0.1. The Limits of Induction
Intellectual disciplines operate by theoretical models. Only the deductive models of mathematics and mathematical logic are absolutely certain. And that does not even include the axioms on which chains of deductive steps are built. All other models are inductive. Inductive models consist of patterns of regularity emerging from repeated observation of facts. Facts are typically instances of contact between the senses and the world outside the senses. Inductive models may come quite near to certainty. But they are never entirely divested of probability. And that includes the laws of nature, which are inductive.
There is always room for skeptics to doubt inductive models. To be successful, inductive models need to earn and win the disinterested, unsolicited, and unforced consensus of a number of independent observers. Absolute certainty does not exist. Universal consensus is not possible. But there is winning and there is losing. A winning model allows a majority of observers to stand their ground confidently over the decades and over the centuries against the inevitable skepticism. One measure of a model’s success is its ability to dominate the textbooks. Then again, inductive models are never permanently established. The need for confronting certain kinds of persistent skepticism never vanishes. Accordingly, creationism will always pose a challenge to evolution theory. An inductive model is a dynamic process. There is a never-ending exchange between its advocates and its skeptics. But in this process, certain models remain on top while rival theories are relegated to the status of also-rans.
Unforced and unsolicited consensus has a peculiar way of overpowering skepticism, however loudly proclaimed. The power of consensus has much to do with how consensus may be quantified. An agreement between two (2) observers may be counted as one (1) unit of consensus. Marginal models are often publicized so loudly that they seem to drown out the standard model. But in spite of the loudness, no two observers can be found to agree on the same marginal model. The consensus quote of such marginal models is therefore zero. And zero is still infinitely larger than a consensus of just a handful of keen observers. Disagreeing is not too difficult. There is always room for skepticism. But earning the consensus of other observers regarding the exact formulation of an alternative chronological model is less easy.
Our modern calendar, instituted by Caesar in 45 BC, provides a kind of continuity down to the present time that makes chronology much less of a concern to AD historians than to BC historians.1 Handbooks of ancient history all agree on the outline of BC chronology. This universal agreement sharply contrasts with an almost equally universal lack of awareness of how this outline was obtained.
The standard ancient chronology is a product of an inductive chronological model. This model is an intellectual structure. The structure consists of various components that are built upon one another in a logical sequence. Some components are logically prior to other components and therefore more fundamental.
No inductive model is above constant verification. Chronological models, being inductive as they are, are no exception. Reluctance to verify the standard model of ancient chronology may engender suspicion that all is not well with ancient chronology. Such suspicion in fact keeps spawning wholesale rejections of the standard chronology in the margins of the field of history.
Lacking proper understanding of the standard model’s foundation and structure, historians cannot defend themselves against refutations of the model. Whether the standard model is true or false is at first irrelevant. What matters at the outset is that the model is very real in the following fundamental respect. It is responsible for the fact that all the history books agree when Ramses II reigned. The model is the hidden engine that drives all the dates in all the textbooks. This engine’s internal workings are grasped to their full extent by hardly anyone. The discipline of ancient studies would be stronger if more people understood how the model works.
Towards this aim, I have portrayed the model of ancient chronology back to about 500 BC in four recent contributions, each endowed with its own distinct focus. The first contribution is an article entitled “Ancient Chronology’s Alpha and Egyptian Chronology’s Debt to Babylon”, to appear in a Festschrift published by Eisenbrauns. Its focus is specifically to outline the model. The second contribution is a shorter and popular version of this first contribution, addressed to a wider audience, and published under the title “How to Date a Pharaoh” in the issue of July/August 2005 of the magazine Archaeology Odyssey, at pp. 27–33. The third contribution consists of two chapters entitled “Foundations of Day-exact Chronology” and “Saite and Persian Egypt, 664–332 BC (Dynasties 26–31, Psammetichus I to Alexander’s Conquest of Egypt)” in the new handbook of Egyptian chronology for the series Handbuch der Orientalistik (now just out as Depuydt (2006a) and (2006b)). The objective of these two chapters is to survey the chronology of 664–332 BC. The fourth contribution is an article entitled “The Shifting Foundation of Ancient Chronology” in the acts of a session held at the Ninth Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists in 2003 in St. Petersburg.2 This contribution puts more than four centuries of modern study of chronology, beginning in the early seventeenth century AD, in perspective by focusing on how the fundaments on which the entire structure of ancient chronology rests are shifting and will be shifting in the years ahead from Ptolemy’s Royal Canon to the Babylonian astronomical diaries and related sources.
The aim of these four contributions was to make the chronology back to about 500 BC more transparent and accessible. The aim of the present paper is to move this boundary back to about 1500 BC, in th...