A week ago, Australian historian Keith Windschuttle gave a talk in Sydney under the heading "Postmodernism and the Fabrication of Aboriginal History". The full text is on-line, highly recommended.
"The argument that all history is politicised, that it is impossible for the historian to shed his political interests and prejudices, has become the most corrupting influence of all. It has turned the traditional role of the historian, to stand outside his contemporary society in order to seek the truth about the past, on its head. It has allowed historians to write from an overtly partisan position. It has led them to make things up and to justify this to themselves on the grounds that it is all for a good cause. No cause is ever served by falsehood because eventually someone will come along and expose you. Truth always comes out in the end, and when it does it discredits those causes that were built on lies.[...] The role of the historian is to stand above politics, difficult though this always will be. Historians should assume a public responsibility to report their evidence fully and accurately, to footnote their sources honestly, and to adopt as objective a stand as possible. To pretend that acceptable interpretations can be drawn from false or non-existent evidence, whose only justification is that it is all in a good cause, is to abandon the pursuit of historical truth altogether."
An Australian correspondent of mine generously sent me Windschuttle's 2002 book about the fate of the Tasmanian aborigines in the early 19th century, and it's excellent stuff. Level-headed, clearly written, unromantic, painstaking with its sources, humanistic in its values and absolutely devastating to prevailing views. European archaeology needs a Windschuttle of its own.
Update 8 June: A number of commenters really don't like Windschuttle's politics. To keep the discussion on track, let me just state briefly that I neither know nor care much about current Australian politics, but I have a strong professional interest in historical methodology and theory. Windschuttle's political opinions appear to be quite far to the right of my own, but when it comes to ideas about good historical scholarship, we're on the same page.
To provoke a different set of angry comments I'll spell out something the attentive reader may already have gathered from a recent entry here. I'm a cultural relativist and a constructivist in my view of culture. This means that very few pieces of cultural tradition are sacred to me, and that I see all ideas of deep continuous cultural heritage as fictions of the present. This applies both to Western majority culture and to Third World minority cultures. The only way for a culture to earn my respect is for it to conform to the UN's Declaration of Human Rights.
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yet Windschuttle has a clear political agenda...
European archaeology needs a Windschuttle of its own.
Oh please, by all means take ours. Australia won't miss him, we have pompous braying ideologues to spare.
I'd have to agree with Lincoln on this one.
It is common that people that accuse others of politicising history, science etc have a political agenda of their own.
Windschuttle's version of history is as extreme as some of those that he opposes. Both sides bring their own biasses into their interpretations.
Yeah, Windschuttle is quite explicit about his conservative political views. I don't share them, but I do share his view of what constitutes good historical scholarship. If a historian is open with their sources, as Windschuttle is, and presents their arguments clearly, as Windschuttle does, then the reader can evaluate each claim regardless of the historian's political bias.
One interpretation is not as good as another. If it were, then all historians and archaeologists should in my opinion be sacked. Scholarship is about seeking the truth. Activities that don't share that aim aren't scholarship.
Great, except his historical scholarship is patchy to say the best as well. This debate has been going on for years in Australia, I kinda get physically weary at the mere thought of revisiting it all, but there are acres out there dealing with the deficiencies of his scholarship.
His most valuable contribution will end up being people being more paranoid about proofreading footnotes.
Heh, ignore the "Mungo" bit. I use that title occasionally (its a sports thing) and it comes up as my saved name in comments sometimes. Mostly I catch it and change it. Bad proofreading from me on this occasion.
I suggest you read John Quiggin's review of Windschuttle:
I'm quite ignorant about Australian history, except for an anecdote about the Bishop of Sydney denouncing rectal gonorrhoea. But I find Windschuttle's book enlightening. The authors he criticises haven't just been sloppy with footnotes. They have made important stuff up out of thin air. These are people whose political views I agree with, but I find their professional conduct disgraceful.
Tim, I'm reading the book right now, and that is not a fair criticism of it. Windschuttle is far from relativist, and there is no trace of racism in his writing.
I'm on the other side of the planet, I've never been to Australia, and I'm a leftie. So I hope you guys will accept that my appreciation of Windschuttle's book (yes, we're talking about the book, not the man in general) is not politically motivated.
I admire Alan Sokal greatly. Like him, I'm a leftie who has put a lot of effort into criticising poor scholarship and hyper-relativism among my political fellows. That's what Windschuttle's book does for me.
Someone unfamiliar might not realise the intense heat (sometimes light) this whole thing and Windy in particular generates down here. It's like innocently saying "Yeah, I've been reading a book by some guy called Michael Moore. Kinda cool! Anyone heard of him?"
So expect to receive a quick education in the Culture Wars, Aussie Style. ;-)
Michael Moore, yeah, I'm a fan!
But you mean the Science Wars, right? I'm kind of a traumatised veteran of them myself.
It's called the History Wars. Surely Windschuttle's bias is obvious? How can he possible claim to be standing above politics?
