Thu Jan 9 16:06:20 1997

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Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 16:02:47 -0500 (EST)
From: "James R. Adair" 
To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Subject: Re: Ms half-lives
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On Thu, 9 Jan 1997, Robert B. Waltz wrote:

> Take the decay of radioactive atoms. If you look at one atom
> of, say, U-238, you *cannot* predict when it will break down.
> But if you observe enough of them, you can say that -- no matter
> *what* happens -- after about 5 billion years (the half-life of
> U-238), half of them will be gone.
> 
> Tim is not stating a thesis ("manuscripts break down after 500
> years," or the like). He is stating an observation and making
> a hypothesis. In fact, he is almost certainly right, too: In
> a large enough universe of manuscripts, they *will* break down
> in a pattern approximating radioactive decay.
> 
> Radioactive decay is a statistical process. It is absolutely
> uniform when you are working with trillions of atoms. When
> you are dealing with tens of thousands of manuscripts, you will
> see bumps and valleys in the graph. (Just as you would if you
> tracked the decay of tens of thousands of radioactive atoms.
> There aren't enough of them.) This has no effect on the rule.

I agree that radioactive decay is uniform, since, as Bob mentioned, there 
are huge numbers of atoms (in a mole of U, 6.02 x 10^23, if I remember 
correctly--that's several hundred, what, sextillion?).  But radioactive 
decay proceeds randomly, unaffected by the outside world (at least 
largely so--but compare C-14 dating fluctuations).  On the other hand, 
the "decay" of a group of mss created in a certain century, while 
generally decaying exponentially, may be affected by outside influences, 
such as the ones I mentioned (persecutions, changes in technology, 
etc.).  I suppose over a long enough period of time even ouside 
influences might possibly fit into some sort of pattern of random 
interference, but I don't think 1000 years or so (or 2000) is long 
enough.  So, as a general description of the phenomenon of ms decay, I 
like the radioactive decay analogy.  All I'm saying is that I don't think 
we can push the analogy too far.

Jimmy Adair
Manager of Information Technology Services, Scholars Press
    and
Managing Editor of TELA, the Scholars Press World Wide Web Site
---------------> http://scholar.cc.emory.edu <-----------------

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