[tied] Re: Grimm's Law is about to expire (Collinge 1985, p. 267, T

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:

>
>
> --- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "ehlsmith"
> > <ehlsmith@> wrote:
> > >
> > > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mkelkar2003"
> > <swatimkelkar@>
> > > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_India_theory>
> > > ...........
> > > > "Mainstream opponents to the OIT (e.g. Hock[11])
> > agree that while
> > > > the data of linguistic isoglosses do make the
> > OIT improbable it is
> > > > not enough to unequivocally reject it[12], so
> > that it may be
> > > > considered a viable alterative to mainstream
> > views, similar to the
> > > > status of the Armenian or Anatolian hypotheses."
> > >
> > > Only if one uses a much looser definition of
> > "viable" than is normal
> > > in academic and scientific discourse. Accepting
> > hypotheses which are
> > > considered improbable but which cannot be
> > unequivocally rejected
> > > would be a violation of Oakham's Razor, and would
> > open the door to
> > > all sorts of crank scholarship.
> >
> >
> > Apart from the inadvisable in attempting to violate
> > a razor, Occam's
> > wasn't about improbabilia, but about the number of
> > entia. Appealing to
> > the a priori sense of improbability of any
> > scientific community will
> > make its field forever sterile.
> >
> >
> > Torsten
>
> ****GK: Thus, if we have 2 or more hypotheses
> concerning some issue,each of which is "viable" in the
> loosest sense of the term, one would be expected to
> opt, other things being equal, for the most "viable",
> least "improbable" etc.as the case may be. OIT may be
> in the ballpark, but it is so far behind AIT (say a
> million -to-one as compared to 2-to-one or better)
> that wasting time on it, in the absence of any more
> potent support than desperate subjective wish, is
> practically a scientific crime.*****

http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/LangIdeo/Koerner/Koerner.html

This general non-recognition of ideological consideratins playing a
role in linguistics and its methodology is deplorable not simply
because of the lack of social consciousness and sense of intellectual
responsibility which this attitude among scholars reveals, but also
because linguists can be shown to have been particularly prone to
cater, consciously or not, to ideas and interests outside their
discipline and, as history shows, allowed at times their findings to
be used for purposes they were not originally intended or simply
joined up with certain trends."


"Although it is obvious from his own account that a considerable
number of authors had ideological, including at times religious and
maybe even political, agenda, Mallory does not raise the issue of
ideology, quite in line with traditional scholarly discourse in which
this aspect of scientific endeavour has been regularly ignored."

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