Lesson in Historiography Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in interpreting the past. It may be called the study of historical writing, or historical methodology, or simply have a title like "how to write good history." The subject can be very complicated since there are distinctive methods for most major epochs in history, with ancient history (the subject) virtually wedded to archaeology, with the history of science not quite a branch of science itself, and art history requiring a set of skills that overlap with those of art gallery managers or museum curators. Then there are various kinds of "modern" history, everything from the history of political movements in the 20th century to media history and the history of currents in religious thought after WWII. This said, in a sense it all boils down to one book that isn't even a "must read." All you have to know is the title, "The Historian as Detective." This is in reference to a 1969 opus by Robin Winks, a book that, as of last count, was owned by over 1600 libraries worldwide. The subtitle is: "Essays on Evidence." The book's title really says it all, however. The point is that it is necessary for historians to be skeptical about evidence, just as a detective needs to be wary of testimony of witnesses. Everyone has an axe to grind and purely objective reporting, while it does exist, is not all that common, in fact, it is rare. You can argue that other disciplines have relevance for RC; no argument from me. I'd say this is true for any of the sciences, for business, for marketing, for computer programming, for ecology (especially with respect to the Quivira Coalition), for psychological counseling, and so forth. But let me add historiography to the list, the need for skepticism about historical records, and by extension, all kinds of other records. We may be on safe ground when it comes to such things as property deeds, or institutional financial accounts, but otherwise how secure are we? The "paper of record," the New York Times, is notoriously biased to the Left. Various other publications are biased toward the Right. That is, truth tests are part of the historian's trade, an automatic way of thinking about nearly everything. Every historian is part Columbo or part Sherlock Holmes. Either that or forever be gullible, forever walk down garden paths, or, worse, fall prey to any number of special-interest promoters who would like nothing better than to enlist people with professional reputations in support of some dubious cause. Which is also a need for Radical Centrists. There are political nostrums in profusion in the world, and most of them have fatal flaws, some of which are not all that obvious, at least not at the outset. Skepticism is just as intrinsic to RC as idealism for a better future, or questioning of philosophical premises, or analysis of political trends. The purpose of skepticism isn't more skepticism, however, it is discovery of the truth and then working with that truth for the sake of making this world a better place, its as simple as that. Billy --------------------------------------------- Hamblin & Peterson: Historicity and the problem of 'getting at' the past
_William Hamblin and Daniel Peterson_ (http://www.deseretnews.com/author/23053/William-Hamblin-and-Daniel-Peterson.html) For the Deseret News Feb. 9 2015 When discussing the meaning of scripture, people often raise the question of historicity. Unfortunately, this is a complicated topic with many distinct yet overlapping issues — issues that are frequently misunderstood or conflated. Historicity essentially means that a person mentioned in an ancient text really lived, that an event really happened, that a place actually existed. Thus, historicity relates to questions such as, did Moses really exist? Was there really an Israelite exodus from Egypt? Was there a Mount Sinai? Alternatively, one can ask, did a historical Gandalf ever live? Was there really a siege at Helm’s Deep? Was there actually a volcano named Mount Doom where Sauron had his forge and workshop? The issue of historicity is thus an ontological question — a question about the nature of reality as reflected in historical texts. Broadly speaking, history as a modern academic discipline is the study of the human past. More technically, however, it’s the study of the textual remains of that past, which distinguishes it from archaeology, the study of the material remains left by past humans. In an important sense, therefore, history isn’t an empirical discipline. Paradoxically, the subject of historians’ inquiry — the “past” — doesn’t really exist. It cannot be directly observed, measured or experimented upon. Rather, history can only be understood indirectly by analyzing textual, artistic, artifactual and monumental remains from the past — that is, documents, art, objects and buildings created by past people that have survived into the present, where the historian can analyze them. Thus, historians don ’t actually study the “past.” They study those texts and objects that were made by humans in the past and that still exist in the present. This is a crucial distinction that many people fail to recognize. When dealing with ancient history, people need to remember that most historical records from the past haven’t survived. The most important and potentially enlightening texts from antiquity, for example, are often irretrievably lost. Imagine a historian 3,000 years from now attempting to recreate an accurate history of 21st century Utah based on fragmentary Facebook records. Imagine how much nonsense and inaccuracy — how many lies and jokes — she would need to sort through. What was thought to be important on Facebook would seldom be considered important by our future historian. Further imagine that English is a dead language by then and that our historian must reconstruct the language and create her own dictionary, based solely on those fragmentary surviving Facebook records. What would she make of “lol” or “xoxo”? This is rather like what historians of antiquity have to do when trying to accurately reconstruct the history of the ancient world based on fragmentary surviving inscriptions and texts. Another serious problem is that sincere people are mistaken or confused much of the time. Moreover, many people lie. And language is often ambiguous, which is especially problematic with poorly understood ancient tongues. Satire and propaganda were as widespread in antiquity as they are now. Furthermore, ancient people sometimes told imagined stories that their audiences knew to be fiction. Modern historians, however, often cannot be sure if an ancient author intended his writing as fiction or reality, or how an ancient audience would have understood it. All of these variables and many more sometimes make it difficult to clearly evaluate the intent of an ancient author and the accuracy of his claims. What if the historian 3000 years from now were trying to gain an accurate understanding of 21st century American politics, based solely on a collection of fragments of speeches from President Barack Obama (liberally sprinkled with speeches falsely attributed to him)? Whether you like President Obama or not, our future historian would find it effectively impossible to get an accurate understanding of the contemporary United States if his speeches were his sole source. Yet, royal propaganda is often all we have in our surviving ancient historical records. Those who reject the historicity of the biblical record seldom consider the fact that its depiction of Israelite history — with its flawed and wicked kings — is far more realistic than the contemporary royal annals of Egypt or Mesopotamia. Thus, the study of history and the question of historicity are fraught with complexities and difficulties. We rarely have an open-and-shut case. ........ ---------------------------------------- Daniel Peterson founded BYU's Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, chairs The Interpreter Foundation and blogs on Patheos. William Hamblin is the author of several books on premodern history. They speak only for themselves. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