He isn't claiming to stand above politics generally: he states his political position explicitly. What he does claim, and here I agree with him, is that it is possible for a historian to produce objective testable work. Indeed, this is the only acceptable way to do research in any discipline unless you want to be called a propagandist or a fraud.
I see the sciences and humanities as instances of the same thing, what the Germans call Wissenschaft. We can probably agree that it is possible to do good work in astronomy without letting your political opinions bias the results. Historical research is no different in principle, though political objectivity takes harder work here.
I believe, quite non-ironically, that a historian's duty is simply to find out about the past as it was. And I believe that this is possible. If it were not, then historians should not be paid.
Ok, here's Windschuttle:
Do you think that is objective?
I haven't the knowledge to tell if it's true, but it's certainly testable. Which part do you find subjective?
It's difficult for history to be testable in the same way as science is. Histories are constructed, whether you like it or not. Now I'm not suggesting that people throw out objectivity altogether, but I do think there is value in recognising that history is not the same as science. History is never going to be testable in the same was as science until somebody invents a time machine.
Oh, come on, don't give me "histories are constructed"! They are constructed in the same manner as woodpeckers and atoms are constructed.
Historical sources have the same kind of relationship to the reality behind them as scientific data has to that reality. Scientific data are never easy to interpret and there are often undetected biases in them.
What I'm saying is not that scientific data are really good and historical sources are almost as good. I'm saying that historical sources are pretty bad and scientific data aren't much better. But they're the best we can get. Much better than making it all up.
Windschuttle only counts deaths that meet his standards for documentation. It should be obvious that not all deaths will be recorded this way. Windschuttle puts the original population at 2,000 - that means that, even using his figures, 5% of the population were killed, a larger percentage than in Bosnia last decade. Surely something serious was going on there?
Regarding aboriginal deaths, it seems Windschuttle places the burden of proof upon those who cry genocide. Bosnia surely can't be a comparable case -- the absolute number is more interesting than the relative one. We loathe the Nazis because they killed a large number of Jews etc., not because of a large percentage of the total.
If I understand correctly, the Tasmanian aborigines were largely wiped out by unfamiliar respiratory diseases (they even died of the common cold, poor bastards!), at the same time as their nativity figures became severely lowered by unfamiliar STDs. I don't think anyone in their right mind disputes that the arrival of the Europeans was the cause of the aboriginals' demise. But I find Windschuttle's case for this having been unintentional very strong. The colonial administration and many private citizens were working hard to preserve those people. And they failed.
Am I the only one around here who's even read the book? I recommend it, it's a good read and certainly not some nasty fascist tract.
Not exactly, but I guess you're always going to find people more believable when they reinforce your own biases.
And even if you don't buy "post-modernism" or whatever you want to call it, you just need to look to cognitive science to realise how wrong that statement is.
Despite its infamous reputation, Van Diemens Land was host to nothing that resembled genocide, or any intention to exterminate the Aborigines.
There's your bias right there - the assumption that it only counts as genocide if it's explicitly intentional. OK, the British didn't deliberately set out to exterminate the Aboriginies, they just took a series of actions which would inevitably lead to that outcome with absolutely no regard to whether they lived or died.
Under Scots law, taking an action which a reasonable person would expect to lead to another's death, with no regard for the outcome, is regarded as murder. You don't need to demonstrate a specific intent.
[T]he absolute number is more interesting than the relative one.
So if there are only a hundred members of a species or culture and you kill 99 of them, it's no big deal - whereas if there are a hundred million, and you kill one million, it is? I can't say I agree.
How to be a successful conservative revisionist in six easy steps:
1. pick your *stupidest* opponents
-- attack their worst arguments
-- repeat x 10
2. pick your most *noxious* supporters
-- criticize mildly, but self-righteously
-- repeat, but no more than once or twice
3. proclaim yourself an objective seeker after Truth, because you oppose the 'nutjobs on both sides'
-- Come up with a catchy slogan for this position
---- like 'fair and balanced'
4. Equate *all* your opponents to the people attacked in step one
-- Hence imply (for example) that *anyone* who thinks the Australian settlers wiped out entire native populations must believe the past didn't really happen and that it's all subjective anyway.
-- nevertheless freely ignore actual, honset-to-goodness evidence when it goes against you
---- because it's biased
---- or because it's a matter of faith
---- or because it's a controversy and you should teach both sides
5. Sell books to thirsting creationists, global warming skeptics, or tory seekers after Glorious Nationalist Histories,
6. Profit!!
Dunc, it seems the main decision on the part of the British that led to the demise of the Tasmanian aborigines was "let's colonise Tasmania". In most other cases, such decisions had not led to the extinction of the indigenous people. Let's save "genocide" for the guys who herd people into football arenas and shoot them, OK?
If I accidentally sneezed on the last remaining Frenchman and killed him with flu, then I would have committed genocide with your reasoning. 100 percent!
And of course intentions are important when we assess possible cases of genocide. Why do you think everyone's heard of the Wannsee conference?
KW's stuff would be roughtly the equivalent of saying "hey, slavery in the US wasn't so bad. At least they got fed!" Maybe it's true, but it misses the point.
