Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 August 4

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August 4

J W Armstrong who professed urine therapy

The Urine therapy article states that John W. Armstrong was the most important name for urine therapy. His book The Water of Life: A treatise on urine therapy, is said to have been published in 1944. A Google search yielded no result for the book earlier than a 1970s edition. There is no biographical material available on the author. I have heard some rationalists claiming that there never was such an author; that the book was invented by some Indian guy belonging to some sect practising urine therapy. No online source mentioning him is on sure grounds. The language in the book (available on Google books) sounds old fashioned and could have been an imitation. Anybody can throw light on this? --117.253.184.183 (talk) 13:58, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

AbeBooks is selling (or rather, reselling) a few copies apparently published in 1905 here, but I assume that's a typo of some sort. Here is a listing for a 1944 second edition. For US$91.79 (plus shipping and handling) you could check it out for yourself. There are other versions on that same site selling for higher prices that also claim to be from 1944. Matt Deres (talk) 15:04, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

The '44 edition is also on Amazon for around 100. I also see a '44 edition listed at the National Library of Australia, though at a tenth the size of the '71 second edition. I'm quite skeptical of urine therapy (I mean, it is literally taking the piss), but claiming that Armstrong never existed sounds more like conspiracy theorism than rationalism. Dismissing it on purely medical grounds is sufficient when the author's (or purported author's) central thesis doesn't rely on "ancient" "wisdom." Ian.thomson (talk) 16:05, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

I'd note that it seems unlikely to me some random Indian authors in 1970s could easily sufficiently accurately emulate the likely writing style of a British author who was a young man during WW1 writing in the 1940s such that a person with some experience wouldn't notice there's something weird. (I.E. Not just an expert could tell.) I mean it's obviously not impossible but that would require a fair bit of effort. And if they were really going to go to that level of effort, why not just print a few fake first editions and seed them around? In other words, if you really think this happened, it seems quite difficult to rule it out. The recent editions seem to be published by Random House. I haven't checked the copyright page but I presume copyright was still claimed. I would assume for copyright etc reasons they would probably want to know who published the 1944 and other edition assuming it wasn't them, just to make sure no one else claims to have the exclusive rights. And they would also need to be paying royalties to someone. Likewise with the 1970s editions assuming it's a remotely reputable publisher. So a fair bit of effort would also be required by any faker to put into that as well. Nil Einne (talk) 06:27, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

P.S. In case it's unclear, I'm not saying I find the conspiracy theory plausible. I don't. My point is more that while checking out one of the claimed first editions may be useful, I'm not sure they're necessary to demonstrate the book is not a hoax, unless it's a very well perpetrated one. If that is the case, I'm not sure that finding first editions from various places adds much to counter the hoax theory.

The other obvious question, especially since the claim it's a hoax is coming from people who call rationalists is what evidence they actually have for this. I mean it may not be completely surprising if some Indian person with a silly theory may invent some British guy in an attempt to give weight to their theory but from a rationalist POV it's only a minor issue. The theory isn't more credible whether it's coming from this random British dude than if it's coming from some random Indian dude. (It's slightly less credible if the theory came from someone who invented a slightly historic person to perpetuate their their theory, but still not that big a deal.)

So why do they believe it happened? If they don't actually have any evidence, this doesn't sound like a very credible rationalist POV. In fact it's even worse if their evidence is they didn't find the first editions, unless things have changed drastically since they looked (I'm assuming it was not the preinternet age you heard this), the fact it's easily findable on both AbeBooks and Amazon itself suggests their research was very poor.

OTOH, if they've read the book and said they don't believe it was written by someone with the only known details of the author, then I guess the first edition is useful since it seems a bit weird someone would go to that effort to print up and distribute a fake first edition but fail to take sufficient care with writing the hoax such that only an expert has a chance of noticing.

Nil Einne (talk) 08:35, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Differences in transport disciplines

What's the difference between transport planning, transport engineering, transport scheme sponsorship, transport policy development, transport programme development and transport programme/project delivery? These all seem to be similar? 82.132.236.20 (talk) 15:34, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Planning is choosing goals and defining a path to achieve those goals. Engineering is designing some tangible thing, like a road or automobile. Policy is legal and regulatory framework. Program management is overseeing a large project with many moving parts. Wikipedia has no articles on scheme sponsorship, and I'm not familiar with that term, so I can't answer to it. The differences between these disciplines are stark and wide and I'm not sure how they could be confused with each other, as they have little overlap; some are technical fields, some are management fields, and some are governance fields. Your question feels like asking "How is an apple different from Hinduism". There's not a point of commonality from which we can start to compare differences! --Jayron32 15:42, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Genghis Khan and crosscontinental migration?

I was browsing through an old reference book today, and I was surprised to find it unequivocally state the following: "1206: Genghis Khan becomes leader of the Mongols. His conquests cause some tribes to migrate from Kamchatka to Alaska." Is there any truth to this? A bit of googling doesn't bring up anything to confirm this, and my understanding is that movement across the Bering Strait (landbridge or otherwise) ended a few thousand years beforehand. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 17:16, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Doubtfull because the Mongols didnt even conquer the northern parts above their origin. They didnt go near the arctic circle anywhere. Since the main aim of conquering in that time was usually robbing and/or enslaving other civilisations, it would not have made much sense to go that far north or to Alaska because there was no civilisation to enslave or rob of their accumulated riches there in that time. However, since they actually tried to invade Japan twice, they clearly could have gone to Alaska too. They certainly send their scouts and spys as far as they could so they probably knew quite well Alaska was just wildness and arctic desert. --Kharon (talk) 05:44, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

... but how would they have travelled there to find out? Dbfirs 06:15, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Presumably... in boats. Blueboar (talk) 09:55, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

