DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.15#0100
90 THE GREAT PYRAMID.
attached to the two methods. But it is altogether
unsafe, or, to speak plainly, it is in the logical sense
a perfectly vicious manner of reasoning, to ascer-
tain first such relative weights on an assumption
of this kind, and, having so found them, to assert
that the relation thus detected is a probable one in
itself, and that since, when assumed, it accounts
precisely for the observed position of the pyramid,
therefore the pyramid was posited in that way and
no other. It has been by unsound reasoning of
this kind that nine-tenths of the absurdities have
been established on which Mr. Taylor and Professor
Smyth and their followers have established what
may be called the pyramid religion.
All we can fairly assume as probable from the
evidence, in so far as that evidence bears on the
results of à priori considerations, is that the
builders of the Great Pyramid preferred the pole-
star method to the shadow method, as a means of
determining the true position of latitude 30o north.
They seem to have applied this method with great
skill, considering the means at their disposal, if we
suppose that they took no account whatever of the
influence of refraction. If they took refraction
into account at all, they considerably underrated
its influence.
Piazzi Smyth's idea that they knew the precise
attached to the two methods. But it is altogether
unsafe, or, to speak plainly, it is in the logical sense
a perfectly vicious manner of reasoning, to ascer-
tain first such relative weights on an assumption
of this kind, and, having so found them, to assert
that the relation thus detected is a probable one in
itself, and that since, when assumed, it accounts
precisely for the observed position of the pyramid,
therefore the pyramid was posited in that way and
no other. It has been by unsound reasoning of
this kind that nine-tenths of the absurdities have
been established on which Mr. Taylor and Professor
Smyth and their followers have established what
may be called the pyramid religion.
All we can fairly assume as probable from the
evidence, in so far as that evidence bears on the
results of à priori considerations, is that the
builders of the Great Pyramid preferred the pole-
star method to the shadow method, as a means of
determining the true position of latitude 30o north.
They seem to have applied this method with great
skill, considering the means at their disposal, if we
suppose that they took no account whatever of the
influence of refraction. If they took refraction
into account at all, they considerably underrated
its influence.
Piazzi Smyth's idea that they knew the precise