See also http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/24/1066631621572.html - only a review of some refutations, but it show's some of his cherry-picking and misrepresentations.
Until the Myall Creek Massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myall_Creek_Massacre) Aborigines were routinely killed by white settlers in Australia. That particular massacre is notable largely because someone was finally punished - and the killers genuinely believed what they did was legal. So did a lot of people at the time.
As recently as the 1928 Coniston massacre: A WW1 veteran shot 32 Aborigines at Coniston in the Northern Territory after a white dingo trapper and station owner were attacked by Aborigines. A survivor of the massacre, Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri, later became part of the first generation of Papunya painting men. Billy Stockman was saved by his mother who put him in a coolamon [see 'The Tjulkurra': Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri, ISBN 1-876622-37-7] A court of inquiry said the European action was justified'. (From wikipedia)
KW's attampted dehumanisation of Aboriginal Australians is bloody reulsive.
Myall Creek is in New South Wales on the Australian mainland. The book I'm reading treats only Tasmania. It doesn't attempt to dehumanise anyone and is not, in my opinion, repulsive at all.
I agree that some form of intentionality is important in defining genocide. However, even the legal definition is much more broad than "shooting people at football stadiums":
...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
And using "their language has no word for x" as justification for anything is a patent fallacy. However, even if a group has no concept of ownership of land, does that justify taking away their rights to use that land as they traditionally have?
Perhaps one could argue that Swedes, with their allemansrätt, have no proper concept of ownership of natural resources. A more civilized group should therefore move in, fence off all forest areas and put them to more productive use. All trespassing Swedes shall be relocated to Gotska Sandön. ;)
Martin:
You yourself said that you weren't familiar with the specific history. While the British colonists didn't deliberately set out to kill the aboriginies, they did deliberately set out to destroy their culture and way of life, in the belief that they were bringing them the "benefits of civilisation" (and to sieze all the land and resources that they depended on along the way). For example, they did forcibly remove children to be schooled by missionaries. That alone qualifies as an act of genocide.
As for this statement: "If I accidentally sneezed on the last remaining Frenchman and killed him with flu, then I would have committed genocide with your reasoning."; perhaps you should look again at what I actually said: "taking an action which a reasonable person would expect to lead to another's death". Accidentally sneezing on someone is neither a deliberate action (I admit the word "deliberate" was missing, but I think it's reasonably implicit given the context) nor is it an action one would reasonably expect to cause death. If you shot the last Frenchman, and he died, you'd be guilty of genocide whether you intended to kill him or not - although the responsibility would have to be shared with whoever it was that reduced the population to an unsustainable level first.
When I read The Fabrication of Aboriginal History I was surprised at its revelations and impressed by its scholarship, but I remained somewhat skeptical. It was reading and investigating the academics' attacks on it (particularly in Whitewash) that convinced me that Windschuttle�s book was unassailable. I was astounded at the level of evasion, vitriol, deceit and fallacy displayed by so many leading academics. They must have assumed that by closing ranks behind their colleagues their bluff and bluster would silence Windschuttle. I started writing articles on my discoveries and finally a book: Washout; the Academic Response to the Fabrication of Aboriginal History. http://www.papertig.com/Publishing_Washout.htm.
Martin, I noticed you added an update saying that commenters here don't like W's politics. But the problem that commenters have with him is that he injects his politics into his history.
As for the number of deaths, I am perplexed that you see nothing wrong with Windschuttle presenting the number of deaths that have been conclusively documented as the total number of deaths. Surely any objective historian should report that as the minimum possible number and also report a maximum number?
I also don't understand why you think that relative numbers don't matter. The impact on the people being killed depends on the relative numbers, not on the absolute numbers.
No Tim, they dislike W because they think he's a braying ideologue on the wrong side of the spectrum.
Yes, the documented number of aborigine deaths at the hands of Europeans should be treated as a minimum. However, W also documents that mainstream colonial society in Tasmania didn't condone cruelty or violence to aborigines. Any undocumented murders would thus have been the work of marginal members of society, mainly convict shepherds on the geographical periphery, not well-organised, and not very many.
Regarding absolute versus relative numbers, your question was whether "something serious was going on there". To my mind, hundreds of Aborigine and European victims over three decades is certainly serious. But it's not genocide, and it's not surprising. What would you expect to happen if you started dropping violent urban criminals into an area thinly populated by warlike hunter-gatherers?
The big underlying question people are asking is perhaps whether European global colonialism was good or bad. I guess it was good for the colonists and bad for the indigenous people. But I personally don't care much about that value judgement. I just want to know what happened in the past.
Martin
> "Any undocumented murders would thus have been the work of marginal members of society, "
"would"? Ya think so? You're being fanciful. I come from a settler family and we have an oral tradition of "did" and we were far from "marginal members of society"
I "wouldn't" be paying any attention to fantasists and denialists like Windshuttle. On one occasion I recall he denied the reality of an incident that I first heard about from an older member of my family over 40 years ago when I was 5.
Windshuttle is simply a pompous liar and he denies not just the history of the settled but the history of the settlers as well. He is about as far from historical objectivity as it is possible to get.
