasons, to most astronomy and cosmology - and for that matter, though for even more different reasons, to some aspects of human biology e.g. understanding the brain. These are all fields in which we are unable to perform experiments, and so unable to use what is perhaps the canonical scientific method. We are restricted to observing the phenomena which happen to present themselves to us. Many of these phenomena, e.g. a fossil, or a text, or a star, can be observed repeatedly, and in this way the deductions made by scholars from the phenomena can be subjected to normal scientific testing - although some are unrepeatable e.g. fossils and texts which crumble away as well as transient astronomical phenomena so we have to rely on records of the initial observations.

Now I can see that according to a certain very strict view of the scientific method this methodology might be considered unscientific. The result is the exclusion from the domain of science of evolutionary biology, of history, historical linguistics and all study of dead languages, and of astronomy (at least beyond Mars, although even there we are observing rather than experimenting) - and of study of the human brain unless we start cutting people up for experiment rather than observing the consequences of injuries and of otherwise necessary surgery.

Alternatively, we can accept a slightly broader definition of the scientific method, and one which I am sure Dr GG Simpson accepted as valid (certainly Gould does), according to which observations are not restricted to repeatable experiments. If we do this, evolution, history and astronomy are acceptable scientific disciplines.

As for historical linguistics, the fossils indicating the existence and development of those languages are the surviving documents written in those languages. Unfortunately, those documents are often just skeletons, even parts of skeletons, unable to flesh out the richness the languages originally had. Where is the skeleton of proto-
Semitic? By your own admission, it doesn?t exist. It is merely a conjecture, based on a theory. To use conjecture based on theory to have veto power over how one should interpret the observed skeleton of a historical language, sounds backwards to me. Especially as long as there is the possibility that the theory may be wrong.


A better analogy here is not with evolution but with physics. Atoms cannot be observed directly. But all physicists accept that they exist because they account for huge numbers of indirect observations. By the same principle, there is no direct evidence that proto-Semitic had a particular form, but various scholarly hypotheses about it are generally accepted because they account for indirect observations e.g. of recorded ancient and modern Semitic languages. There is of course the possibility that the theory may be wrong; there is also the possibility that the atomic theory of matter may be wrong; there is even the possibility that the earth may be flat.

My interpretation of the bones of Biblical Hebrew are that the 22 letters represented 22 consonantal phonemes, each with one sound that existed from Moses to the Galut Babel. The consonantal sounds may have been different than as we interpret the signs left by the Masoretes. Just because a cognate language may have had more phonemes does not mean that Hebrew did. Absent documentary evidence, there is no way to prove, nor disprove, my interpretation.


Which makes your theory certainly no better than the standard accepted one. If you don't accept the latter because of this kind of principle, you had better conclude that it is impossible to say anything about Hebrew except what is immediately deducible from the surviving texts.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/





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