[OT] How much of history do we really know?
- Thread starter reapersaurus
- Start date
Henry
Autoexreginated
In regards to the topic, let me say that I DO agree with reapersaurus' comment, after a fashion. It's flat wrong to say we know NOTHING about certain events and concepts, because we have documentation for many, many things.
However, in a larger sense, we really don't know many, many things. Ever seen the phrase, "the more I know, the more I know, that I know nothing?"
Many times in the past, mankind as asserted that he has reached a pinnacle of knowledge or a plateau at least on a subject, only to have the rug pulled from under himself. Witness dynastic information on Ancient Egypt, true figures for Nazi Holocaust info, for that matter how many people killed under Stalin's regime - no one knows for certain because paper trails can be nonexistent or hidden (and in some cases falsified). Witness mankind's CERTAINTY in Newtonian physics at the turn of the 20th century, only to have advances from 1900-1950 render it useless, and Einstein redefines it to take not only Newtonian observations but relativistic observations into account.
I saw a fascinating special on the Soviet R7 rocket engine, and a bunch of American scientists baffled that the Soviets had Rocket Tech in the 50's and 60's that we STILL don't have a parallel for - because we bought it from them when we realized how good it was.
We know a LOT - but in one respect, the wider we probe, and the better our microscopes get, and the more evidence is uncovered, we find more theories to revise, more info to assimilate, and more questions than answers. So in an overall sense, we know far less than we think we do, as a people.
However, in a larger sense, we really don't know many, many things. Ever seen the phrase, "the more I know, the more I know, that I know nothing?"
Many times in the past, mankind as asserted that he has reached a pinnacle of knowledge or a plateau at least on a subject, only to have the rug pulled from under himself. Witness dynastic information on Ancient Egypt, true figures for Nazi Holocaust info, for that matter how many people killed under Stalin's regime - no one knows for certain because paper trails can be nonexistent or hidden (and in some cases falsified). Witness mankind's CERTAINTY in Newtonian physics at the turn of the 20th century, only to have advances from 1900-1950 render it useless, and Einstein redefines it to take not only Newtonian observations but relativistic observations into account.
I saw a fascinating special on the Soviet R7 rocket engine, and a bunch of American scientists baffled that the Soviets had Rocket Tech in the 50's and 60's that we STILL don't have a parallel for - because we bought it from them when we realized how good it was.
We know a LOT - but in one respect, the wider we probe, and the better our microscopes get, and the more evidence is uncovered, we find more theories to revise, more info to assimilate, and more questions than answers. So in an overall sense, we know far less than we think we do, as a people.
Thresher
First Post
One of the more important things to note is that history is written by the winners, especially when it comes to things like conflict, so its often a bit hard to find an unbiased record of what happened.
As for the rest of it, theres educated guess work based on the interpretation of evidence, some are closer to the facts than others, but an educated guess none the less.
As for the rest of it, theres educated guess work based on the interpretation of evidence, some are closer to the facts than others, but an educated guess none the less.
Mark Chance
Boingy! Boingy!
Thresher said:
This is demonstrably false. See Anne Frank's diary, for just one of many examples.
Mark Chance said:
Interestingly, I would see the publishing of Anne Frank's diary as supporting Thresher's point. I'm not sure of the history of the diary itself, but I imagine that it would have had a much harder journey to the printed page if Germany had kept control of Holland. If Germany had conquered England, it likely would never have come to light at all.
A fun alternate-history book, on this subject, is "Fatherland" by Robert Harris. In it, an SS police inspector in 1960s Berlin uncovers evidence of something called "The Final Solution" on the eve of Chancellor Hitler's historic summit with the American President, Joseph Kennedy. There was a movie version, starring Rutger Hauer, that wasn't bad.
the Jester
Legend
Mark Chance said:
Well, of course it can be argued that her side won, if not her personally.
On the topic, we know an awful lot about an awful lot, but there's an awful lot more to know.
Consider that almost everything that we know about human history takes place in the last few thousand years, yet how long has our species been here? A bit longer than that, yet we know virtually nothing about what our life was like for the majority of our history (well, prehistory, anyway).
MerakSpielman
First Post
The more history I learn, the more I realize how little I know. Scholars have discovered an incredible amount.
We have to define, though, what we mean by "history." Traditionally, history is distinguished from pre-history by the development of writing. Everything we have from before the written word is vague at best.
Think of how incredibly complicated Roman history is, or Chinese history. These people were some of the best record keepers on the planet! Yet there is still a considerable amount that remains unknown. There were complicated civilizations in the Americas before the Europeans showed up. Most of them lacked writing, and so the complications and intracacies of their history are almost certainly lost forever. There's a lot we can deduce from archiology, but a lot we can't.
Can you imagine how much less we'd understand the Romans if they hadn't bothered writing anything down? How much of what we currently know could we have reconstruced based on archiology alone? A lot, perhaps, but still nowhere near all of it.
There were civilzations that didn't record their history in written form up to very recent times. A lot of their history has been lost.
Of couse, it's impossible to know how much is unknown about any particular subject. Some aspects of history are SO lost that it will never occur to us that they ever existed. Perhaps things that were totally lost can be argued to be unimportant, since if they were important they would have been remembered and recorded by somebody, but there's no way of knowing if this is true or not.
