CONS.ELF@AIDA.CSD.UU.SE (Ake Eldberg) (03/07/91)
Darren F Provine rightly points out the need to check our references when we quote from books, and to avoid quoting from spurious sources. However, the problems with this are almost insurmountable. Especially since it's so difficult to know which sources are really reliable. I may read a book that sounds very professional and trustworthy, and quote the author Professor Ron D Millyway, and then it turns out that this so-called professor is a fraud who has his degree from a diploma mill. Or that he belongs to some weird sect and the book is a deliberate attempt to give that sect's teachings an air of "science". The transcendental-meditation people even have a university of their own and publish "research reports" on how Maharishi's teachings work miracles... One frequent source of errors is when archeologists write commentaries on the bible, purporting to write as textual experts. How can I know that this author's ph.d. was in Egyptian Archaeology, not New Testament exegetics? And that he is a complete incompetent in this area? The only solution is not to trust any quote just because it comes from a person with the label "doctor" or "professor" or whatever. Before you go and quote someone as an authority, try to check him or her out. Who is he? Unfortunately, modern western scolarship is much riddled with frauds, fools and nitwits, whose ideas are published in impressive-looking books. Ake Eldberg
kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu (Dr Nancy's Sweetie) (03/30/91)
In response to my earlier article, Ake Eldberg writes about some of the problems that come up in doing research and having to trust the authors one reads; he suggests that the only solution is to check out authorities before quoting them. While I agree that such thoroughness is called for if one wants to be sure of one's facts, I have no delusions about expecting Usenet articles to be that thorough on a regular basis. I would be happy if people would simply be *honest* about what they have and haven't looked up. (This does not even address the issue of plagiarism, presenting another's work as one's own; that too is a very disturbing aspect of Christians `borrowing' without mentioning the work `borrowed' from.) The examples I cited were posted by a Jehovah's Witness who had never done the work of locating the 1864 text or the 1946 Britannica; the quotes came from a JW reference. I have complained to the JW in question before, and only posted to the net when the same citations were used *again*, after my original complaint. I would have been happy if the poster had just said "Smart Guy Foo said `bar de blah', citation _Glarching in Modern Society_, p 44, quoted in _Big Bird Looks At Numbers_, p 25". I consider doing less than that dishonest; maybe I just spent too much time in school. kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu Darren F. Provine ...njin!gboro!kilroy "Quotation, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated." -- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_ [I think your standards may be unreasonably high. People quote Augustine and other famous Christians all the time. I assume a substantial fraction of the quotations are from secondary sources. Usenet does not generally demand the citation standards of formal academic writing. Unless the readers of this group want me to establish different standards here, I don't think it's fair to complain about people who follow general practice. --clh]
mls@sfsup.att.com (Mike Siemon) (04/01/91)
On references, and where one finds them, Kilroy has been asking for a more honest sense of WHERE people get the quasi-citations that tend to crop up in a lot of articles. I think that the place where careful citation is most needed is where it is least likely to be found, in apologetics -- which I might want, uncharitably, to categorize as "You're wrong; I'm right; so there!" There are other kinds of articles -- pieces of one's own spiritual autobiography, for example, or the more open-ended attempt to help others with advice out of our own lives, or such admonitions as we feel we can derive (for our own benefit or in aid of others) from our background reading. In this context, I often see well-known quotes badly mangled -- even scriptural citations from devout and well-meaning Christians. Yet, in most cases, these are not terribly troublesome; if someone has such a quotation badly enough mangled to disrupt the line reasoning, it will usually be pointed out without too much malice and without too much at stake -- the exceptions here are in controversial pastoral areas (sex, war, wealth, church governance) which begin to take on an apologetic dimension. And the trouble with apologetics is that we who indulge in it do so with a strong sense that we have ahold of The Truth, or at least a good part of it. Seeing Truth, we tend to see it wherever we look -- and so we tend to point at snippets out of context as resonating with the cosmic harmony our Truth discloses. All sources alike become grist for the mill. (The homely example is that, to a small boy with a hammer, EVERYTHING looks like a nail.) Almost always we will, indivdually, "reach" the earliest sources by way of a long road starting near at home -- often starting with the "tracts" put out by our own congregations or denominations. And since we tend to trust these, we tend to see little point in following the pointers back to the originals -- or if we do, we are predisposed to read them in the same way our first sources did, even to the point of being unable to read the originals at all in their original context! And patristic sources are generally SO DULL! (when they are not being offensively, extravagantly hostile to their opponents, which I at least tend to turn aside from in despair of Christian charity.) In short, in the very situations where our understanding is most likely to be strongly biased by our fervently held beliefs, we are least likely to make allowances for that, and provide the critical context that will help others understand the devious routes back to the "sources" we cite. Thus, I will in a limited way, second Kilroy's plea -- if you cite an early author, when you are fervently advocating some position or other, PLEASE give us some indication WHERE you get the citation. Or if you have indeed gone back to the original, it will help to cite a wide enough context for an unbiased observer to check whether your INTERPRETATION of the source is reasonable or not. Augustine is still widely enough read in the West that he might be a special case -- the Confessions and the City of God are both "classics" and often assigned in college humanities courses. And Augustine is respected enough by Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist theology that one can enounter a good bit of his work without following a twisted path through other sources -- but those other sources (Luther, for example) can themselves be highly in- fluential in our READING of Augustine, so here too it helps if you suggest what may have directed you to a particular bit of Augustine. If the context is Wittgenstein's _Philosophical Investigations_, I suspect your idea of Augustine will be quite different than if you start from Calvin's Institutes. And the Bible is a still more special case. I would think that a Christian home would have a spare Bible or two on hand -- they're cheap enough -- to have one available at work, to check on a verse that you are using to "prove" a point (as I said, for more casual discourse, less precision is tolerable). And if you CAN'T find the verse, maybe you want to ponder your use of it? At least until you can track it down? There are no absolute criteria here, even in apologetics. But remember that *if* you are trying to make a case for a *minority* opinion, you will gain a great deal of respect by taking care in these matters that often seem poorly done by less reputable apologists. And if yours is a majority opinion, you would do well (not least, in understanding the cogency of your own arguments) to distinguish between that which you are just repeating out of the common fund of "Christian" discourse, and that which you have given some serious, scholarly study to. The moderator observes that the net is not generally a place where we expect a high degree of academic rigor -- and I concur that this should not be imposed by moderatorial fiat. But when you expect your words and opinions to be the glowing coals pressed down on the foreheads of your readers, you should not hide behind vague and illusory "sources" -- you must either speak with prophecy granted you by the Spirit, or do your very best to demonstrate that you are speaking from strength, and not just partisan assumption. -- Michael L. Siemon We must know the truth, and we must m.siemon@ATT.COM love the truth we know, and we must ...!att!attunix!mls act according to the measure of our love. standard disclaimer -- Thomas Merton