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> Consensus has nothing to do with how one can know what things sounded like 2000 years ago, when we have no means to verify anything. The consensus might be ba
by jhanschoo 2y ago
> Consensus has nothing to do with how one can know what things sounded like 2000 years ago, when we have no means to verify anything.
The consensus might be bang on. Or it might be wildly wrong. Or something else. Who can say?
Neither can a person who has never left the US who realistically would not visit France verify whether they are speaking French as is spoken in Marseilles. Yet the effort to approximate it is not futile, and having practiced with a native French speaker from Marseilles to the point of fluency is usually proof enough for many to say that they know French as is spoken in Marseilles, even though it seems to me that you would not regard this as knowledge.
- verisimi 2y agoIf you doubted that they speak French in Marseilles, you could go and verify it. How do you propose one verifies how music sounded 2000 years ago?
- jhanschoo 2y agoYou can go and hear it, and then it would already be a few weeks in the past that the speech you were wondering about was produced, you would still be processing it through your imperfect ears, etc. The fidelity is neither perfect; it's a matter of degree, though quite extreme. You have chosen merely to draw the threshold for calling it knowledge at one point rather than another