IE to ProtoSteppe

[Glen Gordon]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

>>The word "roughly"  automatically admits to the possibility of
>>long-range comparison

>-- let's interject some common sense here.  "Agnis" and "Ignis" admit of
>long-range comparison, especially since they both mean "fire".  But for
>comparisons of this obvious and indisputible nature, the period around 4000
>BCE is a _terminus ad quem_.

4000 BCE is a completely arbitrary point of time and can't be used as a
barrier of knowledge without question.

>Basque probably had lots of relatives at one time.  It would be nice to
>know, but we never will.

>>What makes good conjecture from bad conjecture is the amount of
>>likelihood a hypothesis has

>-- which can only be determined if it can be tested.  An explanation
>attributing everything before 4000 BCE to a playful God who created the world
>in 4004 BCE with ready-made fossils and potsherds is explains everything, and
>can't be 'disproved'.  That's what makes it a semantic null set; no possible
>way of disproving it.

>>it's just accepted that sometimes it  behaves as one or the other.

>-- that can be demonstrated experimentally, and has been repeatedly, as
>has action at a distance, etc.

>>but there isn't any undeniable physical proof.

>-- plenty of it, right there on the laboratory bench.

_Physical_ proof of the nature of particles?? I don't think so. It is
based on observation. Experiments can only tell us a pattern. It can't
tell us the actual form of a particle. Don't be daft.