[finicky (OP)]

BC: It's, of course, not my place to rebut your masterful disproof of ALL theories, but I am prepared to rejoin perceived flaws in mine. The argument that 'perception is intentional', after all, moots exchange. Physical relativity too often leans for emphasis on linguistic relativity. But if my theory holds, Saussure's premise that 'abstracts are fundamentally arbitrary', is obviated.

[Bored chemist]

Much as I'd like to claim credit it wasn't me who first said that, to be useful, theories should be testable and they should predict things. The testability requirement is, I think, down to Popper. I'm not sure about the origins of the claim that theories should predict things.
The point was that theories that don't make the grade are not disproved as you claim. They just are not scientific theories.
Also I think you need to remember that, outside of mathematics, theories are never proven true, only false.

[finicky (OP)]

BC: On my discovery of the ordinal and formal convergence of far more letters of the alphabet than might be attributable to coincidence, with phases of the lunation, I proceeded to investigate ancient myths and texts from the putative period of the alphabet's inception, for corroboration. I reasoned that if an ancient culture had indeed contrived the letters of the alphabet to reflect lunar cycle, they would have been conspicuously alert to the vagaries of this highly enigmatic phenomenon.

Was there evidence of such absorption? Not according to the majority of scholars from the classical Greek, through to the modern, periods. The prevailing concern of celestial observers before the classical Greek period was, in their view, largely solar or stellar. Nor were the ancient insights into lunar mechanics discernible from an even earlier age, considered other than rudimentary.

The evidence, however, reveals that the measure of lunar cycle was, in contrast, focal to the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Levant and Europe. These data incorporate mathematics which address lunar periods. Their products project compound intervals of reconciliation (where calendar cycles require adjustment to restore convergence with their celestial counterparts). While myths concerning intervals of an equivalent duration, accord with the requisite intercalations.

This is all news.

Two discrete sources of ancient data from the same period, each harbouring numerous unsuspected detailed convergences with lunar cycle! Too many for coincidence. Neither the meaning of the myths and texts, nor the origin of the alphabet, moreover, have ever been established conclusively (though we lack no shortage of interpretations; none, however, affording nearly the degree of convergence of the hypothesis at hand).

A discovery leads to unsuspected corroborating data. Further discoveries emerge. The associations are consistent with the original premise and mathematically substantiated.

Potentially a solution to two seminal puzzles which in fact concern science; not, as you persist in emphasizing, semantics.

[Bored chemist]

"The evidence, however, reveals that the measure of lunar cycle was, in contrast, focal to the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Levant and Europe. "

Like I said,

"For the sake of this debate I'm prepared that the ancients knew absolutely everything about the moon.
I just don't see any evidence for that knowledge being incorporated into the alphabet."

Incidentally, was the maths needed to model the moon's cycle available to the Ancient Greeks?

BTW, have you seen this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect
I think it's more likely to be related to how we first chose to pick symbols for sounds than the phases of the moon might be.

[finicky (OP)]

BC: If the ancients were as knowledgeable about the lunar cycle as you are prepared to allow, and their writing system incorporates more ordinal and formal convergences with the lunar cycle than coincidence admits, the evidence you can't see 'for that knowledge being incorporated into the alphabet', might stem from the fact that you haven't looked.

Ancient 'Greeks' both observed and computed lunar cycle. The history of their calendrical advances, however, conforms to the widely-held belief that something interrupted Hellenic traditions sometime between the Heroic and Archaic periods. The generation of Thales and Solon had grown blind to the calendrical significance of Homer's works, for instance (not to mention Egyptian iconography); yet their heirs went on to perfect the 19-year calendar (which formed the basis for the modern Jewish measure) on the principle of an inherited 8-year variable-month antecedent.

An alternative view is that the symbols weren't, in fact, selected for sounds; sounds may, instead, have been appended to the symbols as a mnemonic key. In my hypothesis, the alphabet is held to represent a serial mnemonic employed to track a highly variable cycle through an extended interval of several years. Every 18.6 years, for instance, the course cycle of the moon recurs; which may have been delimited by marking the progress of lunar emergence every night through 230 lunations. Even when obscured by cloud...

