I have started this thread in to a response from Uthman in the thread on Music.
I have viewed the video of Dr Brown on hadith science and here I review what In have learned on Hadith issues.
All religions have to decide what is legitimate and what is not thus the purpose of Hadith is to tell you what the prophet believed and what he did. There are three types of Hadith: sayings, actions and things done/said in his presence to which he did not object. There are two parts to a Hadith: the isnad and the text plus Brown suggests we could add a third that of interpretation. Some Hadith are regarded as 'elevated' meaning it starts with the prophet. The Basic rule is that if the prophet said or did something it must be true/right with the sira often giving the context of a saying or a revelation.
In the early days there were little in the way of written records and although books had been invented a few centuries earlier they were scarce and often of massive size. It is thought that the Codex Sinaticus of the whole Bible was the first real book, not simply because of its content but because of its physical size; it could be picked up and handled. So in early Islam it was all in the minds of the followers so nothing written remains. Early collections were mostly about the meaning of words and only later were interpretations added. The first formal collection were around 800 CE, some considerable time after the death of the prophet and these hadith tended to be only things related to the prophet though there are other things that became cultural norms where most of the Ummah agreed.
From all this we get three basic categories: Forbidden, Allowed and optional where contradictory accounts occurred where the prophet said one thing one day and something different on another day. The transmitter characteristics: continuity of the chain of transmitters (ittisal assanad), The integrity ('adalah) of the transmitters, soundness of memory of the transmitters and Conformity of the Hadith.
My questions on this science:
Firstly, it seems circular in that it depends on the transmitters but their integrity is vouched by other transmitters although there is a separate biographical science that covers this but it does look a weakness though nothing much can be done.
Secondly, everything is reduced to just Mohammed and two question (for me) arise here: is he the only possible person that could say or do some good things (surely others could say and do things just as good or better) and so my problem is how one guards against idolatry here - that is you will have to explain to me how a focus on every tiny word and deed of a mortal man is not idolatry.
Finally, I could not find anything in the talk as a means of validating what was actually said - if the Haith is authentic then I have no difficulty accepting that Mohammed said something but I do find it hard to see how what he said must necessarily be true. For example, Dr Brown gave a few examples about the heavens and I could not see how in any way such saying could be checked?