stephen buckley wrote:
> This is getting a bit off list; but I've spent a fair amount of time
> unpicking what writers in past centuries have put in print as 'probably',
> which then becomes 'must have been' and 'was' by stages. It's often hard to
> discover what these suppositions are based on. So three cheers for
> scientific method, whatever the conclusions. And three cheers for people who
> have the courage to say 'I don't know' when they don't.
Hearty agreement. It's what I think of as 'would have' syndrome... e.g.
"People in the Stone Age would have been
goddess-worshippers/pacifists/younameit" 'Surely' works in the same way. It's
a clever linguistic device that sounds authoritative when it isn't. I've always
felt that this simply means the author has no hard evidence but wants this to be
so. Then people come along in good faith and read it as fact. And before you
know where you are, you have a dogma based on no hard evidence, just a lot of
supposition. Folklore's riddled with it. Just think of May Day, not to mention
the Green Man - the whole survivalist thing, holy wells included (back on list -
phew :-)
Katy
--
Katy Jordan
Faculty Librarian, Engineering & Design
Library & Learning Centre
University of Bath
BATH BA2 7AY
Tel: 01225-826826 X5612
-------------------------------------------
http://www.bath.ac.uk/~liskmj/home.htm
-------------------------------------------
|