Re: Genealogy question - confirming links


"John Cartmell" <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4f8d6bb4f1john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <j7Wdncupps4BdGHanZ2dnUVZ8vCdnZ2d@xxxxxx>,
Don Moody <dpmoody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Don definitely would (continue to) say there are no certainties in
genealogy.

I;d also say that the myth of confirmation from three sources is
inherently unscientific. In the first place it means nothing at all
if
two additional sources trace back to one occasion of one informant
giving information, Any confirmatory value could only arise if
there
were three independent sources of information given by three
different
informants on three different occasions.

But in fact is wouldn't matter if there were 3 million such
independent confirmations. Just one inconsistent piece of
information
falsifies the whole thesis. The absolute best that can be said of
any
genealogical result is the absolute best that can be said of any
scientific proposition: it hasn't been falsified yet.

The trouble is that the information that indicates a link to be
false can be
misleading/wrong. Granted 3 independent sources that the link is
correct - and
one that says it is wrong - then do you say 3 against 1 wins, or
demand (how
many) other sources for the positive?


What I would say is that no matter how many independent sources
confirm something, one to the contrary is enough to falsify the
theory. That assumes that all confirmatory and non-confirmatory have
been evaluated and the sources are regarded as reliable. If the
non-con-confirmatory one were, say, one of the dreaded 'patron
submissions' and the 'patron' concerned had no record of reliability
in research, then I would take no notice of it. Non-confirmatory
things which are internally ridiculous and or inconsistent would get
no weight either. In other words this is where the strict philosophy
moves into the realm of subjective judgement of the validity of data.

Nevertheless if one well-argued inconsistency exists the original
thesis has to be regarded as falsified until the inconsistency is
resolved.That is until a theory is produced which consistently
explains both the old data and the new data. For a simple example 'The
angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees.' You can draw millions of
triangles for which that is true. With a tennis ball and a biro you
can draw one triangle which shows it isn't true. Start at any point,
draw a quarter of the way round the ball, turn the ball at rightnagles
to the line and draw a quarter round again, turn again at rightangles
in the same sense and draw a quarter way round again. You'll meet the
original line at rightangles. You now have a triangle the angles if
which add up to 270 degrees. It is also. incidentally, [possible on
another common object to draw a triangle the angles of which add up to
les than 180 degrees. The way out is to define triangles in such a way
that all three situations become 'true'. That realisation was known to
Euclid himself but he couldn't work on all cases. So he chose
triangles in a plane, and hence the whole of Euclidean geometry, which
had the practical merit that it was near enough the truth for
building, surveying small plots and so on; that is to say parts of the
Earth sufficiently small to be taken as planar for practical purposes.
But Euclid was the first non-Euclidean geometer, and to know that
non-planar geometry existed he had only to do one simple thing. Stand
on the seashore and look at the horizon.

The difficulties in putting the logical into the genea are twofold.
Human lies in giving information and human error in recording,
transcribing and searching. They are not reasons for sloppy thinking.
They are reasons for precise thinking and not claiming more that the
evaluated underlying data supports.

Do you KNOW who your mother was? No you don't and neither do I or
anybody else KNOW theirs. All you've got is hearsay from somebody who
told you she is your mother, and a birth certificate on which she
claimed she was your mother. You weren't there to witness your own
birth, to check that the infant was 'bagged and tagged', or to check
that the correct infant was given to the woman out of whose uterus you
came, or to witness that there was no changing or substitution right
up to the time when you became self-aware and could make observations
presentable in court as direct evidence based on your own
knowledge.Anybody who disbelieves that is welcome to read up recorded
cases un the courts about 'Mum' being handed the wrong 'Baby'

And as for your father being your father, I've been reduced on
occasion to saying that the only certainly true statement in genealogy
is 'father unknown'. Population stats are such that there is only a
50/50 chance that the paternal 3-greatsgandfather of a person, as
'proved' by documentation actually is 3-greatsgrandfather.

Don


.

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