[OT] How much of history do we really know?

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

You know I got no problem with taking a history with a grain of salt, but I do have a problem with the idea that we can utterly discount the value of history as a result of that grain.

Most succintly, there is a scene from the Simpsons on history that I love. Apu is going for his citizenship interview with the square jawed federal offical character:

INS Agent: and the final question, what caused the civil war?

Apu: there were many contributing factors. Both foriegn and domestic...

INS Agent: Slavery, just say slavery.

I love this scene because both actors are, as is the case with the best humor, right. What gets my goat is when you run into someone who has found the other factors and thus discounted slavery. That's history just as bad as the type that drove them to find other factors in the first place.

I work in a book store part of the time and as a result I am privy to a lot of bad conversations in an intellectual vein. Far worse than those I encounter as a grad student since there tends to be less argument within the conversation.

The other day I heard two people who's intelligence I very much respect talking the craziest smack about history. And the upshot of the smack was that they knew more about history than most people because they recognized that history is largely a lie and that the real history lies behind the 'official history.'

Now I don't have a lot of tolerance for this. First of all, it's an incredible act of snobbery. If someone cares enough about history to learn the 'official' version in the first place then they deserve some respect in a national culture that can't even find the lower 48 on a map.

Second, my world is made up of historians and rhetoricians and if there is one myth I think really needs debunking it's that official history could represent anything other than the smallest part of discourse and that that history could somehow be monolithic. The nature of human discourse is such that such an event is impossible over anything but the most limited circumstances. The daughter of time is truth and all that.

Though I am certain that much of the time ignorance is truth. If one of my freshman can't explain the reasoning behind a paper topic, I am certain that the motivations behind something as infinitely more complex as the Nazi invasion of Kursk can be equally unknowable and incoate.

To give a nod to the original statement, however, the myth of monolithic officiality is alive and well in the opposition as well. We know that the scientific revolution happened, and we know that paradigm shifts can be seen in that occurence. But to claim that these things happened as a result of some intrinisic quality of the west rather than a felicitous agglomeration of wildly various circumstances both etherial and mundane is an exercise in ludicrousness. One of the reasons we know we know so little about how history works is because we know so much.

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

You know I got no problem with taking a history with a grain of salt, but I do have a problem with the idea that we can utterly discount the value of history as a result of that grain.

Most succintly, there is a scene from the Simpsons on history that I love. Apu is going for his citizenship interview with the square jawed federal offical character:

INS Agent: and the final question, what caused the civil war?

Apu: there were many contributing factors. Both foriegn and domestic...

INS Agent: Slavery, just say slavery.

I love this scene because both actors are, as is the case with the best humor, right. What gets my goat is when you run into someone who has found the other factors and thus discounted slavery. That's history just as bad as the type that drove them to find other factors in the first place.

I love that scene too.

History is an opinion and with any opinion it’s carries a bias, and that is simply human nature and total unavoidable. If we’ve learned anything from history it’s that human nature leads to bias.

That said, the Civil War at the time was fought over state rights, and not really the poor slaves. The confederacy said they had I right to leave the United States and could run their own sovereign state(s) much like what was written in the “Articles of the Confederation” with a weak central government, and a strong state government. The north, a.k.a. the union, on the other hand said “no you do not have that right.” If you look closely you will see that slavery was allowed in the Union, as in boarder states, for many years while the Civil War raged.

Now that not a very popular answers, look to the Simpson’s for that. Of course, that’s my opinion and though I would consider it fact and have no issues teaching my children it as fact. It is bias just by my very human nature.

Now on to history in general... Look at the sphinx, look at the dinosaurs, and tell me their hasn’t been new MAJOR ideas about them both in the last 10 years…

We learn more of are selves and this planet everyday, and history is the hardest thing to change. I've seen some awesome replies to this thread.

 

[tarchon]

The other day I heard two people who's intelligence I very much respect talking the craziest smack about history. And the upshot of the smack was that they knew more about history than most people because they recognized that history is largely a lie and that the real history lies behind the 'official history.'

Now I don't have a lot of tolerance for this. First of all, it's an incredible act of snobbery. If someone cares enough about history to learn the 'official' version in the first place then they deserve some respect in a national culture that can't even find the lower 48 on a map.