From 221-206 BC the Chin dynasty united and ruled China. They decided that a unified nation required unified thought, and set about destroying all writings they could. Philosophy, religion, science, history - they were all burned indiscriminately. It is unknown how much was lost in those fifteen years, because by default, if every copy of a work was burned, we would never have heard of it and we would not miss its absence.
We probably know more about the 20th century than any other century of history, just because there are still people alive who remember it. And still, so soon after the fact, we are capable of debating things that you would think should be obvious. The whole Holocaust thing debated above is a prime example. What about what really happened "behind the scenes" during the Cold War (including Vietnam and Korea)? Who really shot JFK? The laughable (but somehow gaining acceptance) notion that the moon landings were a hoax? Why did we bomb Nagasaki when the Japanese were ready to surrender after the Bomb in Hiroshima(this one has political science classes debating non-stop)? So many questions, and we'll never really know the answers.
Do you really think for a moment that any era of history is any more clear? The only reason we lack penetrating questions is because we lack the context of having been there ourselves. We are reduced to reading what historians of the time wrote, under behest of their sponsors (not much money in "freelance" historianism). Archiology can tell us that the Greeks sacked Troy, but can't actually dispute much of the fantastic mythology of the Iliad. Archiology tells us only what happened, but rarely why, and that's where the juicy bits of history really are.
We have to define, though, what we mean by "history." Traditionally, history is distinguished from pre-history by the development of writing. Everything we have from before the written word is vague at best.
Think of how incredibly complicated Roman history is, or Chinese history. These people were some of the best record keepers on the planet! Yet there is still a considerable amount that remains unknown. There were complicated civilizations in the Americas before the Europeans showed up. Most of them lacked writing, and so the complications and intracacies of their history are almost certainly lost forever. There's a lot we can deduce from archiology, but a lot we can't.
Can you imagine how much less we'd understand the Romans if they hadn't bothered writing anything down? How much of what we currently know could we have reconstruced based on archiology alone? A lot, perhaps, but still nowhere near all of it.
There were civilzations that didn't record their history in written form up to very recent times. A lot of their history has been lost.
Of couse, it's impossible to know how much is unknown about any particular subject. Some aspects of history are SO lost that it will never occur to us that they ever existed. Perhaps things that were totally lost can be argued to be unimportant, since if they were important they would have been remembered and recorded by somebody, but there's no way of knowing if this is true or not.
From 221-206 BC the Chin dynasty united and ruled China. They decided that a unified nation required unified thought, and set about destroying all writings they could. Philosophy, religion, science, history - they were all burned indiscriminately. It is unknown how much was lost in those fifteen years, because by default, if every copy of a work was burned, we would never have heard of it and we would not miss its absence.
We probably know more about the 20th century than any other century of history, just because there are still people alive who remember it. And still, so soon after the fact, we are capable of debating things that you would think should be obvious. The whole Holocaust thing debated above is a prime example. What about what really happened "behind the scenes" during the Cold War (including Vietnam and Korea)? Who really shot JFK? The laughable (but somehow gaining acceptance) notion that the moon landings were a hoax? Why did we bomb Nagasaki when the Japanese were ready to surrender after the Bomb in Hiroshima(this one has political science classes debating non-stop)? So many questions, and we'll never really know the answers.
Do you really think for a moment that any era of history is any more clear? The only reason we lack penetrating questions is because we lack the context of having been there ourselves. We are reduced to reading what historians of the time wrote, under behest of their sponsors (not much money in "freelance" historianism). Archiology can tell us that the Greeks sacked Troy, but can't actually dispute much of the fantastic mythology of the Iliad. Archiology tells us only what happened, but rarely why, and that's where the juicy bits of history really are.
What Reaper says is true in one sense, false in another sense, and completely meaningless in a third sense.
Each day on this planet, many things happen. Six billion people going for walks, eating supper,and so on. The data on exactly what happened is mostly lost. Conflate this back through history, and the amount of stuff that's gone on unnoticed becomes mind-boggling.
However, there's also a lot of data out there. Just walk into the Library of Congress. There's a huge amount of history there. Laid out and preserved for us to know and study.
And, now, for the clincher - the vast majority of historical data is of no use whatsoever. We could go ahead and ignore it and lead happy and healthy lives. There are occasions where the devil lies in the details, and much understanding can be gleaned from focusing upon them. However, in the long run it does not matter exactly what hour of the day a given law was brought into being, or what type of soup JFK preferred.
And, in general, it is perhaps best to avoid emotionally charged topics like the Holocaust in this forum, hm? Tactically, if you want the discussion to keep going, that is....
Each day on this planet, many things happen. Six billion people going for walks, eating supper,and so on. The data on exactly what happened is mostly lost. Conflate this back through history, and the amount of stuff that's gone on unnoticed becomes mind-boggling.
However, there's also a lot of data out there. Just walk into the Library of Congress. There's a huge amount of history there. Laid out and preserved for us to know and study.
And, now, for the clincher - the vast majority of historical data is of no use whatsoever. We could go ahead and ignore it and lead happy and healthy lives. There are occasions where the devil lies in the details, and much understanding can be gleaned from focusing upon them. However, in the long run it does not matter exactly what hour of the day a given law was brought into being, or what type of soup JFK preferred.
And, in general, it is perhaps best to avoid emotionally charged topics like the Holocaust in this forum, hm? Tactically, if you want the discussion to keep going, that is....
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