THE KON-TIKI ARGUMENT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 714, 20 March 1953, Page 5

THE KON-TIKI ARGUMENT

Sir,-Thanks to "Doodlebug," I can continue to enjoy my favourite pastime of aythority-baiting. My "bad slip" is a minor one. I quote from page 125: "Although the bow and arrow is a principal weapon as soon as we enter the Melanesian islands westward of Polynesia, and thence had spread as a fighting weapon only to neighbouring Tonga, it was not even known at the eastern extremity of the ocean." Which reinforces my argument. "Doodlebug’s" second paragraph is utter nonsense. Again I beg, read the book, pages 439-446, to find what Heyerdahl really did say. And why drag in Elliot Smith? What technique is this? To make a hash of a reasonable statement, link it with another nonsensical statement, and infer that everyone is a fool except the critic? This is not my idea of calm reasoning. Calm reasoning would ask of the carving counter-argument: What culture source conditioned Maori carving to ~echo original motifs when once again the migrants found big timber? Heyerdahl’s counter hypothesis warrants a fair appraisal. So far our local scientists have disappointed me. It seems, therefore, the amateur must step in. This discussion could easily switch from the main theme to "Amateur versus Expert" instead, true to my original intention, of championing Heyerdahl’s own calm, scientific reasoning. But his crime has been to confront the champions of an old and creaking hypothesis with:a smoothly-running new one. My role is therefore a dual one. As for the "emotional attitude of the poet," there’s nothing wrong with emotion as such; it is only to be deplored when it sways judgment. I have yet to meet the authority immune to this very human affliction. It always tickles my sense of humour when I find scientists and authorities behaving emotionally while quite convinced of their own calm and lofty detachment. Dr. Duff and "Doodlebug" are authorities and I am an amateur, howbeit with an elementary knowledge of anthropology and ethnology-o lovely words! But this does not automatically make these two gentlemen always right, nor myself in holding a counter opinion, wrong. It is very difficult for an authority to deal unemotionally with a new hypothesis, particularly one that threatens to destroy everything he has been taught. It is easier for the non-authority, particularly one who has a respect for pure scientific method, to judge between

the relative merits of an old theory: and a new one: he has no vested interest in the older and more solidly established opinion. To find scientists treating new theories with patronising scorn is as old a$ scierice. itself.

VIRACOCHA

(Timaru).