Absence of evidence, and evidence of absence

[Jeff J]

Discuss.

[D. Sebastian]

evidence of absence

Is evidence.

Absence of evidence

Is baseless speculation.

[Corey D. Sullivan]

I will say that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, but I wouldn't argue that.

Also, isn't it pretty much impossible to provide evidence of complete absence?

[Maeryk]

I will say that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, but I wouldn't argue that.

Also, isn't it pretty much impossible to provide evidence of complete absence?

No, you can provide evidence of absence.

I can pretty much say no polio vaccine existed before Salk (I think?) invented it.

I cannot say there were no folk remedies for it, because absence of evidence proving their existance does not mean they didnt' exist.

(That's a really clumsy example, but...)

[welder]

Absence of eloquence is evidence of absynthe.

Discuss.

[Mord]

Oh sigh...

The absence of evidence in a specific context (which is a specific source) means those people who created that context didn't think what you are/were looking for is/was important.

The real problem occurs when there is very little evidence of a phenomena in one source and no evidence of that same phenomena in another.

For instance, let's say a literary source (a written story) states that a lady of the court gave a samite sleave of her gown to a warrior as a token of affection as he was about to leave for battle. But in an inventory of that court we find no mention of samite textiles. In fact, we find no mention of textiles at all.

What does this mean?

A. That textiles were not important to those folks who kept and oversaw the inventory.

B. We do not know if the giving of samite sleaves was a common practice, or even practiced at all, since it's entirely possible that the literary source (the story) could have ficitonal elements in it (dividing the ficitonal from the ture is not always so easy), and that we have no other sources to corroborate the practice.

Mord.

[James B.]

I think people don't understand how to rationalize things in a historical context.

We do not have an extant scale helmet from the 14th century but that is not "Absence of Evidence" because we have written accounts, inventories, and artwork of them; making a scale helmet with known armor making methods based on that art is a reasonable assumption.

[Cap'n Atli]

"Absence of proof is not proof of absence. A whole lot of absence of proof sure drops a strong hint, though!" (David Tristan the Elder)

Pretty much sums it up for me. As for attitudes, I agree with Balderdash:

“Some people take their vacations in Ocean City; we take ours in the 10th century.â€

[AriAnson]

I think some people base too much on a single find or piece, and treat items from noble burials as common everyday items.

[Charlotte J]

A lot depends if you’re trying to make an educated guess based on some other period mention or source, or if you’re trying to back-document a modernism.

There’s tons that we don’t know, but that doesn’t mean that you can just make stuff up. Well, you *can* for certain applications (can as in “nobody is stopping youâ€

[Jon Terris]

We have adopted a phrase that means pretty much the same thing:

"Lack of Evidence is Not Evidence of Lack"

often abreviated to LENEL

It is an interesting point that can work on both sides of an arguement!

[earnest carruthers]

Beat me to it Mr Terris,

I would add that

LENEL is used more often than not to justify agendas:

"You can't prove they didn't have one/do such and such therefore I can"


Char

"or if you’re trying to back-document a modernism."

indeedy, sadly I see LENEL used a lot for this line of reasoning.

[Marc van Hasselt]

There is a lot that can be inferred from a complete absence of evidence, actually, in specific circumstances. There are some examples where a chronicle will completely fail to mention rather touchy subjects like a conspiracy to kill the king, while other documents (annals, charters, etc) do. There are several examples of this, I believe.

However, as with Jeff's example, there is still evidence, from the period, to support any theories. If you want to use something not mentioned in any text, found in any artwork or dug up in any dig, you're using it because you want to. Not because it is in any way historical to do so. Which is fine, we are doing this for fun, after all. Just don't say that it might be historical because evidence may be found to support your claim some time in future. This is not even speculation, it is not history, it is simple a justification so you can do what you want.

Again, which is fine. It is not, however, history.

[Glen K]

The question becomes "to what end are you saying/doing this?" Is it to make things easier for yourself, or your group, i.e. laziness? Or creature comforts? Or is it rather a logical constructive process to address difficult questions that don't have easy answers. The topic that springs directly to my mind is the question of padded undergarments for mail in the 11th (ish) century: Did they have them? If so, where, when, of what type, etc? There is a complete lack of direct evidence for them in this timeframe, but there is plenty of evidence for similar garments shortly before and shortly after this period. The question hasn't been answered (and might never be), but those who say "there definitely wasn't any such thing because there's no evidence" are just as obtuse as those who say "well, logic dictates that they MUST have had them.

