History as Narrative
A narrative consists of a series of events between each of which is a reasonable connection of causality. One event is said to occur, then the next, each occurrence flowing from the previous in a fashion that could be legitimate in the context of usual human experience.
If I told you that this morning I stubbed my toe, hopped on one foot, and fell down the stairs, that would be a reasonable narrative. On the other hand, if I said that this morning I stubbed my toe, my hair caught on fire, and I took my dog for a walk, that would not be a narrative but a list. There is no implied cause effect relation between the events.
Note that causality is implied rather than inherent in the words themselves. Unlike the concepts of a dog or pain or falling, causality is never contained in language, but exists outside it. Even when we say one event causes the next we do not talk about causality itself. That this morning stubbing my toe caused me to fall down the stairs only means that there is a connection between the two events. In other words, the whole concept of casualty only points to the way that events seem to flow in a generally predictable manner.
History, at least as we do it in our culture, involves creating narratives of the events of the past. We take the events and draw some cause and effect connections between them. One problem with that is that we posit cause and effect relationships when it is not correct to do so. In my story about stubbing my toe, it is entirely possible that stubbing my toe and falling down the stairs were both caused by something else. For instance, I could have failed to put in my contacts before attempting to descend to the floor below. Nevertheless, this problem is a relatively small one. What does it matter if we get the specific cause and effect relation wrong? At least we are trying, and maybe getting closer to what actually happened.
The second problem with the narrativization of history is more substantial. We often hear that one of the reasons we do history is so that we do not make the same mistakes in the future. However, to make claims about what we should do in the present to bring about our desired future requires a generalization of cause and effect relationships. To be confident that our generalization is correct, three conditions must be satisfied.
One, the claims need to be testable, at least in theory. This is usually not a problem with cause and effect relationships created from the study of history, since most claims can be tested in theory.
Two, there needs to be a large enough sample size. If we look at only a few events in history and try to come up with a general cause and effect relationship, we probably will be wrong, since the sample size is usually small.
Three, all confounding factors need to be limited to a sufficient degree. Most historical events have a multitude of causes, so it is nearly impossible to separate them out, which means that we are more likely going to oversimplify to a degree that we shouldn't use the gained cause and effect relation to make choices in the future. This is the greatest problem with trying to find cause and effect relationships through history, because it ensures that most of those claims cannot be taken seriously.
From history we believe to have learned (...hmmm. What do we think we have learned from history, in terms of cause and effect relationships? Maybe its just my education of history that is lacking, but I'm unable to find many satisfactory responses. ) that peaceful protest is much more effective than violence for toppling dictators. However, unless this claim is tested by science, we probably shouldn't use it to determine what we should do when we start our own rebellion. There are too many confounding variables both in our current time and lurking in the data that was analyzed to figure out which would best suit the revolutionary needs of today.
That is not to say that we cannot learn anything from history. Without history we wouldn't be able to figure out the problems we need to solve in the first place. If we ask ourselves, "what is going on in the world today," we quickly find ourselves asking, "what happened in the world yesterday?" Without history, for instance, we wouldn't know that the historical oppression of blacks in America leaves marks that continue to prevent blacks from escaping cycles of poverty. Nevertheless, we shouldn't look at history to figure out any cause and effect relationships, for if we do we are likely to be more wrong than right.
If I told you that this morning I stubbed my toe, hopped on one foot, and fell down the stairs, that would be a reasonable narrative. On the other hand, if I said that this morning I stubbed my toe, my hair caught on fire, and I took my dog for a walk, that would not be a narrative but a list. There is no implied cause effect relation between the events.
Note that causality is implied rather than inherent in the words themselves. Unlike the concepts of a dog or pain or falling, causality is never contained in language, but exists outside it. Even when we say one event causes the next we do not talk about causality itself. That this morning stubbing my toe caused me to fall down the stairs only means that there is a connection between the two events. In other words, the whole concept of casualty only points to the way that events seem to flow in a generally predictable manner.
History, at least as we do it in our culture, involves creating narratives of the events of the past. We take the events and draw some cause and effect connections between them. One problem with that is that we posit cause and effect relationships when it is not correct to do so. In my story about stubbing my toe, it is entirely possible that stubbing my toe and falling down the stairs were both caused by something else. For instance, I could have failed to put in my contacts before attempting to descend to the floor below. Nevertheless, this problem is a relatively small one. What does it matter if we get the specific cause and effect relation wrong? At least we are trying, and maybe getting closer to what actually happened.
The second problem with the narrativization of history is more substantial. We often hear that one of the reasons we do history is so that we do not make the same mistakes in the future. However, to make claims about what we should do in the present to bring about our desired future requires a generalization of cause and effect relationships. To be confident that our generalization is correct, three conditions must be satisfied.
One, the claims need to be testable, at least in theory. This is usually not a problem with cause and effect relationships created from the study of history, since most claims can be tested in theory.
Two, there needs to be a large enough sample size. If we look at only a few events in history and try to come up with a general cause and effect relationship, we probably will be wrong, since the sample size is usually small.
Three, all confounding factors need to be limited to a sufficient degree. Most historical events have a multitude of causes, so it is nearly impossible to separate them out, which means that we are more likely going to oversimplify to a degree that we shouldn't use the gained cause and effect relation to make choices in the future. This is the greatest problem with trying to find cause and effect relationships through history, because it ensures that most of those claims cannot be taken seriously.
From history we believe to have learned (...hmmm. What do we think we have learned from history, in terms of cause and effect relationships? Maybe its just my education of history that is lacking, but I'm unable to find many satisfactory responses. ) that peaceful protest is much more effective than violence for toppling dictators. However, unless this claim is tested by science, we probably shouldn't use it to determine what we should do when we start our own rebellion. There are too many confounding variables both in our current time and lurking in the data that was analyzed to figure out which would best suit the revolutionary needs of today.
That is not to say that we cannot learn anything from history. Without history we wouldn't be able to figure out the problems we need to solve in the first place. If we ask ourselves, "what is going on in the world today," we quickly find ourselves asking, "what happened in the world yesterday?" Without history, for instance, we wouldn't know that the historical oppression of blacks in America leaves marks that continue to prevent blacks from escaping cycles of poverty. Nevertheless, we shouldn't look at history to figure out any cause and effect relationships, for if we do we are likely to be more wrong than right.
It seems to me that, outside of the specific context of some history courses, or the scholarly work of a historian, we rarely endorse a historical narrative because we've exhaustively satisfied ourselves of its "correctness." We implicitly trust that academic historians are being honest and forthright in their examination and presentation of evidence--that they aren't altering or inventing evidence, or perpetrating a hoax--in part because we understand that there are professional standards in place, peer-reviewing and so forth, that guarantees scholarly conventions will be satisfied. No postmodernist is saying, a la Trump, that historians (or journalists) just "make stuff up."
ReplyDeleteBut we hear a story, and it makes sense to us, it fits into our sense of the world, or helps shape or reshape our view of the world in some particular way--we "get" a historical story, and it becomes part of the bedrock narrative within which new information, facts, and stories are included. We all have these spotty narratives of, like, American history, or the history of exploration and empire, or the fall of Rome, and we're all aware that they're far from complete. But the stories we do know take hold--you remember them as fact, as "what really happened," and there's something about *story* as a form that makes those facts stick particularly well. It "makes sense," and seems to lead to the present day in some coherent fashion. The stories may or may not be fully up to speed in terms of facts and credibility, but that doesn't matter much in actual practice.