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#9629 10/31/00 12:57 PM
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In another thread (Mogambo) wseiber has written about a friend of his, claiming that all previous history had been "colored" by the views of historians, and he wanted to reveal "the truth"..

Oh, Dear! - wseiber, I don't suppose you would have any success in trying to stop your friend - and maybe it is a therapy that he needs for his own purposes, but please try to stop him from publishing!
There are few things in life more sorrow-making than someone trying to subvert History to be a hand-maiden of the truth.

History is, generally speaking, very subjective. I cannot, having searched my mind for a full twenty-five seconds, think of any example of an event in the past that I could categorize as being "the truth."

Any "historical" event you like to name, I think, is capable of being interpreted in at least two ways - usually many more than that.

I am trying to work out, in my own mind, whether WAR, in the most general sense of the word, is an indisputable fact, but I feel that it depends on which participant in the action that you talk to, as to whether it is a "war", "oppression", "liberation", "a police action", or whatever. And these are not necessarily just eupemistic wasy of expressing the same thing, I think.


#9630 10/31/00 01:51 PM
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Depressing, but seemingly truthful analysis.

Surely, however, if a historian stated that 'so and so' died, it would be a fact? When that person died might be more open to dispute, but not the fact of death. Or birth perhaps (by definition if you died you must have been born at some stage)?

I know this is pretty unprepossessing as a basis for a study of history, but it might be a start. The Achaean civilisation is pretty obviously over. That's a fact. So is the Harappa civilisation, as is the dynasty of Hammurabi, and so on. Perhaps the dispute lies in interpretations of why rather than whether?

cheer

the sunshine warrior


#9631 10/31/00 02:05 PM
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Surely, however, if a historian stated that 'so and so' died, it would be a fact?
Hi Shanks,
Here we are again.. But I don't think we need to start thus far back. A self-respecting historian is not content with mentioning that so-and-so died. He leaves that to a coroner. It's when the isolated facts are being put into some order, some connection, that the trouble starts (even before hypothesising about causes). And: Today you read in the news that, together with a well-known judge, his driver and his body-guard were killed by a bomb. But will this precision be preserved over the next 100 years? And should it? Which part will be kept as essential?


#9632 10/31/00 02:12 PM
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Today you read in the news that, together with a well-known judge, his driver and his body-guard were killed by a bomb. But will this precision be preserved over the next 100 years? And should it? Which part will be kept as essential?

Good points. Which is why history will always be controversial. My point was only to show that full-on relativism (or extreme relativism) is, perhaps, too pessimistic. Certainly, any analysis will be tainted with the editorial veiwpoint, but there is a distinction between analysis, and fact. (Yes? No? Maybe?)

cheer

the sunshine warrior


#9633 10/31/00 03:09 PM
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any analysis will be tainted with the editorial veiwpoint...

I'm a little uncertain about this as a principle...


#9634 10/31/00 03:22 PM
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Perhaps a sweeping judgement by me - but as wsieber points out, there is virtually an infinite number of details attached to any event. Not all can be recorded, and even fewer can be reported. Who decides what? The reporter as editor, presumably. On what basis does the reporter decide? On his/her particular historical theory.

For instance, a public figure is assassinated. There is only one reporter on the scene.

1. The reporter has a Marxist view of history. The public figure is described in terms of his status in the class structure. The act is de-individualised, being represented as the 'will' of a class of people bubbling up and taking concrete shape. If this is the only report published, posterity will know nothing of the individual assassin.

2. The reporter follows something like the 'great man' theory of history. His/her report takes the shape of a Hegelian dialectic piece - the Emperor and the Assassin, a comparison of their individual lives. Posterity sees what appears to be a personal grudge between Gavrillo Princip and Archduke Ferdinand (or John Wilkes Both and Abraham Lincoln - pick your favourite pair).

