Pharyngula

Posted by: Tony Popple | March 21, 2007 10:11 PM

As an engineer, I wish I had the right to be offended by the common criticisms that are leveled at my profession. Unfortunately, I am left standing frustrated and embarrassed by engineers who think they can lecture people on topics they are not familiar with. I am particularly embarrassed by engineers who attack life sciences.

Sadly, I think this kind of arrogance is too common among engineers. My only consolation is that the past arrogance of engineers is currently being over-shadowed by that of medical doctors.

Posted by: Keanus | March 21, 2007 10:28 PM

Tony, you have nothing to apologize for. The world is full of conceited asses and many become doctors or engineers. Historically, many doctors (especially neurosurgeons) and engineers have claimed the street cred to pontificate about almost anything, as if they knew it all--and the unwashed have ceded it to them. Go to almost any government meeting where the public is invited to speak and one will find at least one doctor or engineer claiming special knowledge on a subject about which they're no more informed than John/Jane Q. Public. We have one, and EdD no less, who speaks at every township meeting and always introduces herself as "Doctor ________" even though her field (classroom technique) is not remotely related to the topic under discussion. And I have a couple of engineer cousins who behave the same way. (I always shoot them down in flames without mercy when they're beyond their expertise.) I don't see it as having anything to do with doctors or engineers. It's just people who'd much rather live in the 19th century when the doctor or engineer was likely the only person in town with an education beyond grade school. Many still think they're special.

As for Wally, Wallington, I say "fabulous." The world is richer for people like him.

Posted by: Fernando Magyar | March 21, 2007 11:02 PM

If you want some woo vs reality check out this link:
http://www.world-mysteries.com/coralcastle.htm
This place is not too far from where I live in South Florida.
I've been there a few times with my 11 yr. old to teach him critical thinking skills and engage in conversations with the people who go there to be infused with mystical energies. It can be quite a hoot.

Posted by: beepbeepitsme | March 21, 2007 11:39 PM

Anf I havea to remembar to uss speel checkk.

Posted by: beepbeepitsme | March 21, 2007 11:42 PM

Hahaha

Now it is there TWICE! Please remove one or both. Whichever is considered the more appropriate.

Posted by: wright | March 22, 2007 12:08 AM

Great stuff. No ancient astronauts or Atlantean psychics need apply. Just curious, observant and practical human beings.

I'm glad to see Wallington has a good-sized batch of descendents. One can hope that some of them carry the genes that helped to shape his shrewd, clear-thinking mind.

Posted by: RavenT | March 22, 2007 1:02 AM

a Michigan man with simple, clever strategies for moving massive objects

Not bad at all, but don't forget that from Stonehenge to the pyramids to Angkor Wat, the ancients also had a simple, clever strategy for moving massive objects, which has stood the test of time: whips.

Posted by: MTran | March 22, 2007 3:14 AM

Thanks for the great link!

I'm sceptical of the rotating idea: it looks like you would need a pretty flat surface, and it won't work very well in mud.

If I recall correctly, there has been archeological evidence that implies that a wooden plank road was constructed along at least part of the route from Wales to Salisbury. But I haven't looked at this sort of thing for many years and that notion may no longer be popular.

The guy seemed to be able to move a barn across grass, so it may be that turf is not as great an obstacle as it might seem. Perhaps temporary, reusable, wooden or smooth stone surfaces could be placed at key points to provide a more stable surface. Or maybe just use rocks that are large enough to provide a pivot point, regardless of their sinking somewhat into the earth.

Whatever, it was a fun video. Now, despite my herniated discs, I want to go move a big rock.

Posted by: G. Tingey | March 22, 2007 5:51 AM

It is suprisingly easy to move heavy (flat) objects across country, if you use ROLLERS - i.e. smallish tree-trunks.

BTW, the methods used by Wally were discussed many years ago in "New Scientist" - this is a re-re-discovery, so to speak.

But I loved the initial shots of the great Henge - just as I remember it from a grey day in the 1950's, when we stopped off on the way to Cornwall, with the great stones alone on an empty landscape, and the wind whipping over the grass and flowers and between the stones.

