The answer you have created is very elaborate and involves all sorts of speculation about hypothetical decks and evolutionary scenarios. It attaches great significance to cherry-picked details, taken out of context, woven into complex stories. It is arbitrary, in that other complicated narratives could be created. Many have been, but no one other than you has promoted their imaginative fictional world this relentlessly, for this long.Huck wrote:Our research is just about this question - when and how did it happen? So the 5x14theory gives an answer and an intensive discussion of the details.
Alternatively, there is a simple and obvious answer which remains close to the known facts.
The great thing about Dummett's work is that he took the opposite approach from yours. Instead of using a few facts and a lot of imagination, he took all the facts that were at hand and used a rationalist approach.Huck wrote:The theory "standard Trionfi deck with later Tarot qualities existed c. 1450" was just a "blind shot" of a few card historians, who were gathering information about the game 30 years before - their work was great, no doubt, but naturally it wasn't finished, and these early conditions were not their favored topic. Meanwhile a lot of additional information has appeared. It's definitely the merit of the 5x14-theory, that it provoked a discussion and further intensive research, and the result is the progress, which now occurs.
This gets back to Descartes' four rules for problem solving. His first rule was skepticism, the basis for the rest. Conclusions need to be clearly based on the evidence. The second, (to divide the question into smaller, more tractable pieces), and the fourth, ("to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted"), sound very much like a rebuttal to Yates review of The Game of Tarot. She could not imagine why anyone would take a subject like Tarot -- interesting only because of the occultists -- and divide it so minutely into different games from different times and places, searching out every knowable fact, organizing and evaluating so analytically, etc. Dummett was following the most basic set of rules for understanding a subject. The key rule of Descartes might be #3, working from the known to the unknown. Finally, connecting this rule back to rule #1, we can conclude that when working from the known to the unknown, we should stay as close to the known as possible, remaining skeptical.
That's the relationship between skepticism, logic, empiricism, and parsimony.
The reason why Dummett's conclusions in The Game of Tarot have generally held up so well is that he stayed true to that method, which means that he gathered and considered all the available facts, he analyzed them rationally, and his conclusions stayed very close to the facts. The conclusion about archetypal Tarot in DD&D is a perfect example: nothing has arisen to contradict it. In fact, the kinds of information about early commerce in Tarot, coming from Pratesi's research, make that conclusion a virtual certainty.
For you to call that method, as exemplified in The Game of Tarot, blind guesswork from someone who didn't have enough information, who didn't really know what he was talking about, is fucking rude. Your arrogance is stunning, and we all look forward to the day when you produce a work even remotely comparable.
Bullshit. It has nothing to do with getting "real new information". That's not what you are doing. It's not what you have done for decades. You are making up stories. It's certainly true that you would love to find some new information, but that's not what you do. You cherry-pick from existing information, distort and speculate and invent new stories. That's called historical fiction. If and when some researcher discovers new information, then it can be taken into account. If and when.Huck wrote:I think, that this "all have lost cards" is critical in the cases of the trumps in Cary-Yale (which cards were lost and how many?), 14 Bembo trumps (possibly no cards are lost) and 16 trumps in Charles VI (possibly no cards are lost) and since recently also the Rosenwald Tarocchi (is the Fool really missing?). In other cases the "which cards are lost" question might be critical, too, but anyway, we have often no chance to get real new information, if we put the focus on it.Michael wrote:You are claiming that "lost cards" is speculation. It is not.
No one has overlooked that possibility, and if anyone is blind to alternatives, Huck, it is certainly you.Huck wrote:You only know not of the 14 Bembo trumps, if you overlook the possibility, that these might be part of a 5x14-deck. You naturally don't see them, if you blindly believe, that "standard Trionfi deck with later Tarot qualities existed c. 1450" and take this viewing point as ultimately given.
You and I have been talking about that possibility for eight years, Huck! REMEMBER? It isn't that the idea hasn't been considered, it is that it hasn't been accepted. It has been considered, in painfully elaborate detail, time and time again, and ultimately rejected.
You keep pretending that this is a new idea that no one has considered. That's not true. It's an old idea, it's been around for a long time, and it has been the single most heavily promoted idea in the area of Tarot history for the last decade. It has NOT been overlooked by "blind" people.
