Wallach, Efraim (2019) Biases, Evidence and Inferences in the story of Ai. [Preprint]
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Abstract
This treatise covers the history, now more than 170 years long, of researches and debates concerning the biblical city of Ai. This archetypical chapter in the evolution of biblical archaeology and historiography was never presented in full. I use the historical data as a case study to explore a number of epistemological issues, such as the creation and revision of scientific knowledge, the formation and change of consensus, the Kuhnian model of paradigm shift, several models of discrimination between hypotheses about the past, the interplay between scientists' values and their epistemic beliefs, and the truth-bearing of historiographic reconstruction. I show, in particular, that when scientists share common epistemic values they can modify their beliefs even when such changes go against deeply entrenched biases and preconceptions. Considerations of coherence usually constrain such modifications, and when sufficient data is available the result can be a profound change of beliefs. Several episodes of the "Ai debates" demonstrate, however, that similar change of beliefs will not occur when non-epistemic values take precedence.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
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| Keywords: | Archaeology; Historiography; Empirical evidence; Explanation; Biblical interpretation; Coherence; Knowledge | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Archaeology General Issues > Evidence General Issues > Explanation General Issues > History of Science Case Studies |
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| Depositing User: | Dr. Efraim Wallach | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 25 Sep 2020 13:07 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 25 Sep 2020 13:07 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 18137 | ||||||
| DOI or Unique Handle: | 10.13140RG.2.2.27118.23363 | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Archaeology General Issues > Evidence General Issues > Explanation General Issues > History of Science Case Studies |
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| Date: | 10 March 2019 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/18137 |
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