He was a ratbag opportunist during the '70's when he was a neo-Trot, and he's a ratbag opportunist now.
Dear JM, you might be quite right about Prof. Windschuttle being a "a fantasist and denialist". He might also be "a pompous liar", I cannot know, because I don't know much about him.
But the link Martin has given, on top of this discussion, to a paper by Windschuttle, contains arguments and a critical attitudes of the nature used in "Wissenschaft". At least it seems so to me.
Do you think that this kind of arguments only are means for denial and is something typical for a pompous liar?
So a couple of unruly shepherds possessed Governor Arthur to declare martial law on the whole island?
I'm sure that sources can be suitably arranged to show that mainstream German society didn't condone outright violence towards Jews, and that they had to be rounded up to ghettoes for their own good.
Martial law was declared because those shepherds were getting killed at an alarming rate.
But really, don't ask me about 19th century Tasmania, a subject of which I am almost completely ignorant. Read the literature instead. I've suggested one good book and I'm sure there are many others.
Martin, you obviously want a discussion about methodology and historical theory and you write:
"I'm a cultural relativist and a constructivist in my view of culture. This means that very few pieces of cultural tradition are sacred to me, and that I see all ideas of deep continuous cultural heritage as fictions of the present. This applies both to Western majority culture and to Third World minority cultures".
You obviously explicitly deny ideas of deep continuous cultural heritage. What is then deep and what is more shallow concerning continuity in cultural heritage? - What about e.g. Iranian traditions to celebrate the new year? Are they not parts of a very old cultural heritage?
Might it not be so that during the last half century in Sweden, there has been a historically unusual lack of interest in keeping traditions and that you are very influenced by this culture and therefore have your belief on these matters?
Have I understood you right?
I just meant deep in the sense of "long-lived", chronological depth.
What I'm saying is that when a Jewish congregation prays or a Catholic one hears Mass today, then they are not experiencing anything like what their predecessors did a thousand or fifteen hundred years ago. They're AD 2007 Jews and Catholics, not timeless ones. And if I call myself a Swede, a Saami or a Native American today, then this does not mean what it meant a thousand years ago.
I have the legal right to inherit stuff from my parents and grandparents. I do not have rights to anything one group or another possessed centuries ago. This is as it should be.
In my opinion, all citizens of a secular democracy should enjoy the same rights regardless of ethnicity. Land rights, for instance, should not follow ethnicity: this is in fact a nasty extreme-right principle that the Nazis called Blut und Boden, "blood and land".
I've written about this issue before.
"If your granddad was really nasty to my granddad for ethnic reasons, then it does not in my opinion mean that you owe me anything extra. The important thing is that you are not nasty to me now."
As a non-historian, I think the conflicting comments on this thread illustrate beautifully that the historian, no matter how hard she tries, simply cannot "stand above politics". If we are to understand anything about the world, we need to construct some mental model of how it works. For historians, the relevant model is inevitably political, because politics is history in the making. Hence, bias.
What can be done? You can't help seeing the world through colored glasses. But you can face the fact that you're not objective, and you can do your best to fight fair and listen to your opponents. The people whose glasses are a different color are the ones who can tell you about the parts of the world that your own glasses obscure.
I agree. Always be up-front with your biases. But objective truth is possible to reach in historical studies. If we want to know e.g. whether genocide took place in a certain area and time, then let's formulate a definition of genocide and see what the evidence tells us.
Martin R: "f we want to know e.g. whether genocide took place in a certain area and time, then let's formulate a definition of genocide and see what the evidence tells us."
Martin, this is where the dog is buried. Most political arguments are about definitions: what is the definition of civil marriage (does it include same-sex unions or not?), what is the definition of "human rights" (does it include the right to have a paying job, for example?), in some cases even: what is the definition of "human" (your XIX-th century Australian settlers, as I learned from this thread, did not include the Aborigines in their definition of human). If you make Turks and Armenians debate over the definition of genocide, you'll be in for a rough time.
The idea that truth can always be sorted out is, in my opinion, simplistic. Truth can only be sorted out by people interested in it (others won't bother). It is often that those who are interested have emotional attitude towards the truth. I've read the endless debates, for example, on the Ukrainian-Polish conflict during the IInd World War in Wolyn. The vision of historic reality is totally split along the ethnic lines: Poles see it this way, Ukrainians see it that way. There is very little common ground, even in the numerical question of how many people were killed on both sides -- and Polish and Ukrainian historians are as professional as those in West Europe or the USA. The political solution to the problem is obvious: bury the dead and get over it, cooperating in modern matters (like the Euro 2012, yay!). The historians, however, are left with an immensely difficult problem in their hands.
I think the useful message from post-modernism is not "there is no truth" but "you are unable to perceive the naked truth" and this forces you to be more humble and always ask yourself whether your own bias, sympathies and emotions are not leading you away from the truth. Having a professional code of conduct, of course, helps a lot.
