Origins
I have just finished reading one of my Christmas presents, a very entertaining and surprising book called The Secret History of the English Language. The author begins by arguing that English did not evolve from Anglo-Saxon. He then moves on to claim that Latin in fact evolved from early Italian business shorthand, and then goes into a long digression about the flawed assumptions underpinning Darwinian evolution and paleontology before getting around to his conclusion: that all Western European languages evolved from English, the original language of the prehistoric people who emerged from the cradle of civilization somewhere in the Western Hemisphere, arrived in England by crossing the Atlantic in boats and then spread out all over Europe from there. He could possibly be right. He's very probably wrong.
But the most interesting part of this book is that it's written from a perspective identified by the author as Applied Epistemology, which seems to spring entirely from the maxim "It makes most sense that...". This would seem to be an eminently sensible way of approaching things, but it has its pitfalls. One of these is that it doesn't actually require you to prove anything, very useful when operating in the ages before recorded history when evidence of anything at all is slim. Another is that "what makes the most sense" is clearly a matter of some debate. However, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and I applaud Mr. Harper for his prodding established academia to always remember the difference between evidence and assumption/interpretation, and to keep close track of exactly what is which.
But the most interesting part of this book is that it's written from a perspective identified by the author as Applied Epistemology, which seems to spring entirely from the maxim "It makes most sense that...". This would seem to be an eminently sensible way of approaching things, but it has its pitfalls. One of these is that it doesn't actually require you to prove anything, very useful when operating in the ages before recorded history when evidence of anything at all is slim. Another is that "what makes the most sense" is clearly a matter of some debate. However, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and I applaud Mr. Harper for his prodding established academia to always remember the difference between evidence and assumption/interpretation, and to keep close track of exactly what is which.