IE to ProtoSteppe
JoatSimeon at aol.com
JoatSimeon at aol.com
Fri Mar 12 03:40:43 UTC 1999
>glengordon01 at hotmail.com writes:
>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_.
Beyond this there are dust-devils, mirages, and wheel-spinning.
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.
>Do you realise that you're completely dismissing the field of cosmology
>and quantum mechanics because of lack of "evidence".
-- they're testable.
>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.
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