Martin, you write: What I'm saying is that when a Jewish congregation prays or a Catholic one hears Mass today, then they are not experiencing anything like what their predecessors did a thousand or fifteen hundred years ago".
I would like to formulate the question: How can you be quite sure about that? It may be a reasonable assumption, but can you prove this statement? In other words do you know it as a fact?
Furthermore I could formulate the assumption that different persons in a congregation have a bit different experiences during e.g. a Mass. This assumption could be tested on present days congregations. If it it proves to be right for a number of different congregations, then it could support that this is something, which probably was the case also in congregations 1000 years ago.- But can we be quite sure?
I do sympathise with your view about not inheriting enmity between generations!
I can agree with Roman W that we should be humble about drawing conclusions out of our own perspective, about matters which can be seen from different perspectives. But that does not mean that we can draw the conclusion that "there is no truth". I mean that this is maybe the main weakness of postmodernism.
Roman, yes, many political arguments are about definitions. But in scholarship, before you have arrived at the necessary definitions, then you can't even pose a question. And without questions it is impossible to do research. If you're a historian and I ask you "How did the wonkadoodles piznimack the hoola-zoola?", then you don't have a historical problem to solve but a terminological one.
Genocide is a fairly well defined crime, and the only ones who voice doubts about the Armenian case these days are Turkish nationalists.
Your statement that we "are unable to perceive the naked truth" is often formulated "scientific knowledge is provisional and open to re-testing with new data and new methods". But no amount of re-testing will make Charles Dickens a scientologist. We know he wasn't.
JG, today's congregations enter those synagogues and churches with entirely different perspectives and experiences than a thousand years ago. There is individual variation, sure, but the "mean" view of such an event now must be radically different from the mean in the past.
Martin R:
"But in scholarship, before you have arrived at the necessary definitions, then you can't even pose a question. And without questions it is impossible to do research. If you're a historian and I ask you "How did the wonkadoodles piznimack the hoola-zoola?", then you don't have a historical problem to solve but a terminological one."
Sure. The same in physics. However, the definitions you use already shape your view of the world. For example, a definition might be made narrower to avoid discussing certain things or wider to force them into discussion. If two things fall into a definition which you use, they will seem more equal than if they don't.
Besides, even in hard science, definitions are often at least a bit fuzzy. I've often witnessed discussions in physics seminars about whether X falls into scope of definition Y. And somehow, physics progresses. If you want another proof, go ask a chemist about the *precise* definition of a chemical bond. AFAIK there is none. And yet they use the term all the time.
"Genocide is a fairly well defined crime, and the only ones who voice doubts about the Armenian case these days are Turkish nationalists."
Perhaps I chose a bad example. However, many Ukrainians claim that Holodomor was genocide. The Russians of course even refuse to discuss the issue. Genocide or not? Poland wanted to have the Katyn massacre declared genocide. Russia of course disagrees (and, let me say it as a Pole, they are right about it, however I despise Putin's regime). However, the question has been raised: genocide or not?
"Your statement that we "are unable to perceive the naked truth" is often formulated "scientific knowledge is provisional and open to re-testing with new data and new methods"."
That's not what I had in mind. I meant that just as the uneducated men in the past worshipped Sun as a personified god, we too are seeing the reality (I do believe there is one "real" reality, but that's just it: my personal belief; I received no proof from anyone of its existence) through our own sets of prejudices. And, perhaps, if we by some chance make contact with an alien, more advanced civilization, some things will be shown to us to be totally different from what he held them to be.
I remember a story told by a woman who worked in Saudi Arabia. She once touched the hand of a Saudi religious police member. He got totally crazy, called her "the devil" and looked at her with hate mixed with fear. Now, it was clear from what the woman told that he really *believed* she -- a human being -- was a devil. Probably, if a doctor examined this man, he'd be pronounced sane. Certainly he thought himself sane and his society thought him sane (otherwise he wouldn't be on the job). But yet his religious beliefs distorted his view of reality so strongly.
We are not *that* crazy: but each of us holds his own beliefs (and rightly so, otherwise we'd be without principles), which I don't mean in religious sense, but in the sense of a set of convictions (which make me a supporter of universal human rights doctrine, for example), which make skew our vision of reality. If the postmodernists say "remember about it all the time", then they are very, very right.
"But no amount of re-testing will make Charles Dickens a scientologist. We know he wasn't."
Of course: there were no scientologists in his times. The question itself is bad.
"just as the uneducated men in the past worshipped Sun as a personified god, we too are seeing the reality ... through our own sets of prejudices."
Sure, but there are many, many interesting questions where this kind of uncertainty simply doesn't come into play. Through good science and scholarship we are able to know many things beyond reasonable doubt. Real knowledge is not socially constructed, it is found out through painstaking research.
Yes, we definitely know that Charles Dickens was not a scientologist, because scientology was not "invented" yet in his days. This is a case when we really can know the truth quite exactly. But the truth about whether his grandfather was nice to his grandmother or not is probably a quite different case. In that case we might lack enough evidence even after losts of research.