No visitor's centre or tourist information then - just the stones.

Posted by: John Emerson | March 22, 2007 8:14 AM

OK, based on the film, it was a cooperative effort, right? The ordinary humans erected the verticals by normal human methods, and then waited for the space aliens to put on the cross pieces.

That makes sense to me. It's not an either-or question, but a both-and question with a moderate compromise solution.

Posted by: windy | March 22, 2007 8:29 AM

"Fantastic, building a henge, are we? That's a fantastic idea! That's a marvelous religion the Druids have got! Yes, got a lot of white clothing, I like that. There we go!"
...
"Help you push 'em along? It's not far, is it?"

And the Druids going,

"Heave, everyone, heave! Well done, everyone, you're doing very well! You'll love it when you see it. I've seen some of the drawings already, it's very special."

After 200 miles...

"You fucking bastards! You never told us 200 miles! 200 miles in this day and age - I don't even know where I live now! ( sighs ) I wish the Christians would hurry up and get here!"

Posted by: dorid | March 22, 2007 8:57 AM

Personally, I blame Thor Heyerdahl. He invented the publicity-stunt style of reconstructive archaeology in order to prove a point. Since then the market for television specials on the How has been buoyant. [19]

I was going to praise Heyerdahl for debunking some of the "ancient astronaut" garbage floating around. Of course if you want to talk about quote mining, look to Von Danikin and his ilk. In Von Danikin's books he quotes from Aku-Aku to imply that Heyerdahl has NO CLUE how the Easter Island monuments have been placed.

And now we're getting a second wave of that with Slave Species of god, by Michael Tellinger, a book which is touted as ""enables evolutionists and creationists to finally co-exist in one pond. The
arguments are compelling, simple and refreshing, retracing the path of human evolution from the murky distant past to the religious dogma that haunts humankind today."

If this thing is REALLY a best seller in South Africa, it's proof positive that stupid isn't confined to the US.

Posted by: SteveM | March 22, 2007 9:42 AM

National Geographic did a very good documentary about the "why" of Stonehenge that did not involve any supernatural "woo" (like "energy fields" or "vibrations" etc.), but well reasoned speculation about the belief system of the neolithic Britons that built it. I thought that their hypothesis that one motivation was to create a spiritual connection between Moon worship to Sun worship that represented the transition from hunter-gatherer (night hunting) to agriculture (daytime cultivation). FWIW I recommend it, look for "Who Built Stonehenge", I think it was part of the "Naked Science" series on the National Geographic Channel

Posted by: Gray Lensman | March 22, 2007 10:10 AM

Architects get a lot of the arrogance training too, I think.

Problem solvers have to believe their solutions will work and it's easy to carry that outside their field of expertise.

Posted by: HDaemon | March 22, 2007 10:16 AM

While I certainly agree that engineers have a tendency to try and lecture on all sorts of topics outside their primary area of knowledge, I don't think the behavior is by any means restricted to them. I think it's pretty rampant among just about every technical/scientific discipline, and that the Salem Hypothesis is just a very special case of the more general hypothesis:

"In any ::specialized field:: debate, a person who claims scientific credentials and sides with ::viewpoint contrary to experts in the field:: will most likely have a/an ::unrelated specialized field:: degree."

The whole evolution/creation debate just happens to be one in which almost everyone has an opinion, and which incorporates a disproportionate amount of woo into the contrary viewpoint. Not to mention that those holding the contrary viewpoint tend to cling to it desperately like some kind of security blanket.

Just felt the need to stand up for my fellow engineers. It seems like most times they are mentioned around here, it's with a good degree of condescension and sweeping generalities, both of which I'm just generally opposed to.

Posted by: Baratos | March 22, 2007 10:49 AM

I think I know the reason behind Stonehedge:

"Hey, you wanna make a big pile of stones?"
"Why?"
"In a couple thousand years, it'll confuse the hell out of archaeologists."

