Figural !

[A. G. Maisey]

I'm in complete agreement with you Michael, but I prefer to take the concepts of "truth", "fact", and "accuracy", just a little further.

There was an economist named Fritz Machlup. He was an Austrian, but he migrated to America before WWII.

He came up with the proposal that there was a "half-life of knowledge", this was given as the length of time that had to pass before half of the knowledge in any specific field was either shown to be untrue or was replaced with a more up-to-date version.

As time goes by the residual half of knowledge that remains from the initial degradation of the field becomes less and less so that eventually nothing, or perhaps almost nothing is left that can still be considered to be true.

Machlup died some time in the early 1960's, just about the time I was being taught about his ideas.

Not long ago a mathematician named Sam Arbesman published a book called "The Half-Life of Facts". Arbesman has demonstrated that the ideas that we accept as "facts" are slowly being replaced, and although we can never guess when any particular "fact" is going to go under, we can predict when half the facts in any specific field are going become out-dated.

An idea not dissimilar to Machlup's idea.

The accepted "facts" in any field have differing lives. Half the facts in the field of maths will be revised/replaced in about 9 or 10 years. Half the facts in the field of physics are good for about 13 years. And so on.

Now, with the keris, we're not dealing with perceived "facts" for most of the time, rather, we are dealing with opinions and beliefs.

I'm not at all sure how we can estimate the half-life of keris opinions, but I guess somebody who is much better at math than I am could come up with a formula. However, its probably not all that important how long our opinions and beliefs resist change, what is important is that we recognise that those opinions and beliefs will change, and that at some time in the future much, or most, of what we accept as "fact" today will have been demonstrated to be incorrect.

For this reason, I would most humbly suggest that none of us should become so entwined in our own beliefs and opinions that we are unable to give consideration to the beliefs and opinions of others.

[Sajen]

Three more Ramajala Tegal hilts from my collection.

[VVV]

Yes, Alan, this kind of postmodern criticism of the "one-truth-Enlightenment" has been going on much longer than 50 years now in the academia. Machlup and Arbesman are just two out of 100's.
However, for a discussion on a forum like this, and to be able to handle other "non-academic" everyday situations, I find it quite boring and nonconstructive to force all participants to write long disclaimers each time they state something. If it would be in an academic situation the accepted way would be first to have a method and theory discussion about these factors of skepticism and uncertainty to show that you are aware of them. And after that you would be allowed to state something and argue that it is valuable current knowledge. And then in the end you could write that you hope someone in the future will be able to add-on new knowledge and perhaps prove that you were wrong (like, for instance, Freud did).

If the moderators are afraid that the participants of this forum are not aware of this philosophical discussion, maybe they (David ) can write some kind of disclaimer for us all so we can keep the discussion going in each thread?

I think a statement like: "Most probably it was supposed to be a Yaksha" , which both contributes to the discussion but at the same time accepts the existence of alternative interpretations, is better suited to answer the level of a non-academic forum like this.

Michael