[gothic-l] Scientific methodology, Kephart, Dhillon (was); Andreas

[andreas.schwarcz at UNIVIE.AC.AT]

Like Ravi, I have not read Kephart's book, but I read citations and comments on it and it
seems from these comments that Kephart was in his view of development of human
"races" (by the way, a terminology nowadays  obsolete in ethnology for obvious
reasons, the main that there is only one human "race" on this planet and it comprises all
mankind) an enviromentalist. Now the development of modern genetics has made this
stnce scientifically obsolete. So it seems that  there are reasons why his book was not
taken up by the scientific community.
The argument that there is only one scientific method and one kind of evidence is of
course nonsense. Just to give some examples: there are deductive and inductive
methods and there is for instance the tenet of the sciences that hypotheses must be
proven by repeatable experiments, Now try to apply that tenet to a historical hypothesis!
These differences between different fields are the reason why specialists in their own
fields still are amateurs in other fields and this applies also to scientists and lawyers
dabbling in history and philology and vice versa. And to prove an historical hypothesis
is not just a matter of getting enough acceptance to win a majority of votes. The
evidence in history are the sources and their correct treatment in the way I pointed out.
And an example for their correct treatment is the question of "Goths in India". I read
Franz Altheim, die Welt der Hunnen (the book cited by Dirk Faltin) and the evidence
presented there against this supposition is quite conclusive. Any one who wishes to
take up this obsolete theory would have to disprove the evidence against it.
The Goths were a group of several peoples existing in history and geography. They
have their place in time and space and a library full of historical sources exist about
them (and several libraries of serious literature published on the basis of those
sources). We know who they were and where they were from the end of the second
century AD, when they first appear in the sources (and we know about their
predecessors, the Gothones from about the time of Tiberius, and the Wielbark culture
from the end of the first Century BC onwards) till the time of the Chevalier de Busbecqu,
who gave us the last linguistic evidence for the Crimean Goths.
To speculate about Goths in connection with Getae and Massagetae is case for
amateurs, who did not study the way in which Cassiodorus and Jordanes construed
their learned arguments for the Ostrogothic  and Byzantine court in the sixth century.
You can read all about this construction in the books and articles of Arnaldo
Momigliano, Rolf Hachmann, Walter Goffart, Arne Christensen, Herwig Wolfram and
Peter Heather (to name just a few, and incidentally, of course, in some of my own, too).
I f you go on speculating in this direction without taking into account the evidence
against it, you are heartily welcome to do so, as long as it is "just fun", as Ravi wrote in
his response to Dirk Faltin. But do not be surprised if the scientific world goes on to
disregard such speculations.
Take care
                    Andreas Schwarcz
 ao.Univ.Prof.Dr.Andreas Schwarcz
Institut fuer oesterreichische Geschichtsforschung
Universitaet Wien
Dr.Karl-Lueger-Ring 1
A 1010 Wien
Oesterreich
tel.0043/1/42-77/272-16
fax 0043/1/42-77/92-72
email andreas.schwarcz at univie.ac.at



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