Talk:Livio Catullo Stecchini

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àI removed the following reference:

It is a pseudoscientists critique of Stecchini's already pseudoscientific metrology. -- Egil 13:18, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

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[edit] Cleanup and dispute

Why have these tags been added when there is no discussion of any such problem on this discussion page??? Ian Cairns 00:12, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] disputed item

  • 1. "Stecchini's work had many elements of pseudoscience."(The first sentence gives him quite excellent academic credentials. Nothing he said is actually proven wrong in the article. What grounds are there other than misinformed speculation and opinion for slandering his reputation?
  • 2. "He complained he was ignored by fellow scientists." Is that grounds for calling himn a pseudoscientist?
  • 3. "His defence of Immanuel Velikovsky did of course nothing at all to help in this respect". How does Stecchini defending Immanuel Velikovsky against speculative, opinionated, slander make Stecchini a pseudo scientist? Does it make me a pseudeo scientist that I say those charges have no legs to stand on that are mentioned in the article?
  • 4. "His work on metrology, despite an impressive amount of factual knowledge, ends in pure pseudoscietific conclusions." Such as what?
  • 5. Stecchini's analysis to the geometry and methods for constructing the Great Pyramid were interpreted for a popular audience in Peter Tompkins' Secrets of the Great Pyramid with Stecchini's "Notes of the Relation of Ancient Measures to the Great Pyramid," in an appendix to the book. Stecchini allowed his impressive amount of factual knowledge to be included in an appendix to a popular book. To lable him a pseudo scientist because his work is included as an appendix to a history of more than a millenia of explorations of the Egyptians tombs and temples which includes all of the explorations NPOV is simply guilt by association. I dispute that there is any substantive reason to resort to a misinformed speculitive opinionated polemic against a reputable scholar who taught for decades with distinction at Harvard and MIT
  • Here is what Stecchini has to say about Petrie who was a highly respected archaeologist and egyptologist know for making careful measurements of a wide range of Egyptian monuments, tombs, temples, mastabas and other structures; actually one of the less contraversial egyptologists who studied the pyramids of egypt. It doesn't seem to show him as a pyramidiot.

"Petrie realized that units of length are fixed with extreme precision and appear very stable, but could not explain this precision by referring to the units of weight. If he had accepted the link between weights and length, there would not have been any problem, since he submitted as one instance of precision of weights that a group of Arab sample weights of the eighth century A.D. differ from each other of not more than a third of gram. Since it is easy to compare and preserve weights, and the units of length vary in the inverse cubic ratio of the weights, it is easy f or supporters of the old school to explain the precision and permanence of standards of length. Petrie was forced to present the absurd theory that the length of the Egyptian royal foot was determined by the length of the pendulum that swings 100,000 times in a day at latitude 30° (latitude of Memphis). This pendulum of 740.57 mm. Is the diagonal of a square the side of which is the Egyptian royal cubit of 523.62. Petrie was truly a man endowed with supreme skill as an observer and classifier of empirical data, but as a theorist he never was able to free himself from the influence of his father who directed him to the study of Egyptology and metrology in order to uphold the pyramidite cause. In one of his weak moments, Petrie also intimates that the Egyptians had the telescope; as a result there is today in the United States a particular conventicle of pyramidites dedicated to prove that the telescope was used in Egypt. In general followers of Petrie have gone back to the purity of pyramidite faith, as exemplified by A. E. Berriman in his Historical Metrology (London, 1953) and in his recent article in the Journal of Egyptian Archeology (41 ( 1955 ) , 48-50 ) . This proves how careful one must be in separating the gold from the lead in Petrie’s writings.

In order to prove that the Egyptian royal foot originally had a length of 523.62 mm. determined by the pendulum, Petrie introduced the theory of progressive lengthening. The length would have become 524 mm., in the Fourth Dynasty, when the Great Pyramid was built, to arrive at the value of 525 in the following Fifth Dynasty, But Petrie himself presented evidence of the use of a cubit of 525 mm. in the First Dynasty and also in predynastic times. It is true that the Great Pyramid was constructed by a cubit of about 524 mm., but, unless one is a pyramidite, there is no reason to believe that the standard of this construction must be taken as the official standard of Egypt. For pyramidites, the Great Pyramid is even more than the official standard of Egypt; it was erected by divine dispensation to be the standard prescribed for mankind; it is usually understood that it is the standard used in Creation and the English standard, According to some pyramidites the great pyramid should also prove that the Fahrenheit thermometric scale, used in Anglo-Saxon countries, is the only one in agreement with divine will." Rktect 19:37, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] References

  • de Grazia, Alfred, Juergens R.E., Stecchini L.C. (Eds.) (1978). The Velikovsky Affair - Scientism versus Science. 2ed., Metron Publications, Princeton, New Jersey.

