Comments | iberia: The difference between amateur and professional

iberia

The difference between amateur and professional

Jan 21, 2006 06:58

Last week's (Jan. 20th) edition of The Economist featured a book review in the "Books and Arts" section revealing that last week (Jan. 16) in Beijing and London evidence was revealed bolstering the case that Zheng He, a 15th century Chinese explorer, explored and mapped the New World long before Columbus, between 1405 and 1435. This evidence is ( Read more... )

history

Comments 5

heraclitus January 21 2006, 16:24:55 UTC

I heard yesterday it was shown to be a fake because the map is a Mercator-like projection, which the Chinese did not use at the time the original map was done.

iberia January 21 2006, 16:32:31 UTC

Ah...well, I should say that I am not surprised.

heraclitus January 21 2006, 16:58:51 UTC

No worries. I am sympathetic to your claims regardless of the specific piece of evidence in question.

morsefan January 21 2006, 17:32:36 UTC

I'm not sure your differences here are so much between the amateur and professional, though I would agree with you that very often professionals catch onto things that others do not see or appreciate. Nor are these social science or humanities disciplines (let us not argue over whether history is one or the other -- that has its own set of concerns) so easily divided. A "professional anthropologist" for example, is not necessarily an amateur -- that person is a professional scholar and the steps of removal from historian are not that many. I think the real problem here is the more basic one: professional or amateur, does the work have value? But I don't think the problem is necessarily that dichotomy ( ... )

iberia January 21 2006, 19:38:37 UTC

All your points are well taken, and I agree with them. Unhealthy specialization is something I have been keeping in the back of my head as of late, and have spent much time reading material related to my subjects (generally early modern and modern europe) in parallel (economics, political theory, philosophy, etc.) not just because it helps me understand my subject better, but understand other areas of study as well. In fact, I for a long time now I wish I had more time to fully educate myself formally in several disciplines ( ... )