I didn't believe in History?
This was a paper I wrote in my first historiography class, (I’m pretty sure) at the beginning of the semester (History 625 at Minnesota State University, Mankato, January 27, 2006). I called it "Why I don’t believe in History, and want to be a historian." Since that’s about eighteen years ago, and since I have since become a professional historian, I thought I'd review what I said at the time and see what may have changed and what may have stayed the same (I'm not going to edit the original, even for grammar).
Everybody knows what history is. We learn it in Social Studies classes in High School, we watch documentaries on the History Channel. Sometimes we even read popular histories of events, nations, or a specific time period. We expect these histories to tell us, like a good newspaper story, what happened, who was involved, where and when it happened, and most importantly, why. Why do we spend our time reviewing the distant past? We look to history for a sense of continuity with the past, and especially in difficult times, an explanation of “how did it come to this?”
The Oxford English Dictionary devotes about a full page to words related to history. The main entry gives seven uses, derived from the Latin word historia, “learning or knowing by enquiry, narrative” (Lesley Brown, ed., The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993, 1240). It’s interesting that the derivation contains the two key concepts for the rest of the entry. The definitions concentrate very explicitly on history as “a narration of ... incidents, a narrative, a story.” Less definite is the method by which we acquire the story elements. There are several references to a “continuous, methodical record” and “systematic” study; but they are vague and overshadowed by uses that stress the dramatic or pictorial nature of the story.
Historian, on the previous Dictionary page, is defined as “a writer of history, esp. a critical analyst, as opposed to a chronicler or compiler; a person learned in history, a student of history” (p. 1239). Criticism implies a philosophical position, or at least a point of view. So unlike a chronicler, a historian is a writer or student of history who deals with interpretations of past events, in the form of a dramatic or pictorial narrative. To be learned in history, a person needs to understand the perspective of the Historian as well as the events described.
Seems like I was aware there was a historiographical element, even that early in my studies. That I was going to need to understand not only events of the past and change over time, but interpretive traditions and how they changed. I was also tuned into the twin focuses on narrative and explanation. And I expressed an interest, even before considering how history was defined, in relevance with the present.
An element that seems to be missing from the definitions above is a description of the audiences for whom historians write. Communication is a shared activity; meaning and effectiveness comes from the interaction between writer and reader. A historian’s choice of audience must affect the style, and probably influences the content, rigor, and philosophical assumptions of the work. On the one hand there are professional articles that argue the meaning of events based on competing interpretive schools, or delve with excruciating detail into the minutest details of an event in the past. On the other, there are popular histories that cover such a huge subject that the events left out can be more interesting than those included, and we can be left wondering “is this history, or propaganda?” The extreme distance between these extremes begs the question, how are they related? How does the historian navigate from one to the other? Does the specialized history of the professionals influence and receive influence from popular history?
I seem to be aware that there's so much in the past that any choice of events to include in a narrative is probably editorial, even when the historian doesn't seek to deceive. I still think it's an interesting question that deserves more attention, how academic and popular histories interact with one another.
In developing an understanding of the scope of history and the historian’s job, then, we should examine the audiences of histories, and try to assess the historian’s goal in writing the history. We should appreciate the historian’s point of view and philosophical foundation. And we should probably examine our own philosophy, at least in terms of our personal critical stance and theory of knowledge. Since this is a personal statement, here’s mine.
At the beginning of his essay on “Philosophical History,” G. W. F. Hegel says because “the business of history... remains true to its character in proportion as it strictly adheres to its data, we seem to have in Philosophy, a process diametrically opposed to that of the historiographer.” (“Philosophical History,” Man and the State: The Political Philosophers, Commins & Linscott, ed., New York: Random House, 1954, p. 411) This seems to be a limited, modest statement of the scope of history, tying it to facts that we expect would be derived from observation of actual events. It leaves open the question of the origin and reliability of empirical measurement, which is problematical since Hegel is writing immediately after Kant’s revolutionary conclusion that certain knowledge is unattainable. Unfortunately, he is not content with Kant’s conclusion that we should confine our inquiries to the human experience of events and abandon transcendent absolutes. Hegel bypasses Kant and re-introduces three in the form of Reason, Universal History, and the World- Spirit. His new capital-H History “has constituted the rational necessary course of the World-Spirit – that spirit whose nature is always one and the same, but which unfolds this its one nature in the phenomena of the World’s existence.” (p. 413)
This statement might be acceptable if it could be construed to mean something like Spinoza’s determinism, but Hegel insists on a dualistic division of the World into matter and Spirit. Spinoza’s unitary existence has the advantage of being beyond the scope of human comprehension, allowing the paradox of free will in a predetermined universe. Hegel seems unwilling to allow the possibility that there are limits to human knowledge. The purpose of his dualism seems to be to allow him to get around Spinoza’s immanent, unknowable god/nature/reality, to reinstate a transcendent Divinity in the guise of the World Historical Spirit; knowable and approachable by the elect – led, of course, by Hegel. It’s amazing that only a generation after Kant, irrationalism and the cult of personality re- conquered philosophy. I was shocked and disappointed when I discovered this; only able to come to terms with it by applying Kant’s formula to Hegel, even though Hegel did not do so himself. It is not history itself that demonstrates teleology, but our interaction with it in the form of “History.’’