This has what to do with Stecchini?

[edit] External links

  • An e-festschrift to Stecchini's memory reprinting some scattered material, his controversial essay "The Deluge as Metaphor," an essay on the origin of money in Greece, on the relation between Greece and Anatolia in "Gyges and Homer", and in "The Key to Ancient Architecture," Stecchini's famous analytic measurements of the Parthenon, etc.

These are a list of scientific publications. Egil wants to call Stecchini a pseudoscientist necause he has been published? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rktect (talk • contribs) 20:58, August 27, 2005 (UTC).

I believe my edits have addressed the points above, therefore I'm removing the {{disputed}} tag. Ken talk|contribs 03:59, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rktect's most recent edit

I have made another attempt at a neutral POV on Stecchini. Just as it is a fact that he did a great deal of excellent research on ancient measures, for which he should be honored, it is a fact that the conclusions he drew based on that research are rejected by academia today. It is also a fact that he defended Velikovsky, and that this defence contributed to the disregarding of his conclusions vis a vis the roots of ancient measurement systems. (I will point out as a bit of a side note that Stecchini received the red carpet treatment compared to Velikovsky.) These facts are all part of what made up Livio Catullo Stecchini.

Attempting to whitewash him by removing these facts from the article doesn't magnify his definite accomplishments, it diminishes them. It says "This man's accomplishments are so minor, so unimportant, that any criticism, no matter if it is a matter of public record, will overshadow them." Is that what we really want to say about Stecchini?

Regarding a different viewpoint than is presented here, I can't write it. I believe his conclusions are wrong, right along with the department of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. But that different viewpoint also belongs in this article. Stecchini has both detractors and supporters, so both viewpoints should be equally represented. I challenge Rktect to add that viewpoint in a way which doesn't unbalance the article. Ken talk|contribs 02:28, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

