It is remarkable how closely scientific and historical heresy corresponds
to the model of religious heresy: identification of a singular idea, oddity
or contentious issue, the elevation of that thing to a central and
overriding importance, leading eventually to the reconfiguring of
everything else in order to explain it in terms of the one thing. The
problem with this is not, as conspiracy theorists would probably claim,
that the centre of the accepted truth is shifted or revealed by the
heretic, but that the heretic proceeds from the assumption that there is a
centre -- and a source -- of accepted truth. According to this model, the
idea that a particular inconsistency in an obviously incomplete historical
record needs to be explained by reconfiguring hundreds of years of history
as the invention of two men is depressingly predictable. Unfortunately, the
heretical mindset is such that all disagreement appears conspiratorial,
which means that no one is going to convince Niemetz of his folly by
patiently presenting historical evidence: he has already decided that such
evidence can be falsified, and if it seems to disprove his theory then it
must be false.
The best way to deal with someone like Niemetz is to put him in a debate
not with a historian, archaeologist or dendrochonologist, but with another
heretic: one who has his own conspiracy theory about the same period of
history, who has compiled his own 'evidence', and constructed his own
eleborate theory. Nobody persecutes a heretic like another heretic.
[This is a silly thread, and the too serene Sarasvati should probably tell
us to shut up now.]
John Hudson, Tenebrae, 2002 AD
Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com
Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com
... es ist ein unwiederbringliches Bild der Vergangenheit,
das mit jeder Gegenwart zu verschwinden droht, die sich
nicht in ihm gemeint erkannte.
... every image of the past that is not recognized by the
present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear
irretrievably.
Walter Benjamin
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