Re: [asa] historical science?

I agree. YECs make the extreme claim is that we can't know with certainty events that occurred prior to human history because nobody was there to witness it. But more subtly, the term "historical science" is often used to imply a lesser status for geology, astronomy and evolutionary biology. But in fact time is opaque to us. While God sees beginning and end, we can only see and experience the slice of time that is the present. We can't see the past any more than we can see the future. We only think we can see the past because we have an vivid but imperfect record of the past that our brains make called a memory. The only way we can know about any past event is by viewing a record of the past, and our knowledge of past events depends on the quality of the record. Memories aren't that good, I would much rather have a photograph. But even a photo only shows what's in the frame. Human testimony can be affected by memories (which may be faulty), vested interest, language barriers!
  etc. People lie. A physical record of a past event can't lie. It's the quality of the record that determines our certainty of knowledge of past events. We know that Trilobites existed in the Cambrian with more certainty than we know who killed JFK.

Brent

---- George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com> wrote:

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snip
There is some point in talking about "historical sciences," though for geology & astronomy it might be better to say "natural historical sciences." But the notion that there is some fundamental difference between them and other natural sciences is spurious.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/

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Received on Mon Sep 10 13:31:22 2007