[2011-Dec-28] Tomatoes ARE a fruit!

[smiley_cow]

Sorry, the claims of female idols haven't been exaggerated, and there's evidence of a female priesthood. What I meant was, the claims of a matriarchal society have been (apparently) exaggerated. I never felt like there was any strong evidence for or against it, honestly, but there were almost definitely female priests, so that's neat I guess.

Ah, I see what you mean. Yeah, as far as I know it's never been proven one way or the other if there was actually a matriarchal society there. Though one could argue that the Greek myths along with accounts from Ancient Greek historians such as Herodotus* who talked about them as though they were real, coupled with archaeological evidence that there was an actual civilization there at the right time, who have been shown already to worship strong female deities, is already more evidence than other ancient history we take for granted is based off of. Especially without stronger evidence of an alternative explanation.

Remember, history isn't a science. Most of it is people looking at the evidence that's there and making a best guess. I'm not saying there definitely was a matriarchal society that the Amazons were based off of, I'm just saying based on how we do history, it's a good explanation, and stronger than the other leading theory of discounting it as mythology since it was beyond more documented areas of the time.'**

*And we get a lot of our history from ancient historians, especially in lack of better information from somewhere else. For example, everything we know about Cleopatra comes from the secondary sources, especially historians of antiquity who wrote about her.
**My issue with this is that myths don't just come out of thin air. They're inspired by something. And without a likely explanation of where else these legends could have originated from, just saying that there's not enough evidence, or that they existed in myths, I don't feel is a strong enough argument to discount the possibility that the Amazons were based off of a real, matriarchal civilization.

[Spambot]

Historically history is considered to be those events recorded in writing.

The 'father of history' was Herodotus, who wrote about the Amazons.

In at least some sense we can say that the Amazons were 'historical'.

History, as a discipline, has moved on. In at least some sense we can say that the Amazons were 'not historical'.

What is up for discussion is, as ever, not whether or not terms apply but rather which senses of the words apply.

That terms are used in technical fields for technical purposes does not make this technical usage more proper than colloquial usage. Within the English language there is no equivalent of the 'Institut Francais' which declares how we should use our language. The closest is the Oxford English Dictionary, and that treats common usage as the authority rather than seeking to be an authority over common usage.

That the existence of the Amazons has better evidence for it than other peoples, events, &c. which have entered into the public consciousness as actual is more to make an indictment against the process whereby information enters the public consciousness than it is to make an argument for the historicity of the Amazons.

[smiley_cow]

I want to be clear, I was never saying the Amazons definitely existed. I wasn't even saying the Amazons probably existed. I was arguing against the notion that there could have been no matriarchal society in Northern Turkey where the Amazons were said to have lived that may have inspired the myths.

Once again, people don't really understand how history works. Everything we know about the past is from studying and analyzing whatever clues we can find and piecing it all together as best we can, and the further back you go, or depending on where you go, the evidence gets less and we're making bigger guesses. But part of a job of an historian is not taking history at face value, but to continually analyze and reanalyze the data we have and come up with whatever conclusions we can.

Here's what we know. There was a civilization there at the right time that worshipped strong female deities. There are myths and stories that were talked about in contemporary Greek stories about a matriarchal society of women. There's ancient Greek historians who talk about these women at length. There is no evidence that I'm currently aware of that says there couldn't have been a matriarchal society at this time. Based on this information, it makes more sense to say that it's entirely possible these people existed.

That the existence of the Amazons has better evidence for it than other peoples, events, &c. which have entered into the public consciousness as actual is more to make an indictment against the process whereby information enters the public consciousness than it is to make an argument for the historicity of the Amazons.

To stick on this point and ignore the rest is a bit of a strawmen. If you want to argue the way history is done, and what we accept as fact or not, and based on how much evidence, then I'm willing to have this discussion. But that doesn't change the fact that there is enough evidence to support that there was an actual group the Amazons were based off of that it doesn't make sense to just discount them as myth. How we as a society looks at history doesn't change this fact.

And besides, personally I agree. I don't think we're aware enough of how history is written and I don't think, even in some academic circles, we take a critical enough look at most history. And in fact the reason I brought up this fact in the first place was to point out how little we really understand where our history comes from, how it's written, how we don't look at it critically.

[Spambot]

It seems to me we are largely agreed on the way 'history' works.

I personally would neither assert a matriarchal society in that area and period nor deny it as myth. To me it makes sense only to speak of what records there are and their way of reaching us. There comes a point in any evidence-based approach where we have to just throw our hands up and say 'I don't know!'. Any guessing beyond this point is, quite simply, guessing.

As ever in such discussions I wonder what one might derive from the existence of the debated subject, or lack thereof. This might indicate why one or another party plumps for one or another hypothesis. Or it might not.