It's a very common conceit. I've heard that statement from three different kinds of people:
1. The extremely - let's say - simple, who have difficulty with the idea that other people can understand history, because they can't. Basic motto: "If I don't know it, it can't be known."
2. The fairly intelligent but still somewhat immature (for whom the word "sophomore" was coined), who, upon discovering that much of what they have heard to be true is malarkey, have decided that everything must be malarkey. Basic motto: "Nothing can be known for sure, so nothing is knowable." (Also common is "The winners write the history books.")
3. The fringe crackpot, who finds any accepted form of history to be highly dubious, since it conflicts with his or her very odd worldview. This typically involves notions such as that the Norse gods were space aliens or that the Chinese built Tenochtitlan. Basic motto: "You just can't handle the Truth!"

In all three cases, the holder of the conceit views us poor chumps with something between disdain and pity, which can make them hard to distinguish without a certain amount of probing.

 

[green slime]

Or maybe, just maybe, they have read the same sources, and reached different conclusions. In order to progress our knowledge and understanding, we sometimes need to embrace the unorthodox. It is good that people question the accepted views.

Case in point: Thor Heyerdahl. Very controversial figure who had some rather unorthodox ideas. Whether or not you agree with his ideas, it was important that the questions he asked were asked, and he even had the courage to prove that his theories were practible, when most of academia suggested he had a screw loose. Whether or not you agree with his theories.

Bakker was also regarded as a crack-pot for a long time for suggesting that dinosaurs were anything but cold-blooded.

Without these people, our understanding of the world would be less.

At the end of the 19th century, Physics was wildly regarded as a dead science, that there were no new major discoveries to be made. Young people were discouraged to persue higher studies in the subject. Luckily, some people thought otherwise.

Einstein never won the Nobel Prize for the Theory of Relativitiy, he won it for his work on the photoeletric effect... IS this what he is remembered for?

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Or maybe, just maybe, they have read the same sources, and reached different conclusions. In order to progress our knowledge and understanding, we sometimes need to embrace the unorthodox. It is good that people question the accepted views.

I do not doubt that this is true, but, in the humanities at the very least, you should hold your views in communication, if not communion, with the views of those who have gone before.

This is particularly true in history where access to documents, lore, and techniques changes all the time.

For instance, while states' rights seem to be an obvious civil war issue in the light of the development of government in the twentieth century there are still many documents, including those of earlier historians, that emphasize the importance of slavery and Southern life and power as distinct and central issues. Even the debate over states' rights is clearly centered on slavery if events such as bloody Kansas and the Missouri compromise are to be at all considered in the narrative of American Civil War and disorder. Certainly narratives purely of slavery and southern ambition do not serve the state of the South at this end of this history, but neither does denying those narratives for an alternate narrative focussing entirely on states' rights.


The fact is official histories have to rely on a certain amount of truth or they are never effective. Particularly the 'official' histories put together by professional historians.

So my point is simply that you shouldn't ignore those factors. A proper synthesis of the entire discourse community is necessary to form an accurate and fair picture, one that could be deemed worthy of a professional, particularly in light of most histories' political ramifications.

Mind you, that can be an incredibly difficult task given our human taste for clear cut ideas of how things worked and how large some discourse communities are, but noone said being professional was easy.

I remember arguing the slavery vs. states' rights issue with a friend. We argued a lot and, being a rhetorician, I generally took both sides against his monolothic stand on side and against the other. He being, more or less, a preacher/poet could never countenance that and always saw me as supporting the side he hated. Something I did too little to discourage since it added extra spice to the arguments.

So as I was defending slavery as the major issue of the war he accused me of sounding just like his junior high teacher.

And here I am thinking, "Maybe, just maybe, it would behoove the children of America to listen to their junior high teachers as opposed to merely holding them in contempt. Might increase the percentage of kids who could find the lower 48 a wee little bit."

 

[Darklone]

Another scientific "fact": Who was William Shakespear? The real author. It's widely discussed if that was a pseudonym or some deceit and the true author was someone else.

Someone wrote something about facts and interpretation. How do you know whether facts are true or forgery? You can't.

How many wars have been fought and both sides have rather different opinions about the outcome? How many people died on both sides? As long as someone don't want you to know the truth, how should people several hundred years later know it?

Does anyone here know that "conspiracy of the pope" theory that the church invented the medieval age by inserting some centuries of "history" into the annals?? It's rather difficult to prove them wrong It may be possible... but such proves are seldom accepted by everyone

 

[Amos_Sten]

Someone wrote something about facts and interpretation. How do you know whether facts are true or forgery? You can't.

By looking at other evidence, do archeological records match what has been written? Do other sources match it?

For example the sack of Carthage in the 2nd Punic War.

We have records of Polybius.

We know where the ruins are and archeological research has shown there was a city there that suffered widespread destruction at the same time.

