The Narragansett Rune Stone

Back in the mid 1980s, the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission came into possession (I'm not sure how) of a large chunk of sandstone (7 feet wide, 5 feet high, 2.5 feet deep) on which were carved the above symbols, some of which at least were ancient Norse characters. The sandstone thus came to be known as the Quidnessett Rock, or the Narragansett Rune Stone, and impressed experts on the Norse/Viking presence in North America as authentic.

The stone was apparently stolen from the RIHPHC in 2012, then recovered by law enforcement in 2013. This caused a flurry of press coverage and that in turn brought forward Everett Brown.

Brown now claims that he carved the stone, 50 years ago, thus some 20 years before its discovery. He was a 13 year old kid in 1964, fascinated by Vikings and skilled at carving -- he was also a kid whose family vacationed each summer on the Rhode Island coast. He had too much time on his hands and access to his father's tools and so ... voila! ... an authentic-looking artifact.

I first learned of this controversy only quite recently, when I happened to be taking in the beach air on Block Island, RI, and picked up a copy of the Block Island Times. It contains a column by J.V. Houlihan, a fellow who says he has known the self-identified carver, Brown, for decades and believes in his honesty.

Of course the only reason why Houlihan has felt it necessary to write such a column is that there are those who question Brown's account, continuing to believe that the stone pictured above is an authentic Norse relic.

Two women, sisters, who were children living on the coast in the 1940s, say they remember seeing a stone matching the description of the later 'discovery' in the tidal waters then. "I remember playing on the stone at low tide when it was showing and there were carvings," says one. If the stone they remember is the one now in possession of the RIHPHC, then of course it couldn't be something awaiting creation 20 years later.

A neat little mystery, especially for those of us who share the young Brown's fascination with Norse culture, and its presence in North America. My understanding is that if the rock is what it appears to be, that presence went a good deal further southward than has been thought.

What I would like to believe is that Brown is misremembering his childhood, or remembering a different rock, which may still be "out there" to be discovered. I don't know that he has any clear reason for attempting to pull off a conscious deception here, but it would be good to imagine the Norse presence as wider than hitherto thought, and as encompassing, at least in one scouting expedition, southern New England.

But of course the world is what it is and doesn't care what we would like to believe about it. the world is everything that is the case.

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere. At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...

Recent Controversies Involving Nassim Taleb, Part I

I've written about Nassim Taleb on earlier occasions in this blog. I'll let you do the search yourself, dear reader, for the full background. The short answer to the question "who is Taleb?" is this: he is a 57 year old man born in Lebanon, educated in France, who has been both a hedge fund manager and a derivatives trader. He retired from active participation from the financial world sometime between 2004 and 2006, and has been a full-time writer and provocateur ever since. Taleb's writings for the general public began where one might expect -- in the field where he had made his money -- and he explained certain financial issues to a broad audiences in a very dramatic non-technical way. Since then, he has widened has fields of study, writing about just about everything, applying the intellectual tools he honed in that earlier work. As you might have gather from the above, I respect Taleb, though I have sometimes been critical of him when my own writing ab...

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

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