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Comment by mrjangles | Hacker News Reader

Yeah so obviously spiral staircases turn clockwise on the way down to give defenders an advantage. This guy claims it isn't true, then offers no evidence, except that he can't find any evidence that it is true.

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I think the point is that this theory was first proposed in the 20th century, and given the structures were designed and built something like 1000 years earlier, it is at this point speculation, and there is no evidence to support the assertion.

It's useful to dig into beliefs and try and find their basis, and it appears that in this case it's not forthcoming. Of course, this doesn't rule out that in the future some academic finds a 12th century french scroll on how to defend staircases that talks about this!

Your argument is the main point he makes in the intro and is the strongest argument against the theory. But the arguments the author lists himself are not very strong:

1. "The swordsman theory is predicated upon the belief that castles were intrinsically designed as military structures" => "just because most were; there are a lot of castle like fortress that were actively used as defense sitations.

2. If staircases were genuinely engineered for military purposes, then we should always find that they turn clockwise. => No, opposite, since not all were used military it might not have been a priority for all, and also not all builders might have been aware of this strategy.

etc...

The hypothesis is just common sense. If an academic wants to claim that common sense is wrong then it is up to him to provide evidence.

I look forward to his next article where he debunks the myth that doors are for keeping people out. After all, not all doors have locks, and if the author can't find any texts from the 15th century that discuss keeping people out with doors then surely his hypothesis is proven, right?

The only common sense bit about stairs is that they were likely made to ascend to places and descend from them. Everything else is conjecture.

It'd be the same if people were dead convinced that doors were made to open a certain way to keep the right hand free for attacking people behind the door. There may actually be some doors somewhere made that way for those reasons, but that would be a silly belief to hold for all doors, wouldn't it?

I think perhaps what is missing is an understanding of statistics. There are thousands of doors and stairways in castles. If the majority of stairways all go one way, or if the majority of doors all open one way in castles, then it is statistically impossible that this is by chance. There has to be an obvious reason. A reason obvious enough that most people building the castles saw it without too much thought.

Well, no, it's not obvious at all. It's a neat conjecture that may be true in some cases and false in others. I mean, for all we know there may be castles where staircases spiral a certain way because of some beliefs about the devil.

It's fine to say that we don't have enough information to say anything definite about the subject.

> Yeah so obviously...

Why would you say that's obvious? You don't offer any evidence, either. I would say that if you're going to propose that something has been done for a particular reason, you should back that up. It seems like this is a just-so story: people say they're clockwise for defenders because people say they're clockwise for defenders. It's one of those cool "a-ha"-type ideas that sounds plausible, so people assume it's been studied and researched and then repeat it.

They could be clockwise simply because right-handed people tend to think that clockwise is the "right" direction. It could be done for architectural reasons specific to the particular castle (e.g. the stairs wouldn't face or line up properly if it were anti-clockwise). There are many, simpler reasons why 70% of the castles we see today have clockwise staircases. And if the defender theory is true, why do the other 30% have anti-clockwise staircases?

Do you like teapots? Fine, let us talk about the teapot currently orbiting the sun on the opposite side, so small, we cannot see it, but it is obviously there, ancient books and the elder says so. You do not believe me? Then where is your evidence for its not-existence? You cannot prove it? See: The teapot exist!

If it exists, it doesn't follow, that it is used for a tea, or in this case, that it has any military value over military satellites on the Earths orbit... even if it can disable sattelite, that doesn't follow that it is the best satellite disabler and that teapots function is exlusivelly to disable a satellite.

Sometimes stairs are just used as a stairs and there are no other functions for them, than just walk those steps up and down, up and down - every day.

The article explicitly states that it is not going to present the evidence against the myth; it isn't trying to demonstrate that the myth is false, it's leaving that for elsewhere.

OP makes a valid point stating the article presents no evidence. Therefore, would those who down voted OP care to explain why they did so?

EDIT: I'm being downvoted for asking a genuine question? Shame on you. This place is turning into another Redit.

OP claims it's "obvious" that the staircases are designed for defense, contradicting the article while giving no evidence. This despite the fact that the whole point of the article was that there does not appear to be evidence to support this claim.

Yeah the author seems to be approaching their overall argument by first establishing that there's no primary source evidence from the time of castle building that the defense theory is true. He seems to be trying to establish that the argument for it is modern and therefore just as good or bad as any other.

I wish he would delve into things more but it seems reasonable to me to first establish where the defense theory first came from.

That theory doesn't have any ground, but I am more interested what makes people believe that there is such theory. Nobody today claims, that everything that is written in a Bible is true, why would there such belief without any doubt to something that someone claimed just 100 years ago?

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