[Oswyn_de_Wulferton]

There is a complete lack of direct evidence for them in this timeframe, but there is plenty of evidence for similar garments shortly before and shortly after this period.

Bolding mine. I was unaware of any padded undergarments before the 11th century (discounting Roman, as it isn't "shortly"). Care to shed some more light, Glen?

[Matthew Amt]

I have to say that when someone throws that line at me, I answer with "Yawn!", or something ruder. It seems to be an "intellectual" version of "If they'd'a had it, they'd'a used it". And it usually is a good indicator that someone is going about things all backwards, trying to rationalize what he or she thinks is "cool" or "looks good" or whatever.

Better idea: stick with the EVIDENCE. Use the best evidence that you have, argue endlessly over its strengths and weaknesses, and try to do as little speculation as possible. Simple philosophy, and hours of fun for the whole family.

Mind you, I always approach these arguments from the viewpoint of trying to build historical (or prehistorical!!) clothing, armor, or weaponry. As much as I hate speculation, we always end up having to do some, or none of the groups or impressions I've been part of over the years would ever have come to exist! So a lot depends on one's goals and purposes.

Matthew

[Glen K]

Oswyn,

Sorry, you got me: I should have been more precise. "Shortly after" is, of course, 12th century (only 100 years or less), but the latest "shortly before" is more like "400+" years before. I've seen research indicating references to a subarmalis (sp) used in the late Roman Empire.

No more multiple Strongbows for me when trying to post academically.

[Andrew McKinnon]

Absence of eloquence is evidence of absynthe.

Discuss.

That is the most intelligent thing I have read on this forum bar none. LOL

[Oswyn_de_Wulferton]

And here I was hoping that Glen had caught something the rest of us had missed. Not trying to bash on you, seriously hopeful as my persona is right around the start date of aketons, for that very reason (mid to later 12th century). Oh well.

[Sigifrith Hauknefr]

Maybe the gambesons ran off with the Greaves? Or the middle ages went through a period of no lower leg targeting and lighter calibration?

[Kilkenny]

The absence of evidence/evidence of absence debate has different meaning and significance in different contexts.

I certainly can't prove they didn't have aliens visiting with phasers, but I'm sure not going to argue that they did

OTOH, there are some things where I believe I have evidence, and have been told quite firmly that I'm mistaken. Not based on a rational explanation of how it is that I am misinterpreting the evidence, but *entirely* on the other person's prejudice against the existence of the thing I'm pointing out evidence for.

Some people will not believe it when they see it - first they have to believe it in order to see it. Of course, I'm roundly condemned for trying to fit the evidence into my theory, while they aren't doing any such thing

[Andrew Young]

evidence of absence

Is evidence.

Absence of evidence

Is baseless speculation.

I dont quite agree with that Sebastian. Partly, but not entirely

Speculation can lead to a range of otherwise unasked questions that misleading evidence can overshadow....and lead us down the wrong path.

What Im saying is that if you took a bunch of people who knew nothing of a topic...and then asked them to discuss it and ask 20 questions....Im willing to bet the cumlative investigation of those 'baseless' questions would help piece together a reasonably accurate sketch.

Would aliens look like us?

Or heres one I thought of last night...and had forgotten about until I read this thread.

I believe in evolution. I believe in God too. I see it as a universal plan for everything to evolve...from humans to quarks.

Few years back I was reading about the early physics of the universe and how, in some cases, those pysics dont quite hold up now.

And then something occured to me.

If nature evolves based on the survival of the fittest....

Why couldnt....frankly why wouldnt ""physics"" evolve based on the same principal of survival of the fittest.

Once you start thinking down the life line:
humans...primates....animals...bugs.... bacteria....viruses....

...smaller and smaller....and smaller.

Eventually we arrive on the molecular level...atomic level.

So why would evolution occur only to higher creatures.

Maybe the principal reaches far deeper into the depths of matter itself than we realize.

I told this to a physics professor one time who was quite interested in what I had to say. He wanted me to write it all down. One of these days Ill get around to it. Ive got bizarre ideas on the nature of time and time travel too.

So....just goes to prove that you dont have to know much about something to think outside the box.

Speculation is human...its what makes us so.

.

[Glen K]

And here I was hoping that Glen had caught something the rest of us had missed. Not trying to bash on you, seriously hopeful as my persona is right around the start date of aketons, for that very reason (mid to later 12th century). Oh well.