I'm not sure if this is an ironclad argument in favour of the notion that history is inevitably skewed by the editorial bias of the reporter, but I think it's a pretty strong case...

cheer

the sunshine warrior


#9635 10/31/00 04:11 PM
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okay, lets take another random example; say Barbara Tuchman's best-selling (for a) history "A Distant Mirror : The Calamitous 14th Century". what is the editorial bias therein?


#9636 10/31/00 04:15 PM
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sweeping judgement

Ah, I was kind of agreeing, Mr Heisenberg.


#9637 10/31/00 07:16 PM
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In reply to:

Barbara Tuchman's best-selling (for a) history "A Distant Mirror : The Calamitous 14th Century". what is the editorial bias therein?


Hey Tsuwm - I've afforded you the dignity of 'proper' quotes. lol! More seriously...

1. I have not read the work in question, and may or may not do so. My responses, therefore, will be based purely upon your post,and a generalised prediction set about possible bias.

2. Start with the title - why 'mirror', why 'calamitous'? Some possibilities

Mirror

Likely that the author is selling the idea that the 14th century in some way parallels our own. That we can, therefore, learn from it by studying it, and perhaps apply those 'lessons' to our own lives/society. This is, of course, bias, because any such connection is pattern-forming (metaphor-using). The author will have presented a thesis, and evidence to support it. Evidence that will not support it will,most likely, either be ignored (even if 'sub-consciously'), or discredited.

Calamitous

For whom? And what is the standard for calamity? The seventeenth century saw the bubonic plague sweeping Europe. The twentieth century saw the Holocaust, the Soviet pogroms, Pol Pot, Rwanda, the slaughter in the trenches of the Great War, the famine in Ethiopia and more. Which century better deserves the title 'calamitous', particular 'THE calamitous', as opposed to 'a calamitous'? Again, there appear to be signs, in the title alone, of authorial bias.

3. I haven't a clue as to the author's historical 'project'. Chances are her (Barbara is female, yes?) historical vision is a conflation of social structure theory and 'great man' theory. She will probably 'explain' the happenings of the century in terms of (i) the people who influenced what happened, and (ii) the social/technological/political factors that prevailed (including religion). In this itself there is bias because the historian is trying to 'explain'. Random events - a volcano, an epidemic, a flood, a hunting accident - are downplayed, or, gamefully shoehorned into one or the other side of this theory. We humans dislike the idea that random events (the unexplained, and possibly inexplicable) can affect our lives, and all our theories tend to downplay the effect of random occurences. When faced with incontrovertible evidence of randomness, we resort to synchronicity, and coincidence theory, and eventually, the Prime Mover. My point is not that randomness is the only causal factor in history, nor even that it is the most important. But if (if such a thing were possible) an objective measurement showed that random events had a 20% influence, say, on the course of that century's history, and at least 20% of the explanation, or detail, in her book was not given over to this, then there is authorial bias.

I'm sorry if this 'analysis' is rough and generalised - I haven't read the book...

cheer

the sunshine (suspecting strongly that this thread probably belongs on a different board, but prepared to carry on regardless) warrior


#9638 10/31/00 07:50 PM
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Ah, I was kind of agreeing, Mr Heisenberg.

Too slow on the uptake. That's my problem...


#9639 10/31/00 09:24 PM
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shanks,

I'm sure you guessed that I didn't really pick Barbara Tuchman at random; she used to say (she died about 10 years ago) that she thought of herself not as a historian but as a person who wrote about history. She is more well known for "The Guns of August" and "Stillwell and the American Experience in China", for both of which she won the Pulitzer prize (for what that's worth). She first developed her passion for 'historical events' reporting on the Spanish Civil War; her bias there was loyalist. Here's a little blurb:
http://www.netsrq.com/~dbois/tuchman.html

As for "A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century"; I think you read a bit *too much into the title. 'Mirror' certainly reflects [sorry] her approach: what can we discern from the past that is parallel to our own time, perhaps redounding to our benefit? 'Distant' as in before the time of Gutenburg, and therefore somewhat murky. 'Calamitous' as in heresies, pogroms, Black Plague, internecine wars, the Crusades, etc. (As for 'The', I'd guess that an ariticle was wanted and "A Calamitous 14th Century" doesn't quite work -- where it would in "A Calamitous Century".)

