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New Analysis Pushes Back Possible Origin For Antikythera Mechanism
We've mentioned several times over the years the Antikythera Mechanism, the astounding early analog computer recovered from a Greek shipwreck in shape good enough to allow modern recreations. The device has been attributed to different Greek mathemeticians and thinkers, such as Archimedes, Hipparchus, and Posidonius, but as reader puddingebola writes, "Current research suggests its origin may be much earlier, and its working based on Babylonian arithmetical methods rather than Greek Trigonometry, which did not exist at the time. Puddingebola excerpts from the NYT article:
Writing this month in the journal Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Dr. Carman and Dr. Evans took a different tack. Starting with the ways the device's eclipse patterns fit Babylonian eclipse records, the two scientists used a process of elimination to reach a conclusion that the "epoch date," or starting point, of the Antikythera Mechanism's calendar was 50 years to a century earlier than had been generally believed.
That seems like a weak assumption to start from, that is, if you were trying to make a device that predicted eclipses and wanted to check that it was working wouldn't you set the device to begin calculations for some time period during which you have reasonable records, say 50-100 years in the past...
There were other such devices such as the tower of the winds. The Greeks did not nessasary discover log the data from the heavens, what they did work out is that the heavens followed mathematical rules and so simple equations could be used to predict the behavior of the heavens and not the whims of the Gods. Hence you could convert the equations to gear mechanisms and off you go ...
Except for the fact that it's complete pseudo-scientific bunk, promoted by the likes of frauds like Von Daniken:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
How many ideas and creations have been lost only to be rediscovered, like the Baghdad battery, or the antikythera mechanism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Hey, he may not have been Tolkien, but it was still some great fantasy there. . .
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
It's not really significant that Von Daniken used it in his work, it's that at least much of it seems to have originated there, and for the bits that may not, there aren't any references from earlier sources that are actually considered any more reliable. What a hoaxter promotes is less significant than what he originates. I bring this point up because there are some people, such as Carlos Casteneda, that tend to occasionally mention some real bits in the middle of runs of pseudo-science, and readers end up dismissing those bits when they run across some obvious hokum. Velikovsky is another good example. A good con-artist bothers to build on some real research, making it harder to winnow the chaff because they have left clues to a little wheat.
Who is John Cabal?
Correctly so because science is based on evidence, not wild speculation or serendipity.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If this device hadn't been found, anyone and I mean ANYONE who dared to suggest that such technology existed in this time-frame would be described, ESPECIALLY on forums like this one, as a complete 'anti-scientific' 'nutter'.
There are records of such devices (or at least related ones), but the Antikythera mechanism is the only surviving one. Cicero, for instance, describes an orrery which shows the motions of the moon and planets. Ancient Rhodes was famous for its automata.
soylentnews.org
Antibiotics are a nice example of serendipity.
soylentnews.org
Difference being that relativity was mathematically deduced from a simple set of hypotheses.
Are you saying that archeologists don't follow scientific method? Because that is not how I have experienced archeology. Archeologist have to construct hypotheses based on certain evidence and then set out to prove them like everybody else. Of course you can't obtain your proof sitting on your ass in an air conditioned office deducing mathematical formulae, you have to go out and dig around in the dirt to find you proof. If an archeologist finds marble sheets in Roman ruins around Europe and the the Middle East bearing clear saw marks he can go with conventional wisdom which for a long time would have had us believe these slabs were produced by slaves using bronze hand-saws in painstaking and wasteful manual labour. However, an archeologist, with a bit of imagination might note that the slabs are a bit too uniformly sawed to have been produced by hand and he might also recall from conversations with his colleagues in the department of history that there are plenty of accounts in ancient sources pointing to sophisticated machinery being used in ancient times even though these accounts are often dismissed as fantasy or written off as references to grain mills etc. So taking the risk of applying a bit of imagination to the scientific process the archeologist could perhaps hypothesise that the Romans weren't stupid and that it is likely they developed the process of sawing stone to a high degree of technological sophistication. He could then go and try to confirm that hypothesis by looking for remains of stone processing facilities like, say the stone saw mill at Gerasa in Jordan where large blocks of half sawed marble blocks have been found with several parallels saw marks in them. This site and others like it demonstrates conclusively that the stone was being mechanically sawed into sheets of marble using water wheels at least some 1300 years before the industrial revolution. While I'm sure that mathematics is more logical, rigorous and absolute than many other disciplines of science I'm pretty sure that Einstein in particular with his numerous and fascinating thought experiments found plenty of room for imagination in his work.
Correctly so because science is based on evidence, not wild speculation or serendipity.
The scientific process involves all three. Scientific results is the subset limited to evidence.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Correct. The scientific method requires a hypothesis, which may be hinted at by evidence but still requires imagination to extrapolate from preliminary evidence and hints toward a possible outcome. A bad hypothesis can stifle an outcome. Moreover, once evidence is gathered, the more speculative the conclusion the more imagination is required to piece disparate evidence together into a plausible possibility. The Antikythera device is a great example of this, because at least from what I've seen, much of the speculation about it is grounded on some very tenuous evidence because of the condition of the device. It is not entirely clear what it looked like, because its original appearance has to be extrapolated from heavily corroded junk, and this requires a lot of speculation and imagination.
