On Wed, 13 Feb 2002 18:42:13 Ron Nossaman wrote: >Many a good idea has been abandoned because it was unrecognized as a good >idea, or was different from the accepted expert opinion, while other much >less ideal approaches became entrenched gospel in spite of the long and >venerable history of problems associated with their continued acceptance as >a standard. True. But it would be helpful to those that come after to talk about those ideas and what was done about them. For example, I've talked before about bridge agraffes (or other string terminations on the bridge). I think this is an interesting idea. There are many patents for various versions and some versions were actually built and put into service. Why was the idea abandoned? I just have to conjecture. Maybe there was a good technical reason or maybe it was purely business or economics. But if there was a technical reason, and if someone who did this and observed it in service for 20 years had written about it in any meaningful way then I wouldn't need to repeat all that work. >How do we know by comparing sparse old notes of the very few >who wrote it down what is gold and what is straw? How do we know that bleeding and leeches are not good medical practice? Because someone, or several people, did a lot of work to prove it and wrote it down. And wrote it down with supporting data so that someone later could look at what was written and become convinced without having to repeat everything that they did. >At a certain point, we're >going to have to quit relying on comparisons of our interpretations of what >a couple of experts past wrote a hundred years ago on what they thought >they knew, and find out for ourselves what they did know, didn't know, and >were utterly mistaken about. At the same time, we can hopefully learn how >much we ourselves know, don't know, and are utterly mistaken about. > >Ron N > Should I reinvent calculus rather than read what Newton wrote several hundred years ago? Should I carve up a few dozen cadavers to learn about anatomy rather than reading Gray? I hope our profession can do better than expecting every generation to reinvent the wheel. But presently, in the case of our profession, I'm afraid that you are right. Those who came before us didn't do a very good job of documenting what they knew, either because they weren't good at that, didn't think it was important, or hoped to profit by keeping things secret. I hope we don't make the same mistake. Phil F Check out Cupid School where you will learn from Matchmaker's best and brightest. Good Luck! http://ecard.matchmaker.com/cupid0202/cupid0202.html
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