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

[green slime]

Hey, it's not my conclusion; it's that of just about every history book I've ever read on Hitler's campaigns in WWII -- and I've read lots.

There are lots of books to read on the subject, and not all of them are worth reading (IMO).

It might be more correct if you said it was not just your conclusion, but also those of those authors you had read. Otherwise you seem to be denying yourself individual thought, or are disagreeing with those authors, which I'm sure wasn't your intention

To go further into this complex subject (the battle of Kursk), I would enjoy, but will refrain for fear of boring those with no interest in this subject.

 

[MerakSpielman]

Again, all you're demonstrating is that our understanding of the past is incomplete. To which I think anyone would answer "well, duh."

My point is not to demonstrate what we don't know, but rather what I believe we can't know, and never will be able to. The original poster asked "how much of history is known" and I am merely arguring that the question cannot be answered unless we find a way to quantify not only how much of history is unknown, but how much is unknowable. This is impossible to do, therefore the original question cannot be answered.

We can go on for ages about what we know, and ages more for what we've guessed, but there is no way we can accurately figure out the ratio of what is known to what is not.

 

[ledded]

<snip> The truth is: we don't know. It was a horrifically large number of people who met a truly despicable ending in the hands of a nightmare regime, and we in western europe have Uncle Sam to thank for not squirming under the heal of oppression.

I just wanted to say, real quick, I appreciate this sentiment coming from a european (even if it was meant tongue-in-cheek and I took it wrong).

I know that Americans can get very annoyingly cowboy (especially to the french) about our role in WWII (which I doubt very few people on these boards was alive for), but several of us grew up on stories of sacrifice by relatives and friend's relatives during the war, and it's nice to see that sometimes they get their props.

For myself, my grandfather's brother, an italian immigrant who came to America as a very small child sometime around 1920 (how's that for timing), died invading Sicily with the American army (how's that for irony).

A great uncle on my mothers side, died at the age of 18 in the Ardennes. My best friend growing up had a great uncle who lost part of a lung and 3 fingers on his left hand driving a tank for Patton during the relief of Bastogne, and he was never bitter about it even though he had trouble with his injuries his entire life (he always said "well, it was d*mn worth what I got outta it.").

I could probably recount a ton more, but that would only bore folks.

As far as history, I agree with a lot of the posters on both sides of this argument; we don't know or necessarily have the exact right details of everything that has happenned over the last 1000 years, but for the most part we do seem to have the general gist of it down, at least most of what mattered. It's in the individual details and cultural motivations that we tend to lose coherence, and sometimes that can be quite important, other times not. As sort of an amateur armchair historian, the more I learn about history, the more I realize how little I know.

Think of it this way; how much has changed about what we teach children today about American history differs from what we were taught as children? Which is right, or wrong? I can't tell you, but I can tell you that I personally try to base my impressions on specific events more on the amount of evidence people have uncovered about them and less of the accepted view of the event, and even then I've been wrong quite a few times.

 

[ledded]

EDIT: whoops, double-post there.

 

[Tilla the Hun (work)]

!

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Think of it this way; how much has changed about what we teach children today about American history differs from what we were taught as children? Which is right, or wrong? I can't tell you, but I can tell you that I personally try to base my impressions on specific events more on the amount of evidence people have uncovered about them and less of the accepted view of the event, and even then I've been wrong quite a few times.

I think you are getting close to an extremely important point here.

Whereas we can all agree that we know 'something' about the past, history or prehistory, we should all also be able to agree that there is some degree of uncertainty in the details of the 'something' that we are looking at.

When you start comparing what we were taught as youths in school to our children of today - you're forgetting the various age groups of gamers

It would be better to compare what was taught in the seventies as history to what is being taught today, at the same grade level. Restrict the comparison to history only so you can ignore the deterioration of the publich school system in the past few decades.

It's startling the difference in 'fact' from then to now, but there's a bigger gulf the further back you go.

It's been mentioned that the 'facts' change in observance of new findings, but this highlights what, in my opinion, is the primary issue at stake here.

Conclusions drawn by experts and stated with authority are being accepted as FACT when in reality they are nothing more than OPINION.

Deductive logic is a powerful tool. So is the concept of 'Occam's Razor'. However, they both have truly critical flaws that means they should only be used sparingly. All too often, a respected historian or archaeologist will state a theoretical conclusion as a certainty. Even when they do not, popular media takes it and runs with it as a certainty. In reaction, text books are updated with the new 'fact' and re-published, and a new generation of children learn a completely different 'fact' than their parents knew.

It's almost criminal. The History Channel is often a primary culprit in presenting 'factual' theories, such as their view of an Earth 5 million years into the future! There's entirely too many variables that can affect that projection, yet they present it as a conclusive 'fact'.



When I was a child in the 80's, I was shown pictures of the Sphinx in Egypt - close up, detailed pictures - as part of my social sciences class history sessions. I looked, examined, proclaimed that the weather marks on the sphinx looked like water erosion, odd for being in a desert or made by desert dwellers. My teacher corrected me, told me in no uncertain terms that that was completely impossible, the facts were blah, blah, blah.