This was a paper written for a class, so I put that more diplomatically than I was probably feeling it. I think the first quote about the "business of history" demonstrates Hegel either completely missing the point or (more likely) trying to bullshit his way back into the center. The part about "strictly" adhering to data extends into the opposite of what he's proposing. The contingency of the data is the point. Hegel's error, I now think, is similar to the problem I have with anthropologists who focus too much on generalities and try too hard to describe principles of social organization, at the expense of the uniqueness and idiosyncratic nature of events. So Hegel has already gone off the rails, I think, long before he begins trying to reinsert the supernatural.
I concluded from reading philosophy that when histories become “History,” they take on an impulse to teleology. That is, we tend to expect our grand historical narratives to display a sense of direction toward a goal or ideal of some kind. What the goal of “History” might be seems to be related to the philosophy, or culture, or intellectual experience of the historian. Also, this teleology implies a singleness of vision, a Truth which we believe can be discovered and known by the careful student utilizing the correct critical filter. I think this view is wrong and dangerous; a result of Hegel’s reintroduction of religious absolutism in the form of his new transcendent categories.
I still think this is true, although I wouldn't insist today that all of "History" behaves this way. However, going back to that question I had asked earlier in the paper about the relationship between academic and popular history, I might suggest that self-serving ideas such as Manifest Destiny do seem to suggest some significant interaction between some historians and the cultures they inhabit.
Studying other disciplines has added to my suspicion regarding the nature of history. 20th Century physics hinges on the discoveries that knowledge is fragmentary and contingent, and that the observer interacts with the subject, changing the outcome of observation. Quantum Mechanics introduces a new vocabulary of indeterminacy: the Uncertainty Principle, the Wave Function, and Entanglement. Measurement and knowledge of one aspect of reality actually precludes measurement and knowledge of others. This is not merely a failure of our technology, it is a requirement of reality. To make matters more confusing, some sub-atomic systems seem not to exist in any sense we understand, until we observe them. Then, depending on the type of observation we do, the system comes into existence in the appropriate state. If we look for a particle, we see a particle. If we look for a wave, we see a wave. This means that the question helps determine the answer, in real physical systems. Finally, relationships between systems seem to persist over distance and time in ways we do not understand. A change in one system can instantaneously create a change in a previously related system, across great distances with no exchange of energy or information. This is impossible, based on everything we understand about matter, energy, information, and space/time. The fact that it has been demonstrated to happen shows that there are things we do not yet understand about the world around us.
These discoveries from the microscopic world of subatomic particles should at the very least shake our faith in our comprehension of the complexity that surrounds us. I think they should also challenge our expectation that we can know ultimate reality. I suspect we should be using a theory of knowledge which distinguishes between reality and our understanding of reality. However, quantum effects are generally not observable in the human scale world. The sheer number of particles, systems, and interactions involved in life at our scale tends to average them into something which looks very much like the classical, Newtonian model of physics. It’s possible that the implications of quantum theory for philosophy are similarly averaged out of relevance. But recent discoveries in thermodynamics and “chaos studies” suggest that our understanding of causality may be incomplete and inadequate as well. The more penetrate the secrets of nature, the more surprises we uncover!
For me, the main lesson from science is that I don’t always know how far these new discoveries can be applied to describing events in the human scale world. Where do they cease to be real effects, and become instead useful analogies. The danger is that, because we tend to reason by analogy, we want to apply new discoveries across disciplinary boundaries. We can very easily apply a novel idea outside its domain of applicability. The edges of these domains are difficult to see, especially for people who may be experts in their own discipline, but are laymen in the parent field that originated the discovery. Finally, it can be very difficult for to stay current with the state of the art in the parent discipline. But it’s necessary, if we’re going to avoid using ideas that have been revised, qualified, or even disproven in their parent discipline.