In sciences it is not always possible either to draw exact conclusions. In many cases you have to be satisfied with knowledge of the type that the truth is not known exactly, but you can say that it must be within an interval on a scale, the magnitude of which you can calculate the borders for, after chosing the probability level you prefer to use.
I am surprised that scholars of the arts in recent years often do not use similar concepts. But sometimes it is used. The birth of a historical person can be e.g. about 1490. There might exist good arguments for that the person was not born before 1486 and not after 1498. I would say that is as good a kind of truth we have to be satisfied with, at least for the time being.
Denying the existence of truth obviously often leads to false subjective personal conclusions, if you are not trying to use the best arguments and evidence for estimation available. If I have got it right there exist good procedures for scholars of the arts, which can be used to estimate the truth with estimated limits of certainty. These limits might not be possible to express as numbers, but they can be described in other ways. Why not then use them instead of denying even the possibility to make the best estimation of the truth possible, for the time being? It should be better than not trying at all!
Re Update. My objection is not to his personal politics. He's just not a very good historian.
Roman, as JG pointed out we apparently all agree that Charles Dickens existed, that scientology exists, and that the former died before the latter was born. Non-relative facts.
Amanda, unlike a lot of W's academic opponents, he at least doesn't seem to make historical events up in the book I'm reading.
Martin: "Real knowledge is not socially constructed, it is found out through painstaking research."
I don't know if we use the same definition of "socially constructed", but here's my take on it. Consider physics (my field of work). Do atoms exist? Most educated people will answer immediately "yes". But let's look at those little bastards closer. What *is* an atom? You'll say "a nucleus + some electrons flying around". Leaving aside the fictiousness of the "flying around part" (there are no trajectories in Quantum Mechanics, which is the physical theory behind this stuff), consider a crystal in which interatomic bonds are formed by sharing electrons (valence bonds). Can you still identify atoms? They share electrons, so your previous answer "+ some electrons" is inadequate, since you can't say which electron belongs to which atom (electrons, as quantum particles, are indistinguishable) and you can't really identify a single atom.
So what is the real deal? My answer is: in reality, there are no atoms. There is *something* which we try to approximate using the concept of atoms. Atoms are a model, a product of our brains. Since they were created by a bunch of people who interacted with each other throughout the ages (since Democrit) and with the rest of their societies, we are fully entitled to call them "social constructs".
Is there something which really IS? Yes. You have natural number in mathematics ;-) They are something which just IS, period. Feel free to disagree with me on that...
About Charles Dickens: since we define scientologists as the followers of L. Ron Hubbard, it is indeed certain that Dickens was not one. However, there is a similar question: was Dickens religious? Here your answer will depend on what you mean by "religious". And yet it seems such a straightforward question.
Let's take another example: Napoleon. When I read a book about Napoleon, I read more than just facts. I read the author's vision of Napoleon. From the mere *selection* of facts, to the way the author ties them together, there is a lot of subjectivity in the book. Hell, people even wrote books not on Napoleon, but on the *myth* of Napoleon, i.e. how people's vision of Napoleon changed through the times...
Roman, I do agree in principle with you when you write:"There is *something* which we try to approximate using the concept of atoms. Atoms are a model, a product of our brains. Since they were created by a bunch of people who interacted with each other throughout the ages (since Democrit) and with the rest of their societies". But I don't agree with you when you draw the conclusion 'we are fully entitled to call them "social constructs" '.
The reason for my agreement only in principle is that atoms are not only a product of brains, but the concept of atoms is. This concept has been created in order to have better possibilities to communicate about reasons for properties of matter.
Another thing: As a physicist you very well know that stating that an object has the colour of green is a a way of describing human perceptions of light from the object within a limited interval of frequency of electromagnetic waves. Does that mean that we also should say that green does not exist, even if we are not colour blind?
There are no reasons to deny existence of true facts, even if we don't have knowledge about them, or if we happen to lack really appropriate concepts, which are needed for proper descriptions.
For me, being a chemist, the concept of atoms is very useful. The use of this concept gives possibilities to have a good system for the chemical properties of all existing elements, i.e. the periodic system of the elements. And this is just the basics for the usefulness of this concept.
I will not argue further at present about the usefulness of constructs of languages. We are now using the English language for modelling our arguments. Without such a model, or something similar, of reality we could not communicate. Of course I agree with you that words and languages are human constructs. Wittgenstein analysed a lot of matters around this. But I lack enough knowledge about his works to be able to argue more in details.
You made me a bit surprised, though, since you are the first physiscist I have met who prefers to express him/herself in the way that atoms do not exist.
"For me, being a chemist, the concept of atoms is very useful."
For me also!
"You made me a bit surprised, though, since you are the first physiscist I have met who prefers to express him/herself in the way that atoms do not exist."
Learn Quantum Field Theory. Then you'll understand that even the statement "elementary particles exist" is just a useful approximation of reality. As for now, if I were to take the most basic ideas about nature that physics has as the "true truth", I'd say: quantum field exist and their low-energy excitations are called "particles".