[Edminster]

Spambot: register an account.

[Spambot]

How do I do that? I clicked HERE but it didn't help

[I are a Guest]

I was like, o_O and "How the hell should I know?!" at the anti-spam question, and then looking everywhere trying to find the answer, so now I forgot what I wanted to write. :p Um... oh, yeah!

I always understood vegetables as specifically excluding fruits. In fact, in this forum is the first time I've -ever- heard anyone say that vegetables include fruits, rather than simply being ignorant that a given item is a fruit. I myself didn't realize that tomatoes were fruits until my biology teacher mentioned it in high school, then I thought, "Oh! I guess they are fruits! So they're not vegetables, then." But, even though no longer seeing them as vegetables, I figured, while technically incorrect, it's ok to call them vegetables anyway since that's what they taste like/how they're used. Sort of like if someone asks for gloves by saying mittens... While wrong, we do so for convenience.

Guess the dictionary definition for vegetable is more broad, though - any edible plant/plant part (from Oxford: "1 a plant or part of a plant used as food, such as a cabbage, potato, turnip, or bean"). Bah! If watermelons are somehow considered vegetables, I will have to throw rotten ones of those at terrible performers instead of tomatoes, then!

[DonRetrasado]

Have you ever been waterboarded?

[Oldrac the Chitinous]

Why, is it similar to being watermeloned?

[Guest]

Every time I visit the forum, I get really disappointed, because it's just a bunch of people saying they hate the comic. But I had to this time, because this one... really sucks? Is it just a semantics joke? I'm under the impression Amazons were said to remove a breast. So it's just the fact that some dumb guy said historically instead of... traditionally? Mythologically? (Word filter don't like that last one.) And, I mean, the Civil War one is just hyperbole, not even really that wrong. Or is the comic really telling me I'm a dumb sack of shit?

In what world is the difference between History, Tradition, and Mythology one of semantics?

Our world. Let me clarify.

I'm always rather chuffed when people imply that a point being about "semantics" means it's fiddly and pointless. Semantics is, in linguistics, philosophy, and general purpose Standard English, related to meaning. If, for example, I am disagree with someone over a "purely semantic point," we have something of a major issue: we disagree on what an idea, word or symbol means. If we can't agree on what each person in the conversation means to a reasonable approximation we can't really have an honest conversation.

Now, I know that what people usually mean when they say "that's semantic" is that it is "pointlessly semantic." So rather than quibble with them about the importance of semantics I just try to demonstrate why, semantic or not, my point is important. But it still makes me sad to hear the word so abused. Semantics are pretty darn important--especially when discussing linguistics of all things! The differences between the meanings of History, Tradition and Mythology fall very much under the purview of semantics. But your implication that the differences are in no way trivial is, to my mind, also right on the money.

[That one guest guy again!]

Please accept my humble apologies for my abuse of comas in that last post.

[Edminster]

Please accept my humble apologies for my abuse of comas in that last post.

i will as soon as you go into one

[PapaSloth]

I think Herodotus overheard someone saying, "I'd give my right tit to shoot a bow like her," and the rest is history.

[PapaSloth]

George Lakoff, in his book "Women, Fire and Dangerous Things," makes an important point about conceptual categories (such as "fruits" and "vegetables"). The naive view is that the attributes of such categories can generally be enumerated and the categories themselves can be organized taxonomically from general to specific, where specific categories have a superset of attributes compared to their more general parents. However, this naive view is often incorrect. For example, Lakoff talks about the general category "mother" which may have sub-categories such as "adopted mother," "biological mother," "foster mother," "mother-in-law," etc. When one enumerates the attributes which define each sub-category, one finds that there is little or no significant overlap, and therefore, the more general category "mother" has no significant attributes which are inherited by all of its sub-categories.

Turning to the fruit example, we naively think of fruits as having the attributes of sweetness and juiciness, while vegetables are generally more on the savory side. Therefore, we are surprised when we learn that tomatoes are taxonomically fruits. Similarly, a bottle of peppercorn melange, where black peppercorns, green peppercorns, red peppercorns and white peppercorns all come from the same species of plant, but pink peppercorns come from an entirely different species of plant. It defies our naive expectations.

Humans are social animals. One of our primary methods of perpetuating the species is to communicate information to other members of our pack. Evolutionarily, packs that shared information were able to avoid dangers more readily than packs which didn't share such information. These packs survived and reproduced more readily than their competitors, selecting for the characteristic of information sharing.

Thus, there is a strong biological imperative for us to share the information that tomatoes are fruits.

Teh Enb

[Ana]

I couldn't resist adding this to the discussion, since it's a very common portuguese sweet that I have know since I was a little girl:
Doce de tomate

WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?