Re: [asa] YEC--What can we offer them?

Randy Isaac wrote:
> Moorad,
> I know we've discussed this many times before and we may not make any
> more progress this time either. But "history/forensic nature type"
> doesn't change anything about the nature of knowledge. The only
> distinction between "historical" sciences and other sciences is that we
> may never be able to get all the data we would like and may not be able
> to reproduce at will an event like the formation of the earth. But the
> basic principles of scientific endeavor are still valid and relevant and
> to the extent we have the data, the conclusions are as valid as any other.
>
> Randy
>

Randy

While I agree with you that in principle that the historic and forensic
nature of some science and also at least the fact side of history yet
the repeatability and the abundance of data does affect our level of
certainty. I also recognize that characterizing this as historic and
forensic does not quite capture the essence of the issue as all of
astronomy deals with events in the past, even an observation of the sun
is always roughly 8 minutes old.

Just this last weekend reenactments of the UELs fleeing the 13 colonies
shortly after 1776 and invasions of Canada by the USofA Army and Navy in
the 1812 time frame. Some of the clothes people were wearing are
literal hand me downs in families or were created from direct hand me
downs in the late 1800s. I saw replica sail and row boats roughly 20
feet long that mounted small ~1" cannon that were used to cross Lake
Ontario. Those troops were gutsy folks as I would not want to cross
Lake Ontario in such a boat as I sail these waters many days during the
summer and know how fast a storm can come up and how big the waves can
get and how short the time period can be. Usually replica tall ships
also show up for the reenactment but this year they were unavailable.
Do I have any reasonable doubts that what was portrayed happened? No
Are some of the details of the boats, uniforms, 13+ stripe/star Betsy
Ross style flags flown wrong? Absulutely. Major canals and forts were
built in Upper Canada to protect shipping and still exist today.

Dave W (CSCA)

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Wed Jul 4 08:17:48 2007