Posted by: HDaemon | March 22, 2007 10:54 AM

It certainly happens that biologists/chemists talk with seeming authority on things they don't understand. As an electrical engineer doing imaging research in a lab comprised largely of biologists and chemists, I've had to sit through plenty of such talks. In general though, it's more a matter of talking authoritatively in the absence of experts (or absence of commentary from them), rather than directly challenging them.

Maybe I just associate with the wrong engineers, but all the ones I know do as you suggest and defer to the experts when shown evidence. I think the issue with the Evolution/creation debate is if that a Right-wing creationist is going to end up in a technical career, it's more likely to be engineering rather than biology. Just because most vocal creationists with technical degrees are engineers doesn't mean that most engineers are vocal creationists (or even just vocal egomaniacs).

Posted by: speedwell | March 22, 2007 10:56 AM

OK, I thought that was obvious, but I guess it wasn't... I like the engineers better because they actually give a damn, unlike the rabbits in marketing.

Posted by: Mark | March 22, 2007 11:23 AM

This is what we call redneck engineering. Redneck engineering can result in broken stuff (you know the famous last words of a redneck -- "Hey, watch this!"), but it can also result in simple solutions that evade more sophisticated approaches. It's not surprising that he might have rediscovered techniques. There have been an awful lot of smart, practical people in the world, and they don't all live now.

Posted by: John Emerson | March 22, 2007 12:03 PM

19, 25: The who and why of Stonehenge are extremely interesting. They seem to be pre-Indo-European and are definitely not Celtic. There are good reasons to believe that they were aligned to observer solstices and equinoxes, but there are those who doubt this. Large projects like this would seemingly require a fairly sophisticated society with large-scale organization, but no one knows much about what the society was like. This sort of structure is scattered from Malta to Denmark and are apparently older than the pyramids (the recalibration of radiocarbon dating destroyed the old diffusionist explanation.)

Posted by: The Count | March 22, 2007 1:06 PM

The Count is an Electrical Engineer, and I was taught that Scientists perform the research and Engineers implement the research. Does not take away from either field.

On the other hand, I cannot fathom why people always act amazed at what ancient peoples were able to accomplish... they were your basic person like today, some clever, some not, etc. If someone can be clever at thinking outside the box they were likely to do so as well. Perhaps more so since basic observation was more likely the happen in a life with fewer distractions or with not much else to do but wait for the crops to grow.

Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | March 22, 2007 2:51 PM

I think the issue with the Evolution/creation debate is if that a Right-wing creationist is going to end up in a technical career, it's more likely to be engineering rather than biology.

As some others here I'm in favor of a generalized Salem hypothesis, since as you note misplaced authority isn't confined just to engineers. I too have worked in environments with plenty of chemists (semiconductor and biotech industry) and as you so keenly note the behavour is also and more generally replacing absent authority.

I entertain the hypothesis Gray Lensman stated, about the need for problem solvers to act with confidence. But I also think this habit for engineers is well developed by being often placed to solve new problems quickly. And a market situation means that any loosely grounded ad hocs are only tested in known situations, making it easy to make the mistake that this is enough to base predictive knowledge on.

There are of course exceptions. For instance, when (neuro)surgeons are egnorant about evolution, it is perhaps not only because they are problem solvers when planning and performing individual operations.

It could also be that the burden of treating life and death situations, or merely the continued life quality of others, needs quite a bit of arrogance thrown into the mix. At least that is what it seems like, looking at the performances of some of DI's latest sideshows.

We do have lots of big stones on top of a bunch of smaller-but-still-quite-big stones here in Denmark but they are not arranged like those of Stonehenge at all.

Yes, it seems like there are different structures and purposes that should not be conflated. I skimmed the swedish Wikipedia, and it claims that the first megalith structures were for burial purposes. The first Nordic agricultural society, "Trattbägarkulturen", originated in Polen under early neolithicum, started to implement them during middle neolithicum.

These so called "dösen" ("dolmen" outside Sweden) seems to be most often a stone on top of a set of 4-7 loadbearing ones, of varying sizes. Most of them were surrounded by earth and stones to the sides, and some were reused in later burials.

