Book of A.T.Fomenko "Empirico-statistical analysis of narrative materials and its applications to historical dating"

Text of book in Russian (file fom.txt, 424 K, Win1251)


 

Fomenko A.T.
"Empirico-statistical analysis of narrative materials and its applications to historical dating"

Foreword by Professor Albert N.Shiryaev. President of the International Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability Theory

Volume 1: The Development of the Statistical Tools.
Volume 2: The Analysis of Ancient and Medieval Records.

Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994.
P.O.Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
ISBN 0-7923-2604-0 (Volume 1) ISBN 0-7923-2605-9 (Volume 2)
ISBN 0-7923-2606-7 (Set of 2 volumes)

From an abstract:

"These two volumes represent a major, unique work which is the first of its kind published in the English language. A comprehensive set of new statistical technique is presented for the analysis of historical and chronological data. These technique constitute a new important trend in applied statistics. The first volume concentrates mainly of the development of mathematical statistical tools and their applications to astronomical data: dating of ancient eclipses, dating of Almagest etc. The problems of correct dating for ancient and medieval events are discussed. The second volume concentrates on the analysis of ancient and medieval chronicles and records (such as Egyptian, Byzantine, Roman, Greek, Babylonian, European etc.). An astonishing wealth of historical data is considered. The conclusions which are drawn concerning the accepted chronological dating of events in ancient history will certainly provoke controversy and serious debate. The author suggested a new chronology which is dramatically different from the traditional one. For example, new short chronology place ancient Rome and Greece in medieval epoch. The main result is as follows: the modern "textbook" of traditional ancient and medieval history is the fibred chronicle derived by gluing together the four practically identical replicas A,B,C,D of the shorter chronicle A. Three chronicle B,C,D are obtained from A by shifting it as a rigid block backwards by 333, 1053, and 1778 years (approximately). In other words, the entire "modern textbook" can be completely restored from its lesser part A wholly placed to the right of A.D.960, i.e. each epoch of history, placed today to the left (below) of A.D.960, is a reflection of a certain real historical events from the interval A.D.960 - A.D.1600. For example "the ancient Greece" is dated in 10-14 centuries A.D. The book provide the necessary background and material for intelligent participation in such debates."

From the Foreword:

"Today the methods of applied statistics have penetrated very different fields of knowledge, including the investigation of texts of various origins...

One of the most important problems arising here is to recognize dependent texts, i.e., texts which have a measure of "resemblance", arising from some kind of "common origin"...

As applied to the study of narrative texts, the problem of recognizing dependent and independent texts (e.g., chronicles) leads to the problem of finding texts having a common source, i.e., the same original (such texts are naturally called dependent), or, on the contrary, having different sources (such texts are naturally called independent)...

The author proposed a new approach to the problem of recognizing dependent and independent narrative (historical) texts based on the several new empirico-statistical models (regularities) which he has discovered during his extensive statistical experiments involving various quantitative characteristics of concrete texts, chronicles, originals, and so forth...

The approach proposed in this book is nonstandard and requires attention and diligence on the part of reader to new and probably unfamiliar logical constructions. At the same time, the basic ideas of the author seem quite natural...

The author's scientific results and ideas are very interesting, and perhaps already today we may speak of the appearance of a new (and rather unexpected) scientific trend in applied statistics whose development is of undisputed importance. This book is a result of tremendous amount of work done by the author and his colleagues, most of them specialize in mathematical statistics and its applications...

I hope that, after perusing the first few pages of the book, the reader will be intrigued to read to the end with unabating interest. He will, at the very last, get to know an interesting set of scientific problems and, perhaps, will even engage in further investigations in this new and promising field of science."

Albert Schiryaev

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