Imagine a frying pan with oil on it. Imagine you are a fly hovering above the frying pan. What do you see? You see hot drops of oil flying in the air, so you conclude "oil has the form of drops". But if you went lower, near the frying pan, you'd see that oil there is not a collection of drops, but a single mass of fluid... that's what I mean when I say "in reality, there are no atoms". There are physical, measurable phenomena which are explained very well using the concept of atoms. That's why I'll teach my students about atoms, electrons and other particles, and I'll use those concepts in my work. But I will always remember, that this is just our vision of reality, not the reality itself. Some people get a knee-jerk response to this statement, as if saying so would equate physicists with cranks who claim that their theory of spinning wheels explains the whole world. No. The difference between us and them is that our models are testable, have predictive power and fit into a larger theoretical scheme (like, of quantum fields having such and such symmetries).
I think we need to stop here: this is history/archaeology blog and we've totally hijacked the thread ;-)
"Does that mean that we also should say that green does not exist, even if we are not colour blind?"
It means that "green" is erm, a social construct. People recognize the notion of green because so many things around them (most importantly, plants) are green.
Roman, I do agree that we should not discuss science here on this blogg. But I hope that something of our discussion can be of interst, or even use, for archaeologists. What I have wanted to stress is that we use language, which is a social construct, for communication. Depending on our backgrounds we may have a bit different ideas of meanings of words. In science concepts are usually very well defined, so there shouldn't be any misunderstandings.
I archaeology there are well defined concepts too. But descriptions of human conditions and how they might have been experienced by humans in the past is described in words, which are not always as well defined. But the greatest difference to science should be that the experimental possibilities in archaeolgy are limited. Experimental archaeology is a fascinating field, but limited to rather materialistic matters.
Martin and I seem to have the same opinion that there exist non-relative facts also within archaeology and history. And my meaning is that denying that could be seeen rather as a way to play with words in such a way that it might confuse our brains. My firm belief is that traditional hermeneutics should be preferred before post-modernism. Post-modernism has been à la mode for a while. Now the weaknesses of it are so obvious that it should be time to leave most of these ideas. - They were interesting when they first appeared.
"Martin and I seem to have the same opinion that there exist non-relative facts also within archaeology and history."
This is obvious. I did not deny that. It is much more interesting how do you prove that two facts which *could* be connected were not?
"In science concepts are usually very well defined, so there shouldn't be any misunderstandings."
I recollect a discussion from one physics seminar:
Prof A: "This is Gutzwiller ansatz."
Prof B: "No, it is not!"
Prof A: "Yes, it is!"
etc
Well defined concepts, my ass.
I had never heard of "Gutzwiller ansatz", before and therefore used Google. From http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1367-2630/5/1/391/nj3191.html I get the impression that it concerns mathematical approaches in order to solve something in quantum mechanics.
It should not be surprising that two scientists could have an argument about such details, should it?
The fact that we humans are limited in our minds is no proof to the statement that there does not exist a clear definition in this case. But I shouldn't argue about this because I am very ignorant about methods of quantum mechanics.
My main argument is that the existence of truth about circumstances should not depend on human capacities. The public acceptence of the true nature of a statement, on the other hand,is very much dependent on human capacities. I think that this might be as far as we should contribute here from the personal perspectives of two scientists.
"My main argument is that the existence of truth about circumstances should not depend on human capacities."
I will try to state as clearly as possible what my problem is with that statement. Let's suppose that we discuss the battle of Waterloo. What *is* the truth about the battle of Waterloo?
Can, for example, the statement "Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo" be considered "true"? IMHO not, because it is not a statement, it is a *judgement*. We *consider* Napoleon to be a loser. The fact that this judgement is universally accepted and that it is, by many criteria, "correct" -- i.e. it is in accordance with widely accepted and practically useful notions of "victory" and "defeat", does not matter -- it's not a fact, it's a judgement. Could, then, the statement "Napoleon gave such and such order at such and such time during the battle of Waterloo" considered a (true or not) fact about the battle? More likely. However, this requires some criterion of what can be considered a part of the battle and what not. The only thing which cannot be disputed is that this statement is a fact about Napoleon. Let us consider a more interesting case. In the famous novel by Stendhal, Fabricio del Dongo takes part in a skirmish. Only afterwards, he learn that he took part in the famous battle of W. Do you see what I mean? His experience -- the naked fact -- was not of the battle of Waterloo. It was of a small skirmish, important to him but negligible for the fate of Napoleon. However, he later received an *interpretation* of this and other events which took place at the time around the small Belgian village, as of the battle of Waterloo. This means that in everything which call "the truth about the battle of Waterloo" has an element of interpretation in it (therefore it is not 100% pure, naked truth) which makes us consider it a statement about the battle of Waterloo, not only about, say, the fate of Fabricio del Dongo.
Yes, truth about circumstances can be found. But it will be just a gigantic pile of facts, useless to us. They need to be -- they must be -- organized and interpreted and classified, and this is inherently subjective.
Roman, you asked what I meant by "socially constructed". In extreme post-modern relativism, a better expression would be "socially determined". Some of the leading theoreticians in that movement have actually stated that reality is whatever we agree it to be. All exchange of ideas, all communication in fact, is of course social, but that doesn't mean that real knowledge about the world is impossible.