No worries, Oswyn. "Oh well" is right; sorry to have gotten your hopes up.

[Stahlgrim]

What I find interesting is how closed minded academia can be sometimes.
They find an object , no others like it have been found and professor such and such decides it was a widget.
So for a few years it's a widget .
Then average joe sees it and says I bet thats a gizmo he makes a copy and low and behold it works well as a gizmo in fact it works better as a gizmo then a widget.
Now Professor such and such gets told you know that thing you said was a widget there is a guy here saying it's a gizmo.
So what does he do investigate and possible admit he was wrong,endangering his reputation and standing in the academic community?
Or attack the guy calling his widget a gizmo?
Sadly most of the time it's the latter.
Not to say that that professors are wrong all that often.
In fact I think that nowadays they are better at being open to the possibilities that exist.

[Young Knight]

I would say that while evidence of absence definately makes a certain interpretation a no-no, sometimes absence of evidence should make a certain interpretation equally untenable. For example, the absence of evidence of leather armour (unless someone has a literary source that isn't be all fanciful) in the viking age is rather suggestive of its absence or at least extreme rarity, given the survival of shoes and textiles from that same period.
-Wilhelm

[Russ Mitchell]

I would say that while evidence of absence definately makes a certain interpretation a no-no, sometimes absence of evidence should make a certain interpretation equally untenable.

Except, it doesn't. D. Sebastian had it nailed exactly. Not all baseless speculation is bad, but "shoulds" ... "don't."

[Andrew Young]

I would say that while evidence of absence definately makes a certain interpretation a no-no, sometimes absence of evidence should make a certain interpretation equally untenable.

Except, it doesn't. D. Sebastian had it nailed exactly. Not all baseless speculation is bad, but "shoulds" ... "don't."

Yes we should avoid the "shoulds".....

Im easier on the "could-haves"

And more open minded to the plausible concurrency of some technologies: As in....we know they had/did this.....and we know they did/had that.....so in between its possible they had this.

I believe being open to plausible concurrent or similar technology is critical in being able to formulate a hypothesis from which to test. The results may not be as expected...but at least the question was investigated and thats the important thing.

Yo Joe!.

...I think.

.

[Kilkenny]

evidence of absence

Is evidence.

Absence of evidence

Is baseless speculation.

I think you've bought into something here that is actually a logical phallacy. "Evidence of absence" runs head on into the classic problem of not being able to prove a negative. There is no "evidence of absence". There is "absence", or there is evidence.

When you've got a subject for which there is simply no evidence, the subject is just missing - you've got absence - but no "evidence" of it. It just ain't there. Show me one piece of evidence that Henry Rifles were not present at Agincourt

The axiom, as I recall, is "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". As such, it is fundamentally sound and true - but only because there is no such thing as evidence of absence. It's true, but without meaning.

The real heart of the problem isn't in the conflict over things that are just obviously out of the question (like the Henry Rifles).

It's the conflict over things that are borderline. The things where a difference of interpretation of this artifact and that document produce radically different conclusions, or where looking at all of the evidence there's a clearly recognizable big hole in the middle of it.

Consider something like the hammer. What if we had lots of hammer heads, and no handles. Not a one. No pictures with hammer heads on handles - no pictures with hammer heads at all. Still had all the pieces of armour with the tool marks and we could match them up to hammer heads. Nails, plenty of nails. Axes with handles. Adzes with handles.

No handles with hammer heads. Would that really mean that we were wrong if we were to try fashioning a handle for a hammer head modeled off one of the axe handles or adze handles ? Or would we be more historically "accurate" having all our hammer heads without handles ?

Would we *use* our handle-less hammers ? And would that be more "accurate" ?

Would it be a case for claiming an absence of evidence for hammer handles ? I'm going to say it would make a pretty strong case for the position that we just haven't found any hammer handles, not that they didn't have any hammer handles.

[Marc van Hasselt]

I think the real danger of this type of interpretation is that what is logical to us, might not be logical to them. For instance, hammer handles make perfect sense to us, but might be completely alien to the medieval mindset. For all we know, they used the big holes in those hammer heads to pass a belt through and dropped them on their work. This might seem silly (and it is), but it might make perfect sense in the medieval mindset. And who knows? We might try it out and it could work perfectly, but we won't know if we make assumptions based on our own contempory logic.

