history

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Science and history posts

Posts on science and history: 10/17/2018 – Science and history once more July 27, 2018 – Science or stories 3/13/2018 – Science and history again 2/19/2018 – Distinguishing history and science January 17, 2017 – Combining history and science September 19, 2016 – History and science once again December 15, 2015 – From history to […]

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Church and ethnos

Most Christian congregations have an ethnos, a term from cultural anthropology for people with a common national or cultural tradition. Congregations are usually part of a larger network, denomination, or hierarchy, which has at least one ethnos. (Eastern) Orthodox autocephalous churches are national churches, which include the ethnos of their nation. The (Roman) Catholic church

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Creation and flood

The Bible includes a creation narrative of the universe in general and humanity in particular and a worldwide flood narrative. Are these accurate? That is usually interpreted as the question: are these the earliest accounts? Let’s see. There are many ancient accounts of creation (see here and here) and flood (see here and here). These

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History and science once more

History within the bounds of science is surely the only genuine history. That should not be controversial. If perpetual motion machines are scientifically impossible, then claims that one was invented in the past must be rejected. Does history only within the bounds of science exclude the resurrection of Christ from history? No, since there is

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Three racisms

A previous post on racism is here. This is a big picture, philosophical look at racism or racisms (as in Francisco Bethencourt’s Racisms: From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century, Princeton University Press, 2014). It is also historical, although that is incidental to the philosophical progression. Racism means treating people differently (e.g., negatively) depending on

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Science or stories

Science has no stories. Stories have characters, plots, and narratives. Science has data, hypotheses, postulates, and theories. Science and stories are different. They should be kept separate. Stories can refer to science or be about scientists, but that is not part of science. Science can refer to stories or collect data from stories, but that

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Interesting universe

This post continues a series on history and science, see here and here. The development of the comparative method in linguistics led to the genealogy of languages in the 19th century. This diachronic approach was largely abandoned in the 20th century with the rise of synchronic theories. In short, linguistics pivoted from history to science.

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Science and history again

To some extent the sciences of society and history can be pursued as if they were natural sciences. For example, groups of people exhibit some characteristics of natural objects, and so reflect physics to some extent. On the other hand, the physics of social beings is different in a complementary way from the physics of

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Distinguishing history and science

The post continues several posts on history and science such as here and here. All histories are part of the humanities, which are separate from the sciences. There is no scientific history or historical science – that would be like a round square. A purported scientific history or historical science is either science and not

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