Your description of current atomic theory suggests that physics' model of what the building bricks of matter are really like has continued to be developed since my last high school physics class in 1990. Most non-physicists like myself clearly have outdated ideas about atoms. But this is scientific progress. A lot of what Maxwell found out about the properties of matter still holds.
It heartens me to see you write about Napoleon, Dickens, Hubbard and their various characteristics as if you're quite convinced that they have existed and that objective knowledge about them is possible. This suggests that you are still happily unaware of just how radical and destructive a proposition po-mo hyper-relativism really is.
@Martin
"Some of the leading theoreticians in that movement have actually stated that reality is whatever we agree it to be."
I disagree with them. I believe that there is an objective reality, since I am aware that at least I am a part of it ("I think therefore I am", ;-)). However, all the words we use to describe the reality fall under the scope of the statement that you quoted: they are whatever we agree it to be. Every damn word that we use is not reality, it is something which we agreed upon to mean this and this. In a way, we agreed to see these aspects of reality and ignore all the others. That's why I believe that reality will forever remain a mystery to us. All we can get to is a shadow of it, a shadow created by the candle of knowledge which we hold. Since we hold the candle, we get to partially decide what this shadow will look like.
"It heartens me to see you write about Napoleon, Dickens, Hubbard and their various characteristics as if you're quite convinced that they have existed and that objective knowledge about them is possible."
That's a bet on my part. There is no inescapable proof that they existed, but it makes more sense to trust the generations of historian who wrote about them than to reject their work and sit with my eyes shut. The same with atoms: I know they're just models of reality, but they're very useful models.
"This suggests that you are still happily unaware of just how radical and destructive a proposition po-mo hyper-relativism really is."
Actually, I've discussed with a few post-modernists and I can't say that they are totally destructive. Those sane ones will not oppose science or technical progress, they just point out the limitations. What is really precious about post-modernism, is that it makes a wonderful bullshit detector: all this talk about "natural law" (which means women can't have abortions), about something being "objectively evil" (which means that someone decided that it is evil) is nicely exposed by post-modernist criticism.
OMG, post-modernism as a bullshit detector!? Roman, you are clearly a virgin here. Po-mos produce humonguous planet-dwarfing cascades of reeking bullshit. Try reading Sokal & Bricmont's book Fashionable nonsense. Did you know that your penis equals the square root of -1 according to Jacques Lacan?
Yeah, I heard about Sokal and Lacan, too. But I didn't say that I discussed with Lacan.
"Po-mos produce humonguous planet-dwarfing cascades of reeking bullshit."
So do other branches of philosophy. Nothing new here.
I read Windshuttle too, and what I saw was that a Lyndall Ryan had written something with, by herself, fabricated sources. That´s treally bad. She gave Windshuttle a good opportunity, to demonstrate his (hrm!!) feelings about women, aborigines, and other "oppressed" groups. And then Martin points to his own blog, that´s interesting. But I found something else in his blog, some comments at Nessles...
"10 Responses to Spöksamerna i skyn
Martin R Says:
juni 5th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Wöw! Spöksamerna måste förstås ge råd angående hembränningsapparater och lämpligt beteende gentemot grannens kåta, fru och barn.
David Says:
juni 5th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Martin: Aldrig har jag sett ett mera nödvändigt kommatecken.
Martin R Says:
juni 5th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Jag övervägde att uteleämna det eller sätta det inom parentes."
This tells me more...than other words...about the power of the SRY-complex:
I would recommend all to read a really amusing book about the SRY-complex, that fights for its life throughout the world, in nature (and unfortunately also in culture, unconsciously (?)) David Jones, "Y-The Descent of men" 2002. www.TimeWarnerBooks.co.uk.
Oh, didn't I mention that this is a misogynist xenophobic blog intended to further White Male hegemony?
But, dear Martin, I am not a feminist, I am a conscious cultured being. Hopefully.
Not a feminist? I am. My first wife had a background in 70s radical leftie feminism. Though she did eventually get kicked out for using make-up and liking men.
No, I'm not a feminist in that point of view. I've never made friends with those women. I'm a plain, unpainted simple dressed person. I use my left hand. The feminists were always very suspicious about what I'm up to.
I'm something else, I'm from the north country. I like men, but I realize that even more important than the class struggle is nature,(I didn't think so earlier, and I didn't think of the chromosomes eather earlier)I know more now.
Bad jokes about my people, even if the're not badly meant, hurts me.
But if a man is a feminist, I cannot do anything else than be happy about it...But many times it has shown to be only a thin layer, like ice on a lake in the autumn, at the time when the first snow comes and hide it...
It is a hard day today for us.
But by the way of SRY-complexes, I've heard on the radio today a nice program about it "Genusforskning i djurvärlden", Vetandets värld, it´s too late for 12.10, but it comes on radio 23.07 tonite. The biologist talking has for sure read the book I recommend "Y: The Descent of Men". The authors name is not David, but Steve Jones.