Mathematical myths of "New Chronology"

An interview with a novochronologist and, unfortunately, the actual member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Anatoly Fomenko ( http://er-portal.ru/about/text.shtml?16/5379.11128 ) appeared on the official portal of the United Russia party. The surname Fomenko and his “new chronology” in the scientific community have long become commonplace, meaning an outrageous level of incompetence in historical research and direct falsifications. An important role in the debunking of the myth of the “New Chronology” was played by the Doct. physical mat. Sciences, physical faculty of Moscow State University Mikhail Gorodetsky, creator of the Internet portal "Fomencology" ( http://hbar.phys.msu.ru/gorm/fomenko.htm ). TRV-hobby offers its readers an interview with him. Questions were asked by Alexey Ivanov.

- Michael, tell us in a nutshell about how the “new chronology” arose and how A. T. Fomenko was involved in it.

- I'll try, but not in a nutshell, but in two versions. The roots of the “New Chronology” should be sought in the multi-volume “Christ” of the Narodlitz and a self-taught scientist, honorary academician Nikolai Morozov, published in the 20-30s of the last century. He tried to prove, widely using, in particular, astronomical interpretations of biblical stories and descriptions of astronomical phenomena in ancient chronicles, that world history is largely falsified, and its chronology is very distorted. In the mid-60s, the mathematician M. Postnikov came across these forgotten works and began to actively popularize them in numerous lectures, which was also listened to by A. T. Fomenko, at the insistence of which in 1974 postnikov organized a 50-hour course of lectures at Moscow State University. Their notes, formed by A. T. Fomenko and A. S. Mishchenko, later turned into typewritten volumes, distributed in the Soviet Union by samizdat. They led to the beginning of the conflict between Postnikov and young enthusiasts who organized their seminar by this time and began to invent elaborate methods to check chronology with mathematical lining. After a couple of joint publications in the early 80s, the roads of Fomenko and Postnikov parted.

According to Fomenko himself, in the 70s, in the framework of his studies on heavenly mechanics, he stumbled upon the articles of Robert Newton about “mysterious illiteration forces” and “racing of the moon”, checked the calculations and came to the conclusion that the incorrect chronology, which was postulated by Morozov, which he heard from “conversations in the corridors of Moscow State University”, can be an explanation.

- Could you popularly tell about these mysterious results of R. Newton and his “problem of the second derivative of the lunar elongation1”?

- No riddles. The existence of illiteration forces in the system of the Earth and the Moon has long been known. First of all, these are tidal friction forces, predicted by I. Kant, which lead to a gradual slowdown in the rotation of the Earth, lengthening the day by about 15 μs per year, and the removal of a 38 mm satellite per year from us. American physicist Robert Russell Newton tried to more precisely determine the acceleration caused by these forces in the Luna and Earth system, comparing the estimated circumstances of hundreds of sunny and lunar eclipses with their descriptions in historical chronicles. It turned out that in addition to the constant component in the acceleration determined from the eclipses, the fluctuation component is also present. In the earliest article, R. Newton really turned out that changes in acceleration occur at some point quickly enough, but when he processed a lot of more observations, he received much more smooth curves. From the publications of A. T. Fomenko it follows that he was familiar only with this early article by R. Newton and did not find time for all the past years to read his further articles and three monographs about the subject. According to one article, due to the lack of initial data, it is impossible to conduct its own calculations, and the entire work of the “new chronologist” was reduced to the removal of objectionable early points from the schedule of R. Newton. The misunderstanding of A. T. Fomenko is the essence of the problem, even if he continues to write about the “mysterious races of the moon”, although in fact, as R. Newton himself explains, “the second derivative of the lunar elongation” includes accelerations of both the Moon and the Earth. At the same time, fluctuations are caused by the uneven rotation of the Earth. Own acceleration (more precisely, slowdown) of the moon remains almost constant. Many publications and monographs are now devoted to the study of the uneven rotation of the Earth, they are reliably measured in our time with satellites. In particular, long -term fluctuations of the Earth’s rotation are associated with processes in its core and climatic changes.