The problems are that it is inconsistent with the evidence about known decks, it is inconsistent with the evidence about Tarot being widespread at an early date, and it doesn't explain anything that isn't more plausibly explained in some other way.
There are no Tarot decks with 14 trumps known, except in your imagination. There are no Tarot decks with 16 trumps known, except in your imagination.Huck wrote:There's a "14" appearing 3 times, there's a 16 appearing 3 times. There's no 22 in the same period.Michael wrote:There is no early document spelling out the design of Tarot. None for you, none for the playing-card historians.
First, I don't have a "side" in the sense of "my theory" or anything like that. I don't have a theory of my own, and "my side" is whatever side the historians come up with. As I keep pointing out, the debate isn't you versus me, Huck. It's you versus playing-card history. For the most part, I just agree with the historians as best I can understand their findings and conclusions. If better evidence and/or arguments come along, I'll change "sides", but until then I'm on the "other side" of most historical arguments from you as well as the occult apologists.Huck wrote:You can't claim all playing card historians for the "22"-assumption. Ron Decker had his doubts about this point earlier, and John Berry, too, and there are meanwhile other more recent playing card historians, who have adapted parts of the evolutionary model. You can't claim "playing cards historians" per se as an your side.
Second, I did not claim anything about all playing-card historians. What I stated was that "in every place where Tarot spread in the 1440s and 1450s, when evidence does appear the evidence is the same -- Tarot had 22 trumps, or more in the case of Minchiate." That is not a statement about historians but about historical facts. I can see why you would want to ignore that fact -- you want the question to be a difference of opinion rather than a matter of facts.
Third, you sound exactly like a Creationist, or a global-warming denier. Not all evolutionary biologists agree on every point; not all climate scientists use exactly the same data sets or analytic methods, or arrive at exactly the same conclusions. The fact that some people have considered various positions on various details is taken as a blanket rejection of "my side" and automatic support for your position. This sort of double standard is rhetorical gamesmanship. Most people, including both historians and those like me who simply read stuff, have considered various ideas. Historians sometimes even publish "possibilities" to generate some debate and see what other evidence and arguments can be brought to the question. Depending on how loosely (and misleadingly) you define "evolutionary model", even Dummett can be claimed as a supporter of an undefined "evolutionary model". He certainly admitted the possibility.
The problem is that the field of ignorance, that "lost in the mists" area where you play your speculative games, is getting smaller. Your theories are like those of Christians who preach a "God of the gaps". Science keeps growing, and their god keeps shrinking. With this new article by Pratesi, the window seems to have closed down to the early 1440s. Of course, that seemed likely before, but now it seems inescapable.
Thinking that I was talking about numbers of historians rather than numbers of facts, ignores the evidence that I was talking about and reduces the question to a difference of opinion. It is in that way typical of your arguments, so I'll try to explain the point again:
You need to read the words, and stop using your imagination so much.Huck wrote:... ... Hopeless optimism at your side, I would guess. Facts count in Tarot history, not persons with the "same opinion" - especially when the group of playing card historians is here mishandled by you in the manner "only those playing card historians are real playing card historians, if they have my opinion".Michael wrote:There is, however, the fact that in every place where Tarot spread in the 1440s and 1450s, when evidence does appear the evidence is the same -- Tarot had 22 trumps, or more in the case of Minchiate. Each one of those is evidence that early Tarot had 22 trumps, because that is the simplest explanation of how later Tarot had 22 trumps. Taken together, the existence of 22 trumps in all those places and the existence of 14 trumps in none of them is conclusive evidence.
Score: Huck=0, playing-card historians=ALL!
"There is, however, the fact that in every place where Tarot spread in the 1440s and 1450s, when evidence does appear the evidence is the same -- Tarot had 22 trumps, or more in the case of Minchiate. ...each one... taken together... all those places..."
The score is about facts, evidence.
In no case ("no case" = 0) is there any solid evidence of a 14-trump Tarot deck.
That is what the score, Huck=0, means.
In every case (every = all) where there is solid evidence, the evidence is of 22 or more trumps.
That is what the score, historians=all, means.
Best regards,
Michael