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[Galen Brokaw]

Evidently both Bernard's post and my response were unreadable. I think 
Bernard accidentally reposted his message to Aztlan. I reposted mine 
again in response to his before I realized that it was going to Aztlan. 
I'll repost it here for anyone who is not subscribed to Aztlan:

My main point here has to do with the way in which one engages in 
scholarly debate, not with the accuracy of Brotherston's work. Of 
course, the burden of proof of any given argument is on the claimant, 
but that includes the claimant who wishes to refute someone else's 
argument. Of course, such refutations can be made on both substantive 
and methodological grounds. It is perfectly legitimate to point out 
logical or methodological flaws that invalidate an argument, as Bernard 
seems to do. My point is that you can't just dismiss someone's work by 
merely asserting that it is fantasy. Bernard, it seems to me that your 
criticism engages with Brotherston's work in a perfectly legitimate way, 
and I have no problem with that. This type of engagement makes possible 
a responsible dialogue about substantive issues. For example, although I 
haven't searched for the passage that you cite in your message, just 
based on that quote in isolation, one could argue that your criticism of 
this statement is based on a misreading: it doesn't seem to me that 
Brotherston is claiming that "the Aztecs contrived their creation story 
so that one day in their 260 day ritual calendar would match the Spring 
Equinox of a year some 4700 years in the past." In the quote, he says 
that it "incidentally coincides" with the spring equinox. Saying that it 
is incidental by definition means that it was not contrived. In 
isolation at least, Brotherston's statement merely seems to be pointing 
out the fact that the systematicity of the calendar has certain 
incidental effects that contribute to our understanding of its 
systematicity. In the larger context of the quote, maybe there would be 
more to say. In the case of the serpents and the numerical significance 
of their dots, I don't have an answer. Maybe you have a valid criticism 
there. This is precisely the point, which is that we can discuss these 
things and disagree about them in substantive terms rather than 
dismissing them out of hand. As I said before, I'm not claiming that 
Brotherston's work is flawless. Whose is? However, even if it is more 
fraught with error and/or speculation than other work in the field, that 
does not mean that it is pseudo-scholarship.

Galen


ANTHONY APPLEYARD wrote:
> These two messages from this group:
> From:	brokaw at buffalo.edu at Mon, 21 Jan 2008 22:47:33 -0500
> From:	bortiz at earthlink.net at Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:27:01 -0500 (EST)
> both with title
> Re: [Nahuat-l] Aztec World Ages and the Calendar Stone
> reached me as a random jumble of characters, e.g.:
> "J‰žÉ櫱¨("Z(‘çi­ëmÉÉh±érjÐk¢Ø^®ËhžÃÚŠ{^t(’Ê1ìbr†§uú.ÛajØ­r‰íj)Þv"
> What mode were they input as?
> 
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> 
> 

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