1 Lunar elongation - the angular distance between the moon and the sun, as it is observed from the Earth, respectively the second derivative - the acceleration of rotation of the moon, or rather, its projection onto the plane of the earth's orbit.

- When you became interested in works on the “New Chronology”, and what was the original idea of ​​the Fomencology site?

-For the first time, I collided with the New Chronology in the first half of the 80s, still a student. My school friend Sasha Kolbasov entered applied mathematics in Kerosinka (the Moscow Institute of the Neftekhimic and Gas Industry named after I. M. Gubkin, now the Russian State University of Oil and Gas named after I. M. Gubkin), where there was some kind of group of comrade-in-law of Fomenko trying to realize his “empiric and statistical methods” on the processing of historical texts on the then computers. Those cars were monsters with punching data and by performance were noticeably inferior to modern smartphones. In fact, the statement that the “New Chronology” is based on computer statistical calculations is equivalent to the assertion that world history was refuted by the calculation on the cell phone. Computer experiments did not show any unambiguous results. You can wonder why with the rapid development of personal computers and the appearance of the Internet, which gives access to a huge number of sources and other data, emphasis on “empiric-statistical methods” from the books of Fomenko disappeared. Sasha let me read typewritten volumes, said something, it was interesting, but I did not delve deeply.

I forgot about Fomenko until in the early 90s they began to appear on the shelves of his book. At that time, I was not particularly burdened with historical knowledge, and therefore the reasoning of the mathematics seemed not evidence, but outwardly believable. However, I already had some mathematical preparation and a critical attitude towards any statements brought up during scientific activity. At the Physics Fund of Moscow State University by that time there was already the Internet. I found the forum “on the roof”, where the “new chronology” was discussed at a high level. After the appearance of Fomenko on TV, in the Night Flight program, a special forum of the program appeared. He began to look for critical articles of the 80s in libraries. But these worthy works, however, were mainly written by historians who did not try to figure out the methods, but already proceeded from the absurdity of the declared results that they understand.

It was just interesting, and I decided to delve into the foundations of the new theory. At first he turned to astronomical arguments, since astronomy was seriously fond of school. It turned out that many specialists who gathered thousands of observation descriptions, who, with very rare exceptions, are well consistent with astronomical calculations were engaged in ancient and medieval eclipses. Ptolemy paid a lot of attention to the Almagest, which contains more than a hundred unambiguously dated astronomical phenomena and easily resists any attempts to “transmit” it. The only surviving “natural science” method in NH is the fortune -telling on horoscopes, where a really accurate astronomical calculation of the planet position is superimposed on an arbitrary interpretation of images that are not even always images of the sky.

But I still could not believe that the “new chronology” has no reason and turned to “empiric-statistical” methods. Mathematics was not too complicated, but rather exotic, much closer to the author’s native to the author than to traditional statistics. However, NH of these publications did not develop in any way. More and more new methods were actively declared, some of their mathematical justifications were occasionally given, but almost nothing was checked on real data, and if it was checked, the results were extremely ambiguous, but, nevertheless, in the conclusions, in some fantastic way, the “systems of chronological shifts” and “global chronological map” suddenly arose. In the end, I reproduced on a computer a method for finding duplicates of dynasties and drove the rulers from the English directory of dynasties. The declared result of this method, known for reading the books of Fomenko, are the images of “Christmas trees”, graphically comparing the pairs of sequences of rulers of different countries and eras declared in the “new chronology” duplicates. For example, duplicates are announced by ancient Roman and medieval German emperors.

It turned out that the method does not allow any duplicates to identify, but what is demonstrated in books is the result of manual selection with violence over the source data. At the same time, on the "tail" of the statistical distribution during a computer bust, you can even find much the best pairs without manual manipulations; For example, the medieval kings of the Navarra are “duplicates” of the now ruling Swedish dynasty of Bernadotov and predecessors. I told about this at the sign conference "Myths of the" New Chronology "in December 1999, where I first met many historians.