Add to this the fact that the interval between successive focal lunar phases (such as waxing crescent and waxing half-moon -- which extends on average, six nights) may vary as much as 36 hours from lunation to lunation, and you may better appreciate the enormity of the exercise. A series of distinct notational markers would obviously prove invaluable for reviewing and digesting the evidence.

[Bored chemist]

"and their writing system incorporates more ordinal and formal convergences with the lunar cycle than coincidence admits"
8 out of, say, 26 is not more than coincidence admits- I got 9 out of 9.
Coincidence doesn't enter into it if you are looking hard enough.
What I'm looking for is some evidence that, for example, the letter O is the moon rather than the sun, a face, or just a circle.

[finicky (OP)]

BC: You not only obscure the fact that these convergences fall in the same places in both sequences, but that the lunar phases on which the eight letters are drawn, are also the only ones in the lunation identifiable on sight. Three points of convergence: formal, ordinal and spectral.

The cultures identified with phonetic script were demonstrably preoccupied with the moon, as evidenced by their myths, texts, rites and calendars (not to mention heritage). It would not only have been natural for them to enshrine the focal phases in symbols, but likely.

The seven focal lunar spectres (and two focal lunar aspects), moreover, were further singled out in these cultures, as divinities.

In some hazy realm far away, perhaps, this might wash as coincidence. But the texts generated by these cultures consistently substantiate the inference, conceptually and mathematically.

[Don_1]

"and their writing system incorporates more ordinal and formal convergences with the lunar cycle than coincidence admits"
8 out of, say, 26 is not more than coincidence admits- I got 9 out of 9.
Coincidence doesn't enter into it if you are looking hard enough.
What I'm looking for is some evidence that, for example, the letter O is the moon rather than the sun, a face, or just a circle.

Or just the shape of the mouth when using the letter.... "O"

Sorry, finiky, but your just not convincing me at all, especially since you still chose to ignore writing in forms other than our alphabet.


Coptic

 דצמבר
Hebrew

حمولة نفايات
Arabic

がらくたの積載量
Japanese

[finicky (OP)]

Don, my thesis is entirely about the origin of the Alphabet, which is a phonetic writing system. You keep bringing up earlier systems of writing which have nothing to do with the Alphabet or my hypothesis. The Pictographic, Ideographic and Syllabic writing systems function on different principles.

The Alphabet is distinct. It is thought to have developed sometime during the second millennium BC, at a time when the other writing systems were yet in use. Versions of these other systems endure to this day. But my work is expressly concerned with the origin of the Alphabet.

In order to better assess the validity of a hypothesis, would it not be beneficial to know a little something about the subject first!

[finicky (OP)]

Apologies for being so snappy, Don. No excuse, but I have the worst flu in history. Your point about later alphabet systems is a legitimate one and, under better circumstances, I might have taken the time to address the examples fairly.

The Hebrew alphabet is said to have developed in the third century BC, from an Aramaic antecedent (which in turn derived from the proto-Semitic script identified with the earliest alphabetic inscriptions).

The Coptic alphabet developed from the Greek alphabet in the second century AD, with added characters for sounds peculiar to Egyptian phonology.

The Arabic alphabet appeared early in the sixth century AD, having developed arguably from the Nabataean (Aramaic) script of the second century AD.

And the Japanese 'alphabets' which first came into use in the seventh century AD, are in essence, syllabaries (or as some maintain, "syllabic alphabets").

These, and other derivative scripts, have no bearing on the development of the original Alphabet, which is conjectured to have arisen early in the second millennium BC (at least 1500 years before the earliest example cited).

Although I may employ certain English letters (for clarity) in demonstrating my hypothesis, it is with the correlative characters of the original Alphabet, in mind.

For comparison see the reference charts on pages 10 and 58 at http://ia700109.us.archive.org/21/items/InstructionsForRestoringTheAncientWisdom/primer.pdf [nofollow] .