Re: Peer review and ID

Y'know, all in all, I think we're asking a lot of these folks in their
own time by expecting them to arrive at an approximation of pi that is
much more accurate than 3.
The string/rope/whatever model you suggest seems both plausible and
likely in the absence of something like steel chariot tires.
It is quite an achievement (and pretty exciting, I expect) to have
discovered the constancy (and probably mystery) of that ratio, whatever
it might be in detail.
Having discovered it, there would likely also be a compelling desire to
find this strangely constant ratio to be exactly 3 from their mystical
perspective.
In any case, their approximation of 3 is for them a good working
approximation, no less valid than our 3.14 (or 3.14159, or whatever) for
most practical purposes that do not involve the precision required of
machinery (or tire-making). JimA

gordon brown wrote:

>On Sat, 22 Oct 2005, D. F. Siemens, Jr. wrote:
>
>
>
>>Gordon,
>>You can produce a possible explanation for the ratio of the laver. But no
>>lagomorph (hare, Strong's 768) or hyrax (coney, 8225) chews the cud
>>(1625). The root of the last (1641) has a primary meaning of drag or drag
>>away, and is specifically associated with bringing up the cud. The
>>scriptures thus present the erroneous natural history of antiquity. The
>>claim I have encountered that the hare ingesting some of its feces is cud
>>chewing won't wash. The scriptures are not, contrary to a popular claim,
>>scientifically inerrant. Consequently, I consider it wiser to recognize a
>>crude estimate of pi, less exact when measures were a cubit, a span, a
>>hand, a fingerbreadth, a pace--all connected to human movement or, in
>>other cases, activity
>>Dave
>>.
>>
>>
>>
>
>I don't expect the Bible to be written in such a way as to be inconsistent
>with the scientific understanding of its original readers, but I would
>expect people who had made measurements to realize that pi is definitely
>greater than three. I would guess that the measurement of the
>circumference of the laver would be made by putting a string around the
>cylinder (if it was a cylinder) and for the diameter by laying a rod
>across the top, thus including the protrusion there.
>
>Gordon Brown
>Department of Mathematics
>University of Colorado
>Boulder, CO 80309-0395
>
>
>
>
>
>
Received on Mon Oct 24 01:20:13 2005