These structures were developed first into "gånggrifter", with an entrance so it looked like a "T". The next development was "hällkistor" with 2 or more rooms, which could be totally covered by earth. Also so called "skeppssättningar", looking like ships outlined by stones, could in some cases be associated with burials.

Nowhere do I see any mentioning of religious functions, which I suppose henges and especially Stonehenge is claimed to be about, typically being 20 m or larger, and containing 1 to 4 portals, timber circles, monoliths, posts, pits, coves (burial chambers looking like collective "hällkistor", btw), burials and and central mounds.

If any of these informations are wrong, or if henges are seen outside of Britain, I would like to know.

Posted by: Richard Hendricks | March 22, 2007 4:20 PM

Why do engineers tend to gravitate towards creationism/IDC? Uh, isn't it kind of obvious? It has nothing to do with authority.

Scientists discover the how and why, but engineers design, implement, and fix. If all you do daily is design, implement, and fix (DIF) things, many of them quite complex, you would tend to see a need for DIF in anything else complex around you. I'm guessing engineers see God as the Great Engineer, so to speak, and that's why many of the IDC advocates are engineers.

Of course, I'm the except that proves the rule. Engineer, been called arrogant by some, but also atheist. Go figure.

Posted by: Saint Gasoline | March 22, 2007 6:06 PM

I saw this video clip a while ago, and I remember watching some sort of crappy documentary on the history or learning channel that was talking about the "alien" theory as if it were a legitimate theory, and slapping my head the whole time.

Sometimes it can be hard to remember that the Seven Wonders of the World were built before we had huge machinery and computers. Sometimes a load of slaves and a little ingenuity is all it takes.

Posted by: Graculus | March 22, 2007 7:04 PM

BTW, I hate to interupt the celebrations, but this guy isn't an engineer.

He's a carpenter.

He has a website

Posted by: twincats | March 22, 2007 7:55 PM

Don't forget Eddie Izzard!

Black Adder and Python both in one thread!
Thursday's looking up!

Posted by: Caledonian | March 22, 2007 8:30 PM

As long as we have the technological accomplishments that the Enlightenment made possible, who needs the Enlightenment?

Or so the consensus in the US seems to be going...

Posted by: Rupert | March 23, 2007 4:48 AM

OK, for Baghdad Battery read rubbed amber! There really was a lot of knowledge spread out over the ancient world.

I suppose the most vivid example, and one of which still endangers us, is when the Ottomans decided they had to decide between science (the most advanced in the world at the time) and fundamentalist religion, and went with the religion.

Don't have my books to hand, but this quote from Wikipedia of "The Incoherence of the Philosophers" by al-Ghazall, an 11th century book which became wildly popular and is thought by many to mark the beginning of the turning away from natural philosophy, will seem awfully familiar to those who have delved into the heart of ID:

"...our opponent claims that the agent of the burning is the fire exclusively;' this is a natural, not a voluntary agent, and cannot abstain from what is in its nature when it is brought into contact with a receptive substratum. This we deny, saying: The agent of the burning is God, through His creating the black in the cotton and the disconnexion of its parts, and it is God who made the cotton burn and made it ashes either through the intermediation of angels or without intermediation. For fire is a dead body which has no action, and what is the proof that it is the agent? Indeed, the philosophers have no other proof than the observation of the occurrence of the burning, when there is contact with fire, but observation proves only a simultaneity, not a causation, and, in reality, there is no other cause but God."

(I reckon that's about a 90 on the scale: certainly the highest I've seen)

Rupert

Posted by: Keith Douglas | March 26, 2007 10:48 AM

J L Smith: T. Heyerdahl should also be remembered for illustrating that one can do experiments in history.

Rupert: Unfortunately occaisonalism seems to have been (and still is, in some respects, as far as I can tell) a dominant theological position in Islam.

I often think what came together to form science as we know it, and a lot of it seems to be luck - affluence, relatively open societies, mathematics, the alchemical tradition, greek philosophy of many kinds ...

Posted by: JCA | August 17, 2007 4:54 PM

Use nutating gear technology to move big rocks,
has prehistoric people did!

Henges - Engineering in Prehistory