Deccan tulwar

[Ren Ren]

Originally Posted by Mercenary

Tom Nichols. The Death of Expertise:
"All things are knowable and every opinion on any subject is as good as any other".

Some time ago, I already recommended to one of the participants in this thread to pay attention to this wonderful book. Now my intuition tells me that I will have to do this more than once

[ariel]

Expertise by definition requires full-time involvement, professional education, vast knowledge, experience and stellar track record. Anything less than that defines an amateur.
Neither I nor you ( at least I hope so) would like to be operated by a part-time medical assistant.
I am an expert in neuroendocrinology, but happily refer patients with metabolic bone disease to a bone/calcium expert even though theoretically I am certified to take care of them, and my diabetes colleagues send their patients with pituitary disease to me from all over the US. Family or criminal lawyers would never take a case of medical malpractice or maritime law. As a rule, real professionals take the issue of “expertise” seriously.

I am perfectly happy considering myself a dilettante and listening to the opinions of people like Robert Elgood, Denis Toichkin, David Alexander, Don LaRocca and (regretfully late) Leonid Tarassyuk.

Regretfully, this is not always the case within the antique weapons community. There, as the old Russian saying goes, “[almost] every gofer considers itself an agronomist”.
There are very few examples of people lacking first two qualification of an ‘“expert” ( see above) who nevertheless added a lot to our knowledge of weapons. Ronald Ewart Oakeshott created the established classification of medieval swords, Jens Nordlunde is a world authority on Indian katars, Kirill Rivkin wrote an almost Darwinian book of history and evolution of a saber and , of course, the incredible “ private researcher from Kutaisi ( Georgia)” Levan Dvalishvili who moved the history of shashka back to 17th century and destroyed a myth that it was an ersatz weapon of poor people, meticulously found actual documents of the best known Georgian armourer Geurk Elisarashvili and his sons, immediately proving that many swords proudly exhibited in major museums and private collections were posthumously marked with his spurious signatures, and an astonishing paper about weapons of Southwest Georgia.

I know little to nothing about other ethnic areas such as SE Asia, Indonesia and Philippines, Japan and China, but am sure that there are other “private researchers” whose names were omitted by me out of sheer ignorance. To all of them, my sincere apologies.

[Ian]

Gentlemen (you know who you are):

These less than amicable exchanges are getting very tedious to everyone but yourselves! If I need to issue permanent bans to get rid of this constant bickering, then I will. Some of you have been warned already. Nevertheless, my actions will be all encompassing, whether you have been warned previously or not.

Sarcasm is an ugly instrument. By definition, it means to tear the flesh of someone like a wild animal.

I have edited several comments recently to remove offensive materials. The next time I have to edit out argumentative, abusive, or sarcastic comments will earn the author a permaban.

Enough!