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
To get today's reactions, it used to be necessary to drop the name Tesla - the man, not the car.
But your example is about fitting various pieces of evidence together to come up with a theory that challenges previously held beliefs, our AC friend at the top there seems to have missed that bit out. It doesn't matter how true something is, if there's no evidence for it then it's not scientific.
But also of observation (that bacteria were killed by mold) and methodical experimentation (isolating the mold, extracting the antibiotic chemical and performing control trials on animals). Use of Penicillin wouldn't have happened without those further steps.
Umm, no. Perhaps you missed the part where Einstein wasn't actually all that hot at math, and the mathematical formulation of his theories was actually constructed by a mathematician friend, with Einstein claiming (possibly only humorously) to be unable to understand them. Or so I remember the story.
Relativity, like all theoretical physics, was constructed on thought experiments - aka logically creative speculation. There has been lots of mathematically deduced *implications* of the theory, but that "simple set of hypotheses" *is* the theory - the formula are only the mathematical description of it. And it wasn't until years later that there was the slightest shred of evidence that they actually described reality.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
But without the speculation, the experiments which eventually accumulated the evidence would never have been performed.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
"If this device hadn't been found, anyone and I mean ANYONE who dared to suggest that such technology existed in this time-frame would be described, ESPECIALLY on forums like this one, as a complete 'anti-scientific' 'nutter'."
Yes, exactly that.
And there lies the difference between a scientific mind and a nutter: once the device was found and found to be legit, the 'anti-scientific' tag is gladly removed and the implications researched.
The nutter, on the other hand, will still insist that "man was never on the Moon" or whatever is his preferred conspiracy theory no matter what.
"Perhaps you missed the part where Einstein wasn't actually all that hot at math"
Relatively speaking -pun intended.
Einstein might not be as good at maths as his friend Marcel Grossman, but he still could beat your pants off any day of the week unless you are a professional physic or mathematician (and Grossman helped Einstein on his General Relativity work, once Einstein already had published what earned him his Nobel Prize -just to put things into perspective).
"it wasn't until years later that there was the slightest shred of evidence that they actually described reality."
Well, up to a point. Einstein didn't work in isolation and Michesol-Morley experiment, back in 1887, put a serious crack to the ether theory and Einstein just worked on that wave. Fizeau's experiment's results from 1851 also were a perfect match -another pun intended, for Einstein's special relativity. So by the time his paper was published (1905) it already described known reality better than any other theory and it also showed very promisory as it cleanly put together things that previously didn't fit (electricity and magnetism).
"But without the speculation, the experiments which eventually accumulated the evidence would never have been performed."
That helps to produce a romantic narrative, but it is not usually the case.
Usually evidence gets gathered by "mere" observation of natural phenomena or by structured attack to current theories that, oh, surprise, happens not to render the expected results (falsification).
Usually, *only* when it's already suspected that a theory (or group of theories) has a flaw or a crack *and* there is an alternate theory that offers a clear falsification experiment, you go for the experiment after the speculation.
Generally speaking unexpected results point to a crack in the existing explanations, but they rarely point directly at an alternative. There then exists a period where lots of intelligent people speculate wildly and come up with lots of different alternate explanations that fit the new data, and try to come up with new experiments that would confirm them. Most explanations get rapidly disproven, and the handful that remain then compete for mindspace among the broader community until they are either disproven or another non-disproven hypothesis manages to decisively win the popularity contest.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Babylonian makes a whole lot more sense. By the time the Greek civilization was in full gear the deeper mysteries from pre-Egyptian civilization had already been lost. How do I know? Well, I don't KNOW first hand, but I believe the people who have been there, a-la- the old writings and edgar cayce etc. Plus there's the archaelogical records. And old structures, built for air breathing beings, that have been submerged for well over 18,000 years. And constructions of machined rock so hard that even diamond woould have a hard time cutting it. And 16,000 year old massive underground excavations in Turkey designed with modern scientific airflow principles. So that they would have an "abacus"like computer doesn'ty surprise me. And it's not made of iron and por copper or whatever metal it's made of, out of primitivism.It's advanced foresight, for a society that would have lost all electric power. A few Carrington events and this would be the only kind of computer we could use, too. It's obvious that they had electric power before that, because there is not a single mark from torchlight in the Great pyramid. None. So how did they see inside there, if not electric power? Besides theres heiroglyphics that show electric lamps. So yeah..the AK Mechanism? it's old old old...
Ah yes "sigh" We all know that all great discoveries are made in a vacuum. That science is just religion in disguise and only the priests of it can undersand crazy new theories That science is a waste of time and has no bearing on modern society. And.. hoo.. must be a dozen more crackpot ideas floating around about science and scientists. Funnily though, the one that gets very little traction is that major scientific descoveries are made with plain old hard work. By examining other current research into that area. And that these discoveries do indeed impact society in a beneficial way. Not only do these last points get little traction, I read the antiscience brigade comments repeatedly aired out online! Written on a computer! Go figure....
If you just take the CAPITALISED words and ignore the rest inbetween, you still get a load of nonsense, but at least it's only a couple of lines.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it