As I was reading the beginning of my little digression into quantum physics here, I was thinking exactly the question I posed in the third paragraph. Does what I'm relating about physics have any validity when it's used metaphorically in this way? Do the indeterminacies and observer effects we discover in the microscopic realm "scale up" to the world of historical events? Looking back on it, I think I'm leaning out a bit over my skis when I say the social sciences share these issues, next.
The social sciences share the issues of the physical sciences, and multiply them exponentially by dealing with people. Studying Economics taught me that it’s very difficult to model subjective human decisions in a form that is both realistic enough and simple enough to be useful. It also taught me that everything depends on your assumptions. You can argue logically to any conceivable conclusion, by manipulating the first premises. Any system which moves from description to prescription carries buried in it layers of assumptions and unproven hypotheses that become less visible and accessible as complexity increases and systems are handed from programmers to end- users. And again, when the hand-off happens across disciplinary lines, the danger increases tremendously, as does the danger that the end-users will fail to stay current with the state of the art in the parent discipline.
Although I don't think I want to endorse that earlier claim about the physical sciences, I think my critiques of social sciences that operate like economics are valid. Especially the dangers of unrealistically oversimplified assumptions. Something I came within sight of but failed to mention fully enough was the transition from descriptive to normative that often happens without people being aware of it.
The final influence on my idea of history comes from studying literature. In reading and writing fiction, we are taught to create and to live temporarily in artificial worlds. We learn the techniques authors use to tell realistic, compelling stories. When we read and write, we ask ourselves: Is there a narrative arc? Do the characters feel real? Are their motivations consistent? Does their understanding of the reasons for their actions reflect the truth, or is it a rationalization hiding unrecognized inner drives? Do supporting characters have their own reality, or are they just foils for the protagonist? We also learn that the omniscient narrator is a voice, a technique rather than a reality.
Literature presents a consciously artificial world of tightly focused details, causes and effects; in which we suspend disbelief in order to follow the story the author wants to tell us. A myriad of missing background detail is ignored, and the main action, invented by the storyteller, takes center stage. We aren’t interested in exploring the back-stories of all the members of the crowd, so the author doesn’t have to write them. If there is a great deal of background detail, we can linger and explore it. If not, a brisk narrative pace can carry us by without noticing. Different techniques are appropriate to different genres, themes, and goals. The success of the story rests on how well it uses these tools and techniques to meet its goal.
I suspect that history shares quite a bit with literature, but with the added complexity of an expectation of a relationship with objective reality. Literature has the advantage of not needing to be real; though some authors might argue that this unreality allows them to be truer. History is required to make truth claims, sometimes more explicitly than others. I think this is the most challenging and attractive element of the historian’s job: untangling its relationship to reality (in the form of empirical validity) and to truth (in the form of subjective, inner experience). Ultimately, I think the function of history is very similar to that of literature: to engage people in a dialog about the present and future, using stories; whether made up or from the past. Given my belief in the impossibility of establishing absolute truth but the necessity of trying to get as close as possible, the work I expect to do as a historian seems to be about understanding my own theory of knowledge and critical stance, and being able to recognize those of other historians. I’ll be splitting my time between finding and interpreting facts, and telling stories that are relevant, meaningful, and compelling to an audience in the present. Since the present is where historians and their audiences live, the ultimate test of history, like that of literature, is probably how effective is it? What does it influence people to think and do about today and tomorrow? Will I be able to find answers in the past to some of today’s questions, and then tell a story that shares these discoveries?
I like this conclusion. I was unsure, when I first opened this file, whether I had written it as an introductory or a final essay. It seems pretty amazing, given this conclusion, that I wrote it at the beginning of my first semester of historiography, before reading Hayden White. If I didn’t have the date of the essay, I’d think I was channeling Metahistory, which I really impressed me because it was so resonant with things I had already experienced as a reader of literature.
I'm pretty happy about this essay. I think I pretty accurately identified my interests and my approach to history, all the way back at the beginning of my study of it. These are still, to a great extent, the issues I find relevant and fascinating. I'll try to continue to make progress on these questions, especially the one about the relationship between academic and popular history, as I explore this next phase of my life as a historian.