In the time of the Mongol Empire their navy had around 5,000 vessels. 86.136.177.211 (talk) 10:35, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

... but nowhere near to the open sea in 1206? Dbfirs 12:05, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

However... the question isn't whether a few Mongol ships reached Alaska (possible)... but whether there was a significant emigration of people from Kamchatka to Alaska in the 1200s. That is more doubtful. Blueboar (talk) 11:32, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

The Mongols directly and indirectly caused all sorts of mass movements of populations - one that I know of, going the opposite direction, is the Khwarazmian Turks, who were expelled from central Asia and ended up in Egypt. So, it's possible that they created refugees moving northeast as well. But as mentioned there was no reason for them to head up there, unlike the wealthy areas of China and central Asia. Thule people, Dorset culture and Paleo-Eskimo might also be interesting to read here - essentially, the Inuit arrived in North America relatively recently. Probably much earlier than the Mongol period, but still, there were probably recent movements back and forth across the Bering Strait. Adam Bishop (talk) 11:50, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

The question isn't limited to the year 1206. 86.136.177.211 (talk) 12:40, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Not directly supporting the premise of the question, but HISTORY OF THE THULE MIGRATION (an article about the Thule people who crossed the entire Canadian Arctic from Alaska to Greenland in about 1200) says: "a remarkable new theory with growing support in the archaeological community proposes that the Bering Strait Thule experienced a serious iron shortage related to disruptions in East Asian trade routes after the rise of Ghengis Khan in the 13th century. Knowing of sources of iron in the Canadian Arctic, Thule migrants set off on a journey eastwards in search of this precious commodity". Alansplodge (talk) 17:49, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Bingo! Lost Cities and Ancient Mysteries of the Southerwest by David Hatcher Childress says: "Kingsley Craig, a historical researcher and an epigrapher from Oregon formulated a theory using Frank Hibben's information on the Gallina battle and Stewart's book on the Dene and Na-Dene migrations. He said that the Mound Builders of the Midwest and the Pueblo Indians of the Southwest, were destroyed at approximately the same time, about 1250 AD, by a roving army of 20,000 Mongol men and women, who, in the years around 1233 AD had escaped from the ruling Khans in Mongolia and traveled in mass-migration into Canada and down into the Midwest". Alansplodge (talk) 18:09, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Well, those two sources seem to have, ah, differing levels of reliability :) Adam Bishop (talk) 18:38, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Indeed. Best I could do I'm afraid. Alansplodge (talk) 10:25, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Poul Anderson once wrote a science-fiction short story "The Only Game in Town" about a 1280 A.D. Mongol invasion of North America (as part of his "Time Patrol" series), but any attempt to postulate that such an invasion occurred in real history immediately runs up against some of the same problems which plague the Book of Mormon -- the Mongols could not have conducted any overland military movements without horses, and would certainly have brought some kind of herd food animal with them, yet such animals are unknown in North America before 1492... AnonMoos (talk) 15:25, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

• Some possible information I found at Wikipedia can be found at Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact theories. There are several examples of proposed theories involving cross-pacific contacts, dating back thousands of years in some cases. --Jayron32 16:44, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

• Note that the Mongols wouldn't have needed to directly invade Kamchatka to force people to flee from there to Alaska. They could have invaded someplace further south that displaced those resident to Kamchatka, who in turn displaced those residents to Alaska (or the residents from further south could have just traveled through Kamchatka on their way to Alaska). There could also be even more intermediate steps. However, I know of no evidence that this actually happened. StuRat (talk) 17:25, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Battlefield anecdote

I am trying to verify a battlefield anecdote. I added it here:[1], and the source that I used is certainly notable and reliable, but this incident falls under "too good to be true" (IMHO). Although WP prefers secondary sources, I would like to find a more contemporary source to verify. — 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:4890:FAC5:8AED:1CC9 (talk) 19:22, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Too good to be true, but true nonetheless. You can see a transcript of a draft of Washington's covering letter here at the website of the National Archives and Records Administration. --Antiquary (talk) 21:09, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! And thanks for adding the citation to the article. This could make an interesting addition to the 'Did you know...' section of the main page (but this is beyond my purview). — 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:4890:FAC5:8AED:1CC9 (talk) 22:29, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Data on how people decide on moral scenarios

I'm doing some research in ethical philosophy and I'm looking for some actual data on how people respond to ethical scenarios. I mean things like the trolley problem and Moral Foundations Theory (MFT). I know that MFT has a web site but I've never been able to find any of the actual data on their experiments. I would also be interested in any experimental results regarding hunter gatherers, most severe taboos, etc. Also, I'm wondering are there any public domain repositories for this kind of social science/anthropology data I could be searching through? Thanks in advance for any suggestions. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 20:54, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

You are lucky. There is even an complete science branch dedicated to this. You can find it hidden behind the term Game theory. --Kharon (talk) 05:13, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I know about game theory. I agree it is extremely relevant here. In fact what I'm trying to do is to bridge what I think are artificial boundaries between humanities/philosophy and actual math and science. But what I'm specifically looking for is actual data. For example, one issue in applying game theory is that people aren't always rational, even the notion of a utility function, at least some people claim, may not be completely valid for describing the way people make actual decisions. What I'm looking for is any actual data that relates to these kinds of issues. I've built an OWL (Web Ontology Language) model that can represent moral choices, game theory models, etc. but I want to populate it with some hard data from actual experiments and I haven't been able to find much. I know there are various public data sources for various kinds of problems. WordNet for example for people doing research in linguistics and NLP. I think there must be similar public resources for this kind of data but I haven't been able to find any with my limited google skills and could use a tip from other researchers in the humanities where to look. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 16:19, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Insofar as economics studies decision making, social economics may also have some things to say on your line of inquiry.--Jayron32 02:40, 6 August 2017 (UTC)