In 2001, a noted geologist was requested by a friend to make an informal study of the erosion patterns. He concluded they were indeed caused by rainfall, placing the date of the sphinx at a completely different time than was then widely accepted.


This stood the whole egyptology world on its collective ear. Many noted and respected egyptologists of decades of experience BLASTED this geologist as though he'd committed a carnal sin of blasphemy. As a result, his findings are only sketchily published and not widely known.

That's a classic case of scientists NOT having an open mind due to facts being presented to them through the school room and colleges that are not facts.



So gather evidence before you reach conclusions. When you reach conclusions, present them as THEORY not as complete facts. This is what is wrong in our perceptions of ancient history and prehistory. We are too inculcated to accepting potential conclusions as fact from modern history to view ancient history/prehistory any differently. We seek finite facts of specific detail and we cannot have them.

Carbond dating is, at it's best, +/- 2000 years on it's dating. If you're attempting to determine climate and weather patterns, that's going to throw your 'deductive logic' off. If you base further conclusions as to potential dieting and toolmaking capability off these results, you're almost committing a crime!
And Carbon dating is supposedly one of the more 'reliable' dating methods out there.



So I stand with the original issue- We don't know JACK about history, and what we do know is so heavily biased it's getting more and more difficult to get to know Jack in any kind of detail.

That's not to say the mounds of evidence are piling higher and higher. That evidence gives us indications of Jack and what his life was like - but as the mounds grow higher, so too do the egos and the reputations of the conclusion drawers to the point of ridiculousness. Those are the people that adopt a position and defend it against all new-comers and new evidence. That's not a scientist. That's just someone looking for fame.

 

[MerakSpielman]

Heck, they taught me different "facts" at different grade levels. Example:

In 1st grade, I was taught by teachers that Colombus proved that the earth was round. The greeks had figured that out a long time before, and even calculated a very precise estimate of the diameter of the earth.

Then, a few grades later, I was taught by teachers that Columbus discovered America. This was closer to the truth, but still not true. If he discovered it, I guess all those Native Americans showed up afterward. And then there's the whole Viking thing that most people have heard of. There are suspicions that certain Portugese had traveled that far - but kept the discovery a secret. There are even rumors that China sailed across the Pacific. Certainly the Polynesians traded with South American natives.

Finally, in high school, I learned that Christopher Columbus was searching for a fast, cheap trade route to East Asia, lied to his crew about how far they had sailed (so they wouldn't get alarmed and mutiny), forced several native tribes into slave labor for his outposts, and threatened his crew with death if they expressed the opinion that they had not landed in Asia, which was very clear to him at that point but he was in denial and refused to beleive it. It is true that his expeditions led to the European colonization of the Americas, but virtually everything I had been taught before high school was a deliberate lie.

Why did they lie to me? Because they needed some way to explain why we celebrated Colombus Day, so they made up some stuff young kids could understand. Is that the purpose of education? I think not.

 

[barsoomcore]

As the mounds grow higher, so too do the egos and the reputations of the conclusion drawers to the point of ridiculousness. Those are the people that adopt a position and defend it against all new-comers and new evidence. That's not a scientist. That's just someone looking for fame.

You're painting a pretty big group with a pretty broad brush, there. It seems like you're saying that history is getting LESS reliable because people are jerks.

Which I say is nonsense. Heard the same story about the Sphinx. Seen a couple of shows on it, read something or other on it. Some scientists disagree, some don't. I don't know that the ones who disagree are closed-minded, and I suspect you don't know that, either. Perhaps there's excellent evidence to suggest the Sphinx was built well after the timeline proposed by the geologist. Perhaps the reason this geologist's opinions aren't well-published is because they're WRONG. I don't know. I'll read them if I have a chance, and I'll read a couple of counter-arguments if I'm interested enough, and I'll see what I think.

But to say that scientists are generally becoming less reliable people, and that therefore our knowledge of history is becoming less reliable, is not a position I can consider very seriously.

 

[MerakSpielman]

But to say that scientists are generally becoming less reliable people, and that therefore our knowledge of history is becoming less reliable, is not a position I can consider very seriously.

Perhaps it would be more fair to say that as the number of scientists grows, the number of unreliable or stubbern scientists also grows. Per capita it's probably the same.

Besides, real science makes lousy TV. It's better for ratings to find an outcast kook who is the only person on earth who believes in his own theories, couple them with some fancy, computer generated animations, and make it an hour-long special.

 

[barsoomcore]

Besides, real science makes lousy TV. It's better for ratings to find an outcast kook who is the only person on earth who believes in his own theories, couple them with some fancy, computer generated animations, and make it an hour-long special.

Okay, if you're getting your scientific knowledge from TELEVISION, you just gave up your right to complain about the current state of scientific knowledge.

 

[MerakSpielman]

Nah. I get my scientific knowledge from Douglas Adams books, like normal people.