We have Roman monuments describing it.

We have Cartheginian momuments/text describing the sacking and rebuilding

So its fairly certain that something happened there, was it the 2nd Punic War? Probably given the evidence its safe to say so. A forgery of that scale would require an awful lot of work to complete.

How about Hadrians Wall.

We have records of it being built.

We have persoanl records of the Romans occupying it.

We have records of troop deployments there, records found throughout the Empire.

The wall is there covered latin graffiti.

The wall was built using Roman construction methods.

Roman graves are found on the site.

There is a big wall where it is meant to be.

So yes its safe to say that in the reign of Hadrian a wall was ordered to be built there and was built there. Unless of course you have facts proving otherwise.

Of course why it was built would be more of a matter of debate.

 

[TiQuinn]

Like Dr. Strangemonkey said, it's one thing to look at history with a critical eye, and taking into account that information can be biased. It's another thing to completely discount history solely due to bias and interpretation. Archeology and anthropology has done much to provide hard evidence of many historical events. What led to those events, and what those events mean is always up for debate. It's also why we still need historians, archeologists, and anthropologists to continue their work.

In the end, this is really just a philosophical argument: If you weren't there, how do you know it really happened? And even if you were, how do you know if you saw what you think you saw?

In other words, you can debate this until everyone is blue in the face.

 

[green slime]

Oh yes, I agree with you that one should still hold respect for the opinions formed by others, but it is the questioning mind that approaches the topic with a fresh and open attitude that is actually going to confirm/repute established dogma/theories. In questioning the validity of previous statements, both the amateur and the professional can uncover hitherto unknown/disregarded information or suggest alternative answers. These alternative answers/theories would then be checked and either repudiated, dismissed, challenged, or accepted by a large majority of the community. In fact much new information/theories has come to light from questioning the validity of old theories.

I'll steer clear of your civil war, because it is an area I know far too little about to really have an informed opinion. I have AN opinion, but I realise I have probably read too little on the subject to form a solid basis for any argument.

So the perhaps the answer to inquiring youth is to do more research themselves in the field, rather than force feeding them ideas. There seems however to be a vogue in the states to misbelieve anything, and conspiracy theories abound. While fun, it is impossible to prove that a something has not occured (i.e. Roswell). How is the US government going to prove that it doesn't have the remains of a UFO? If you don't have it, you can't produce evidence to that effect!

The thing is, perhaps the arrogant manner in which information is feed to the students, as absolute truths, rather than saying "we believe that X did Y", and if people ask for the cause of these beliefs, then point them in the direction where further information can be found?

Another cause could be the lack of faith in anything. If you have no faith in society, leaders in any field, or religion, or the information provided by the media , or even in your peers to tell you the truth, then how can you actually believe anything which you haven't seen for yourself? When a large number of the "facts" that are presented to people, (consider the amount of facts that are misrepresented in the press, due to sloppy journalism, and blatant disregard for consumer intelligence) are incorrect, you can hardly blame people for becoming disillusioned.

As for amusing historical fallacies, I met a person in Australia once, they were there with this Viking ship replica in Cairns, and this woman seriously claimed that the Vikings had been to Australia (after discovering America), and that this was of course "proved" by the fact that they were the first seafaring peoples!

I asked her "Were they really the first sea-faring peoples? What about the Phoenicians?"

Her reply was "...that they existed at approxiamately the same time". At which point I could only laugh.

 

[hunter1828]

Someone wrote something about facts and interpretation. How do you know whether facts are true or forgery? You can't.

That "someone" would be me. And yes you can.

Facts are facts because you have verifiable, cross-checked, solid documnentation. One source does not a fact make. Two that say the same thing are getting there. Three or more and you're on to something.

If you have but one source that says "American Indians sailed to England in canoes and built Hadrian's Wall" (I just made that up...sounds good, huh? ) you do not have a documentable fact. But if several different sources from different areas can be found supporting that bit of info, then you have a historical fact.

One of the great falacies of history is that one tiny shred of evidence is fact. It isn't. Many people will ignore all other documentation that points to A and say "But I have "B" here and it says..." "B", as the only dissenting voice, is not fact. "B" may well be a forgery. It might be made up (people make history up all the time...a real problem for us historians) for one reason or the other. It may have been a parody, not intended to be taken seriously. Whatever the reason there are too many people that will say "HOLD THE MARCHING BAND! I've got one, ONE, source that disagrees with the dozens (or hundreds) of other sources! It MUST mean something!"

hunter1828