So what do I make of all of this? I think we all bring some personal bias to whatever we write. But that doesn't necessarily make what we write biased. Read: I think that there *is such a thing as objectivity.


#9640 11/01/00 08:37 AM
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Ah, I was kind of agreeing, Mr Heisenberg.

Too slow on the uptake. That's my problem...


Hi Shanks,
Oh no, you instinctively avoided to be trapped in the sling of self-reference!


#9641 11/01/00 11:19 AM
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you instinctively avoided to be trapped in the sling of self-reference

You betcha it was instinctive - my conscious mind certainly hadn't a clue about any of this...


#9642 11/01/00 11:34 AM
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shanks - I believe you are a covert historian! Your analysis accords strongly with my own. Like you, I have not (nor will I, most likely - not my period ) read Tuchman, but my immediate response to tsuwm was - "Calamitous - yes; all four horsemen were riding hard through that century, but it would not (could not?) have been calamitous for everybody. Undertakers and shroud makers would have done well, at the very least. In England, many peasants made enough out of their scarce labour (after the Black Death) to buy land and become yeoman farmers, some of whom went on to become great landowners and members of the nobility in later ages."

Calamity - at the time, perhaps, but look at the impact on the future. We all have our view on such things - thank goodness - and it very properly comes out into the open in one's interpretation of History, so that it can be scrutinised and commented on by others - including those who are not "experts, but have a valid viewpoint.

(OK - who decides which is "a valid viewpoint" or not? we can become infinitely subjective along this route!)

As to any period of history "mirroring" any other - !!!!!???!


#9643 11/01/00 11:41 AM
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Yeehaw! Some support!

Indeed, the problem may partly stem from the fact that the word 'bias' has both denotative and connotative senses. In the denotative sense, of course, as I have suggested (and you), there can be no work of 'history' that doesn't contain bias. But this doesn't mean the writer is biased in the pejorative sense of bigoted.

Language eh? Trickier than you think. Trickier than you can think...

cheer

the sunshine warrior


#9644 11/01/00 05:21 PM
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Language eh? Trickier than you think. Trickier than you can think...

Yes, I agree with both of you (this is worrying for this forum, is it not!?!?)

tsuwm suggests death as a starting point
Have you heard of Lord Lucan in the States? (although he is “definitely dead” according to a coroner, he’s probably been reported as “definitely observed crossing Central Park”, I bet )

And what about say, jazz – some would say that is as “definitely” over and done as other unique happenings in a particular time, whilst others would claim a continuity of jazz-becoming-something-else.

What I am moving towards is the general *belief that what distinguishes us at our very core is our tendency to make patterns. This is true of language, true of visual sense, and surely true of the other ways we think, such as forming theories. We tend to adopt short-cuts (perception theory is littered with examples of how the brain ‘fools itself’) and discard material that doesn’t sit happily with our frame of reference – because ultimately it is not the veracity but the aesthetics of the pattern that counts to a key part of our imagination!

As a matter of fact I believe this is what John Keats means by “beauty is truth…”


#9645 11/01/00 05:21 PM
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there can be no work of 'history' that doesn't contain bias. But this doesn't mean the writer is biased in the pejorative sense of bigoted.

shanks (and Rhub), couldn't agree more.
On the other hand, I don't think the above viewpoint is incompatible with tsuwm's that there is such a thing as "objectivity".

But I might also be inclined to say that "good taste" is an objective thing.

Something about common consensus here, I think. Errr...

Burble burble.




