I am not sure what you mean. People were building bridges and houses
before Isaac Newton. But phyics allowed also building of rockets and
computers, but not in 1700s or 1800s. Kessler used probability theory
in a nontrivial way for the first time. This can be done for every language
now instead of using heuristics.

Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:

----- Original Message -----
From: "H.M. Hubey" <hubeyh@...>
To: <Nostratica@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 01, 2003 2:57 AM
Subject: Re: [Nostratica] One, first, head, finger


> Mathematics based comparative method.
>
> For the first time the results can be said to be "rigorous" instead of "heuristic".
>
> The best part is not the math. That can be found in a chapter on any book on statistics. The best part is all the linguistics he goes through to explain why all that must be done.

Would you care to give a couple of examples showing what is innovative in that approach? Is there anything new Kessler has contributed rather than simply reproducing results that are already well known?

Piotr




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-- 
M. Hubey
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The only difference between humans and machines is that humans
can be created by unskilled labor. Arthur C. Clarke

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