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January 4, 2008
What Have You Changed Your Mind About?
Every year Edge asks an "Annual Question." The 2008 question is,
When thinking changes your mind, that's philosophy. When God changes your mind, that's faith. When facts change your mind, that's science. What have you changed your mind about? Why?
About 110 intellectual elites ranging from Alan Alda, "actor, writer, director, and host of PBS program 'Scientific American Frontiers,'" to Anton Zeilinger, "University of Vienna and Scientific Director, Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Austrian Academy of Science," gave their personal answer.
I thought I'd give this question a shot. But while many of the invited answerers worked within the framework of their whole life, I thought I'd confine the question to what I have changed my mind about in the last year and that relates in one way or another to my abnormal Interests. Over my life, I have changed my mind on several big things and even more little things. I was once a theist and now I am not. I once thought being a theist or an atheist or an agnostic was important. Now I do not (except when I feel my position is under attack). I do think there are important things in this neighborhood but not theism itself. But those were other changes of mind in other years.
Now I've changed my mind on a number of little things this last year. Perhaps the biggest thing I have changed my mind on is the chronology of Iron Age I and II in the southern Levant. In one way, this is also small thing, but in another, it has nearly stopped a project that I had spent a lot of time working on and it has open up a very interesting bunch of questions that I once thought closed.
I began the 2007 thinking a "mid-chronology" more or less like that proposed by Amihai Mazar was, if not certain, a relatively solid hypnosis from which to work. I no longer think it so solid. Why have I changed my mind? Well, I've read a lot more of Finkelstein's work and took a another look at some of the supporting evidence that Mazar brings to the issue. While there is a lot of related evidence for one side or the other, I have the most trouble with making the relevant destruction layer at Jezreel, with its Samarian architectural feathers and its Megiddo like pottery assemblage fit anything other than a low(er) chronology. Sure, Mazar's chronology can accommodate it to some extend but I think Jezreel pulls everything down rather than just widening the Iron I horizon. And it may not widen it enough at that. But even widening the Iron I horizon adds confusion rather than clarity to the issue. And the there is the 14C study that I discussed several months ago. And if Megiddo comes down, so does Hazor, Gezer and a bunch of other sites as well as Jerusalem. And as the chronological window moves down, the Biblical portrayal of Solomon's kingdom is even more called into question.
Now, I don't take any of this as definitive. It may turn out that Mazar or even Wright, for that matter, turn out to be correct on this. I can live with whatever the case may be. But, I don't think that one can any longer simply assume that a more conventional chronology is correct and go about one's business as if it were. Notice that my change of mind was from what I thought to be a rather solid position to agnosticism on this subject. But I do regard that as a change of mind and one that greatly complicates a number of issues that I find abnormally interesting.
There is another thing I have changed my mind about that I won't discuss in much detail here. I no longer think that the ability of humans to talk using syntax and metaphor evolved 70 KYBP or a little longer ago. From what I've read in 2006 this may well have happen much earlier. Whether we started talking with syntax and metaphor much earlier is another question. But if not, what would drive the evolution of this capability? The good news is that this change of mind does not affect anything I'm currently working on.
Oh yes, and I've changed my mind on how to understand a short Ugaritic text I am working on. In fact, I changed my mind on that several times today.
What have you changed your mind about?
Via Pharyngula
Posted by Duane Smith at January 4, 2008 4:21 PM | Read more on Odds and Ends |
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