#9646 11/02/00 12:24 AM
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what distinguishes us at our very core is our tendency to make patterns. This is true of language, true of visual sense, and surely true of the other ways we think, such as forming theories. We tend to adopt short-cuts (perception theory is littered with examples of how the brain ‘fools itself’) and discard material that doesn’t sit happily with our frame of reference – because ultimately it is not the veracity but the aesthetics of the pattern that counts to a key part of our imagination!

As a matter of fact I believe this is what John Keats means by “beauty is truth…”


Yes, mav, we certainly do have a very strong tendency to make things fit into a recognizable pattern. You could well be right about Keats, too--no argument here. (I can't help being reminded of "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder".)

Attempting to make things fit a pattern, I think, accounts for a LOT of subjectivity. If I am in an environment that is completely alien to me, I will make efforts to comprehend it in ways that are familiar to me. So, my reporting of an event there may be incomprehensible to a native.

Making things fit patterns does not automatically mean that the result will be..."un-real", for lack of a better term.
I agree with tsuwm that there can be objectivity.

I also think that some of the world's greatest inventions came from people who had the ability to not see things as part of a pattern. I think a quote sent to me by a friend fits well here: "I like to find what's not found at once, but lies within something of another nature in repose, distinct."--
Denise Levertov




#9647 11/02/00 08:20 AM
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mav:..our tendency to make patterns- Jackie:..a very strong tendency to make things fit into a recognizable pattern

Here I find another case of a discussion illustrating itself (self-referentially): Jackie seems to assume that her sentence is simply a re-phrasing of mav's sentence. As I see it, there is a whole ocean between the two.
make things fit into a recognizable pattern presupposes the existence of things as well as patterns, whereas making patterns presupposes only chaos (randomness). Chaos, of course, tends to be resented as frightening. This is why, I assume, the first sentence was fitted into the "recognisable pattern" of the second sentence.
I neither suppose nor have the ambition that this should be the last word on the subject.




#9648 11/02/00 08:36 AM
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Ws!

Excellent analysis. Are you sure you're not a post-modern philosopher?


#9649 11/02/00 01:21 PM
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there is a whole ocean between the two

I suppose I have to say you are right, but why you felt it necessary to point this out is beyond me. No, I did not assume that my sentence was a re-phrasing of maverick's. His, to me, hearkens back to the time of discovery and assessment: as in, making observations and deciding whether the observed things do or do not make up part of a pattern.

I was pointing out something that we do in an attempt to make sense of our surroundings after an assessment has failed to accomplish this. Though, perhaps, I could have specified that. This is not the first time that my
unstated thought processes have led to misunderstandings.
Maybe I need to think about that some more.


#9650 11/02/00 02:35 PM
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>mav:..our tendency to make patterns- Jackie:..a very strong tendency to make things fit into a recognizable pattern<

one of my favorite sayings is "gifted minds find order in disorder"
(i am not the neatest person in the world, and i use this as an excuse--my house isn't messy--you're just not clever enough to find the order!)
but finding order or patterns is a human way of dealing with things... I see one arising from the other..
In the beginning, there was a void, nothingness, and god created light..

When there is chaos, the first way we deal with it, is to find some identifiable part, and then start making patterns, (and the light was called day, and the darkness night!)
so while chaos is frightening, is enleashes our creativity. (and yes, i do find the thread chaotic at times, but oh such wonderful chaos!)
If you belive in god, (or at least the judeo/christian version), god created all, and we, in god's image, try to do the same. otherwise, humans are just inherently in need of order, and do it on there own-- but i do think it is a basic human trait.


#9651 11/02/00 06:05 PM
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a basic human trait

Yep, I agree Helen - and most significantly for this forum,

in the beginning was the Word...

PS You should see my desk right now - gives chaos theory a whole new meaning! My quote to cover for this, BTW, is:
If a cluttered desk may represent a cluttered mind, what does an empty desk represent?


#9652 11/03/00 03:42 PM
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yes, i do find the thread chaotic at times, but oh such wonderful chaos!

Ah, no! Helen - not chaos - anarchy! and a wonderful anarchy indeed.


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