To us, it might make perfect sense that vikings would wear gambesons, because in our mind, we need some sort of padding under our armour. However, the vikings themselves might think it very silly to make a piece of clothing as 'armour-underwear'.

If we are given something as a token of affection by our lady, it might make perfect sense to us to display this, the belt being a perfect place for it. This might abhor a knight of the high middle ages, though. To find out how they would view such practises, we should go to the sources and do research, looking for what they said and did instead of looking for justification for our own beliefs.

[Kilkenny]

I think the real danger of this type of interpretation is that what is logical to us, might not be logical to them. For instance, hammer handles make perfect sense to us, but might be completely alien to the medieval mindset. For all we know, they used the big holes in those hammer heads to pass a belt through and dropped them on their work. This might seem silly (and it is), but it might make perfect sense in the medieval mindset. And who knows? We might try it out and it could work perfectly, but we won't know if we make assumptions based on our own contempory logic.

To us, it might make perfect sense that vikings would wear gambesons, because in our mind, we need some sort of padding under our armour. However, the vikings themselves might think it very silly to make a piece of clothing as 'armour-underwear'.

If we are given something as a token of affection by our lady, it might make perfect sense to us to display this, the belt being a perfect place for it. This might abhor a knight of the high middle ages, though. To find out how they would view such practises, we should go to the sources and do research, looking for what they said and did instead of looking for justification for our own beliefs.

Indeed one of the constant hazards of understanding what x or y was to *them* is that we're working from *our* life experience, and that is something quite distantly removed from *their* experience.

There is a continual need to examine whether what we are inferring is based on what we know about them, or on what we know about ourselves. Sometimes, the two align. Humans in 900 ad were bipedal bilaterally symettrical organisms, just as they were in 1300, 1700 and today. We're pretty safe looking at a tool and figuring out how to hold it, because the bodies haven't changed much.

My example of the hammer is one to consider carefully. Let's say for a moment that we try passing a belt through and dropping it on the work. I'm pretty certain we aren't going to be able to achieve those hammer marks inside a helm that way, but I would certainly encourage someone to try it, rather than telling them "No, hammers are handleless tools. The hole is for your thumb." Nor would I tell them "No, hammers go on handles like adzes and axes. Your belt idea is wrong."

However, when you have evidence of the tool's use, evidence of other tools that work on similar principles and have a specific missing feature (like a handle) and a bit of experimentation establishes that putting a handle on a hammerhead lets you achieve the observed effects of hammers on objects....well then you've got a pretty strong argument that the hammerhead belongs on a handle. Now - you've got a heck of mystery, in the question of why did the handles not survive with the heads ? And you should stop short of telling people that your handle mounted hammer is historically accurate. It's your best effort to fill in an obvious gap in the record and it comports with all available evidence, but nothing has survived showing them and until something shows up, it's a best guess.

If we're strictly limited to only the actual surviving gear that can be replicated without having to make some logical assumptions here and there, we're restricted to an awfully small sample that certainly does not present an accurate image of the time or place (speaking of pretty much anyplace in the medieval through Renaissance time frame).

And if archaeologists were to limit themselves in the same fashion, they wouldn't understand a vast portion of their findings. They're constantly having to fill in blanks in order to understand what they are looking at.

The trick is all in recognizing what is, and what is not, a reasonable extrapolation.

[Wolf]

The question becomes "to what end are you saying/doing this?" Is it to make things easier for yourself, or your group, i.e. laziness? Or creature comforts? Or is it rather a logical constructive process to address difficult questions that don't have easy answers. The topic that springs directly to my mind is the question of padded undergarments for mail in the 11th (ish) century: Did they have them? If so, where, when, of what type, etc? There is a complete lack of direct evidence for them in this timeframe, but there is plenty of evidence for similar garments shortly before and shortly after this period. The question hasn't been answered (and might never be), but those who say "there definitely wasn't any such thing because there's no evidence" are just as obtuse as those who say "well, logic dictates that they MUST have had them.

thats cause your a farb

[Wolf]

Oswyn,

Sorry, you got me: I should have been more precise. "Shortly after" is, of course, 12th century (only 100 years or less), but the latest "shortly before" is more like "400+" years before. I've seen research indicating references to a subarmalis (sp) used in the late Roman Empire.

No more multiple Strongbows for me when trying to post academically.

hehe 400, try 900 years and references yes, too bad none survived so we can actually tell what they are talking about