"Bargaining Chip": Antedating & Mystery

[Rick H Kennerly]

|o| I don't want to get too snobbish -- I myself have no formal training or
|o| academic credentials in the field of linguistics -- but I have
|o| to ask, why
|o| is it that with regard to a subject like physics it's widely
|o| accepted that
|o| people without "credentials" are unlikely to contribute
|o| anything advancing
|o| the field, but with regard to etymology it's "snobbish" to disparage the
|o| assertions of those who operate purely on conjecture?
|o|

The answer is pretty obvious.  The day of unschooled gentleman scientists &
casual experimenters contributing to basic science (vs. applied science) via
direct observation passed around WWII, about the time quantum theory became
pure math & molecular biology went subatomic.  OTOH, any observant reader
can trip up on an antecedent and one only needs a bit of knowledge of almost
any foreign language to turn in a gem, making etymology the 21st century
equivalent of 18-9th century physical sciences for the common man.

In fact, it's painful to ponder the number of useful antecedents passed over
in university classes, reading rooms, genealogy rooms, and bathrooms just
because no one knows that a person on this list is looking for it.  Think of
the power of putting hundreds of thousands of readers to work doing the
spade work of etymology--a kind of SETI project for the bookish.

One may be right to disparage conjecture, if conjecture is all that it ends
as.  However, conjecture is the key to many discoveries, even if the end
product is to prove the conjecture wrong, which is useful knowledge in
itself.  Of course, my view of the bargaining chip question is that neither
side possesses deadly convincing arguments and that the matter is open to
discovery that may fall equally to either an etymology professional or a
lucky, observant reader.

You may take comfort from the history of science, where this exact debate
between the professionals and amateurs raged for over a century.