singhals wrote: > META discussion of theory -- names not needed, no lookups needed. > > All right, let's say, just for the sake of having somewhere to > start, that Absence of proof is not proof of absence. > > At what stage can one legitimately claim that absence of evidence is > proof of the absence of proof? > > I mean, at what stage are we allowed to be reasonable about it? In strict logic there is no such stage, because it is impossible to prove a negative. On a somewhat more concrete level, evidence is not the same thing as proof. Although evidence IS necessary to make a proof possible, a proof cannot be used conversely to synthesize evidence. Proof is the conclusion drawn from analysis and correlation of a number of discrete facts, which we collectively refer to as evidence. The evidence must be pretty weak, I suspect, before any researcher will beg us to "be reasonable" about our standards of proof. Such a plea should always be taken with a grain of salt. There is still a greater hazard -- back of this one, as it were. The discovery of one additional pair of ancestors hardly concludes the process of tracing the pedigree. If one generation in a line is hypothesized from a dubious collection of evidence, then doubts must extend to the whole length and breadth of the pedigree behind that generation. We may never legitimately determine that the evidence is absolutely against the original identification, but we may also never legitimately argue for its validity -- nor, by extension, for the validity of the entire lineage. > How many long-shots add up to enough? When you're down to begging > total strangers to let you paw through their attic just in case > their ancestor (a) kept a diary (b) knew your ancestor and (c) > mentioned your ancestor's parents in their diary -- is absence of > proof good enough to prove there's no evidence? In this instance, you might have evidence to show that the strangers are descended from people who might have known your ancestors, but that evidence extends no farther. You approach them expressly to beg of them the opportunity to paw through their attic in hopes of finding other evidence bearing upon two points: whether their ancestors knew yours, and the names of your ancestor's parents. The content and uses of the information differ to such a degree that you cannot legitimately claim that you used the same evidence to locate your newfound source as you found in the source itself. The moral is that evidence inheres in many things, and has many uses. Any statement of a factual problem demands as well a clear statement of the evidence bearing upon that problem and no others. If a thorough search of any particular source produces no facts that have evidentiary bearing on the problem, you are entitled to say that the source contains no evidence. But the statement has value (if a null value) only as to that source and that problem. It does not mean either that there is no evidence still to be found bearing on your problem, or that the source contains no evidence at all. > Is 35 years of > personal searching, plus another 52 years combined efforts of two > lawyers, two professional genealogists and four other interested > family members enough to say "mama-said" is as good as it gets > proof-wise? > > Cheryl Singhals <[email protected]> No. What did you, the lawyers, hired genealogists, and interested family members look up in all that time? Compile a list of authorities and add notes for each authority detailing what characteristics were sought in each authority or set of records. Preface it with a description of the mama-said. Austin W. Spencer "Austin W. Spencer" <[email protected]>