  • Stechinni is to measurements what Manny Rodriquez is to the Red Sox. He hits a lot of balls out of the park and then sometimes he goes into the wall. Though he is not actually rejected by academia today and his work is considered generally solid and fascinatingly interesting and informative, some of his points are controversial, ie; still being discussed. In places his methodology is horible. He often writes in run on sentences and does huge data dumps which can take you all afternoon to check out. He also is very often simply wrong, close but no cigar and he is equally often cited by pyramidiots. Reading him is like a really peaty scotch, an acquired taste.
  • He can also be taken to task for giving "ideal" values calculated to four decimal points. That is very bad methodology, but reflects an historical desire for accuracy and precision well typified by studies of measures of Egyptian and Mesopotamian structures going back three centuries. Piazzi Smyths measurements, (not his views but his measurements) and Coles Survey would be famous examples of this.
  • He's right about lambasting Petrie for suggesting the Egyptian use of a pendulum to establish the degree despite that Petrie is very well respected as "the Father of Egyptology" and made huge contributions to scientific archaeology. Even Petrie occasionally makes an error.
  • I agree with Stechinni prefering to go with the position that Egyptian standards of measure are based upon the size of fields, the containers for grain, standard rations of bread and beer and other commodities, the cannons of proportion in inscription grids and body measures. All of those are standardized in a system where lengths are related to areas as the side of a square and related to volumes as the side of a cube, and there is good generally accepted evidence for that in Gardiner and Gillings so that portion of his work is totally non controversial.
  • His loyalty to a colleauge who had brilliant and imaginitive if unsubstantiated insights in many areas and who was also something of a publicity hound was both misguided and understandable.
  • When Stechinni first encountered Velikovsky he was still regarded as brilliant but weird, and noted for being the sort of chap who could drop by to discuss with Einstein strange esoteric things like the possibility of their being a tenth planet.
  • He simply wasn't all that controversial yet when Stecchini first got to know him. Later when his ideas were picked up by Sitchin and Von Daniken and Grahm Hancock and run into the space aliens and ufo's pyramidiocy of the well hemped 70's he came to be seen as one of the tin hat crowd with his guilt chiefly by association. Velikovsky's discussion of the Ipuwer papyrus is a fascinating read which you can both entirely disagree with and still want to give some thought to.
  • Velikovsky also proposed that the explosion of Santorini might be misdated and tied into the arrival of the Hyksos in Egypt. (There are a couple of things that he proposed that are now accepted as fact but were considered pretty weird ideas at the time)
  • Stechinni is right about the relations between Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman and European measures. That is all generally accepted as non controversial by academia.
  • He is not contraversial in refering to units netto and brutto and trimmed units. Again those are common well accepted concepts in mensuration. He may be completely wrong in some of the conclusions he draws from the concept but he definitely has done his homework.
  • When you cite him you are often tempted to wring his neck because of the inconsistancy.
  • What probably hurt him more than anything else was allowing his appendix to be published in Peter Tompkins book which made him look un-academic because it wasn't an obscure little known scientific journal wheere his peers would review his ideas before they were made public.
  • I have no objection to treating him fairly and noting both his positive and negative contributions, but I don't think Egil has that sort of fair perspective. Before I put any of this in the article I would expect it to be discussed and corrected where necessary but preferably without quite so much attitude. Rktect 17:17, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not going to comment in detail here. Stecchini made several errors of method, performed some number magic in a number of areas to get results he liked, and came to some conclusions not accepted today. I think we agree on that. What hurt him worst in my opinion was the Velikovsky incident; everyone that supported Velikovsky got tarred and feathered. The Tomkins book may have amounted to "science by press conference", which didn't help matters.

But given all that, I think there's definitely a good start to an accurate and unbiased bio here.

Ken talk|contribs 17:16, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The quote on his insight in metrology must be included

Egil, why do you say this? I don't disagree, necessarily, but I don't entirely agree, either. It would seem to belong more in Pseudoscientific metrology.

Ken talk|contribs 17:11, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps - but I must say I believe it describes his approach pretty well - and it is not taken out of context - if you read his texts on metrum.org I think you'd agree it is typical. I have tried to improve NPOV in the added comments, further improvement is appreciated. But on the other hand NPOV should go hand in hand with critical. And really, how can a typical quote be POV? Of course, if someone would find another quote in another contexts that shows another facet of the man, then thats brilliant. -- Egil 19:21, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New attack

Rktect just wiped out all statements critical to Stecchini: [1]

My trust in the content rktect produces is at absolute zero, but it someone is willing to verify everything rktect wrote and merge with existing more critical content, I have no problem with that. -- Egil 15:31, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Educational institutions

Some research shows that Stecchini took a law degree at the University of Genoa, then a PhD at Harvard University. I've found mention that he taught at the University of Chicago and William Patterson State College in Patterson, New Jersey, and Rktect asserts that he taught at Harvard and MIT. This needs to get worked into the bio.

Ken talk|contribs 01:28, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

Kenneth Kitchen and Werner Jaeger are real enough. -- Egil 08:04, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Why revert?

The latest rkteck edit simply wiped out the main indicators of pseudoscience: An elevated ego and lack of self-criticism, and claims of being ignored by fellow scientists. Since Stecchini hands out proof of this on a silver platter in form of quotes, this is certainly not POV.

If anyone thinks something from this latest edit is worth integrating, then go ahead: [2] -- Egil 08:04, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

The reason I removed the POV items is they are simply false and misleading. Your opinions are unsubstantiated. No "quotes" from Stecchini that he had an elevated ego, a lack of self criticism or claimed to be ignored by fellow scientists have been produced. Apparently you think its enough to make a false charge and then repeat it to get it to stick.Rktect 16:15, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] probable pseudoscience

This guy is notable. He may be notable as a crank, but he he notable and he's gotten the public atention to show it. This page is the place to argue about his bio--the length or the discussion should have demonstrated that it's not a qy of deletion but NPOV which is a qy of editingDGG 03:20, 15 January 2007 (UTC)