The site and the forum appeared a little earlier, in the same 1999. The goal was to give the possibility of “lyrics” who read Fomenko’s books and not ready to unconditionally agree with the author, to get reliable information: read critical publications, original sources, scientific work on dating and chronology, help others understand the pseudo-scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific scientific science Many experts in different fields sent their interesting results of checks and professional comments. By 2003, thanks to the persistence of the publisher Igor Nastenko (“Russian Panorama”), most of the site materials were published in the series of books “Antifomenko”. By this time, it became finally clear that even from the appearance of the scientific methods “New Chronology”, it has finally departed and turned for an academician and its co -author simply into a commercial publishing project. To date, co -authors have published about a hundred books in various "yellow" publishers. Interest in Fomenko faded not only me, but also in the scientific environment and on the Internet. In this regard, I began to pay the main attention to other pages of the site - the history of astronomy, ancient technologies, and natural science methods for dating the past. The “Fomencology” section practically does not develop, although the discussion of the “New Chronology” does not continue very actively on the forum.

- Is the “new chronology” so dangerous? Some believe that the “new chronology” only causes interest in history, and smart people, they say, will understand everything and figure it out.

- Oddly enough, the “new chronology” does not pose a particular danger to history, no matter how dangerous any activity of amateurs for real science is not dangerous. However, it is dangerous for society, for the historians themselves living in this society, and for all science and scientists in general. The main harm is that books on the “New Chronology” undermine the authority of science in society, inspiring, on the one hand, an idea of ​​the unreliability of any scientific truths, and on the other, about the extraordinary ease of scientific activity accessible to everyone. I recall the hero of R. Plyatta from the film comedy "Spring": “Do you know how they make discoveries? He sat down, thought ... opened! The main thing is to think! ” So many readers and followers of the “new chronology”, following the example of the founding fathers, begin to “think” and make “discoveries” that they are in a hurry to share with all others. A characteristic feature of such activity is an implicit assumption that the first thought that came to mind is true. At the same time, books on the “New Chronology” inspire readers with a very aggressive, implicated on nationalism, attitude to the entire historical community as “Scaligerian-Romanian historians” who are afraid to lose their earnings and therefore intentionally engaged in falsification of reality and concealment of truth from the people. The same attitude towards specialists in dating methods, astronomers and everyone who does not agree with the "new teaching".

Smart people, of course, can figure it out, but for this it is necessary that they have the opportunity to listen to arguments and the other side. In addition, these smart people could devote their time to something more useful than catching someone else's fleas. I really know examples when the “new chronology” stimulated interest in history. For example, a professor at the University of Florida, also a physicist, Dennis Duke, now one of the famous experts in the history of astronomy, was carried away by this direction after G.K. Kasparov attracted him to verify the astronomical arguments A. T. Fomenko. However, such examples are still quite rare. Now, when NH has degenerated only into a commercial project, its influence on society, in my opinion, has become insignificant.

- You are a physicist, but you devote a significant part of the time of time. Does this interfere with the hobby of the main scientific work?

- Probably interferes. But, perhaps, vice versa, I just need such a switch.

I myself am interested in the issues of the history of astronomy, calendar and chronology. He participated in several Russian and international conferences on this topic. It was even a small discovery in this area. Among the published texts of Kirill Belozersky (end of the XIV century) it was possible to identify and decipher the earliest calculated astronomical tables in Rus', which are on the same level with Western European astronomical knowledge of this time. Astronomical analysis, which showed that these tables are of Serbian origin, was confirmed by Serbian sources. Moreover, the fact of the existence of such a developed astronomical school in Serbia was unknown to historians of science.

Still, I want to emphasize that I am not engaged in purely historical research and I do not pretend to the laurels of the historian. This requires a completely different scale of work in archives with original sources and a completely different preparation. But in some interdisciplinary areas, my contribution can be useful. So, I organized the translation (in which I myself took part in the Book of G. Wagner “Scientific methods of dating in geology, archeology and history”, supplemented by agreement with the author of the leading domestic experts. The remarkable historian R. A. Simonov attracted me to work in the Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Natural Scientific Book in the Culture of Rus'”, where I am the deputy chairman.