RE: Etymology - Information Finding Championship - Season 1 : Round 24 entry
The false etymology thing kinda helped me realize that almost all etymology is false etymology because almost no one truly knows when almost any word started.. Most of it is guess work and there's still a lot of argument about where a lot of words came from.. To me it seems kind of similar to trying to decipher ancient picture written on cave walls, or in the Pyramids in Egypt for that matter.. Even with the Rosetta stone, how do we truly know what those symbols meant that were created so long ago? Many people have trouble proving things that happened last week or yesterday, the average person can't even remember what they ate for breakfast. So.. As exciting as it is to think you've stumbled on the "true" meaning of words, I think one should be careful to realize that... Our knowledge about such is very limited and who really knows what a lot of these words mean.
Also the rule of thumb controversy was something I didn't know before, thanks for sharing such a very interesting entry! :) Oh and congrats on the big payout you got on this one! That's awesome! :D
A couple of my IFC entries have picked up a curie of varying sizes (small ones!), so thank you @ifc and @apolymask for giving me the creative books to write the posts!
I have a feeling linguistic scholars would have a difference of opinion there! Although, like most academic scholarship, the finding and tracking of information is slow and not all fireworks. Sadly, the things that go viral or make it into public lore are not always the things that have the greatest backing in evidence. A honey sweet trap of 'common sense'.
But I think in part, at the extreme end, yes you are right. It is impossible to know for sure how words have evolved. But that is the way of the scientific method! Gather evidence to formulate an idea with falsifiable predictions and outcomes. That said, the non mathematics and physics fields are incredibly loose..
Agreed with pretty much everything you said including how most etymological studiers would disagree, but I think those at the higher levels of study would agree. Most of them anyways. Sort of like how most regular scientific people will claim something like the big bang being the start of our universe is an absolute fact without a question of a doubt. Yet at the higher levels you'll find most of them seem to agree that we don't really know and a number of them believe it was even earlier, so.. That seems sort of typical of the average students in almost any discipline.. They like to think they know almost everything, but when you get really deep into it, you tend to find we don't know as much as most people would like to think. Heh.
Also, glad to help offer some inspiration of subjects for you to post on! That's one of the things I like hearing the most and I hear it somewhat often now.. So it's awesome to know that this game is doing that. Thanks for the feedback! :)
Ha ha, Yes...definitely with any real study there is always endless questions and absolute certainty is something to be wary of. However, too often I see it used to cast doubt on things that are mostly tied up. (not that I think you were doing that!)
However, most of my study in science was in the abstract and theoretical. No bad influences from the real world allowed!