It has been a long time since my last
post in this blog, so I am going to summarize where I am at right now. I
started laying base "foundations" for truth, talking about its
objectivity and exclusivity. I talked about different areas of truth such as
morality and religion in terms of their objectivity. And I started to talk
about the search for truth through science. I will continue off that last post
by talking about finding truth through history, and will probably continue to
other areas thereafter.
I am starting a new blog here. This blog will contain more
frequent and varying posts. Basically I will write about what I feel like
writing about at the time, similar to the "side topic" posts in this
blog. This "From The Ground Up" blog will continue in a more logical
order and will have less frequent, but longer posts.
Anyway, on to history. People,
including historians have various definitions for history. Some of these
definitions involve what people wrote down (hence their biases get involved),
and how people today interpret the past. However, for simplicity, I will use
the definition that history is "all true past events". Along with
being simple, I think this is the best fit for a definition of history. For
example, the fact that I wrote this sentence is a true event of the past. Even
if there was no evidence that would help someone determine if I did write that
sentence (i.e. if my computer broke and I never told anyone about it), that
event would still be history.
The historian's task is to attempt to
determine what actually happened in history. There are issues that cause
uncertainty with what actually happen, especially with ancient history. Today,
video cameras allow us to see what happened in the past, sometimes with
complete certainty when there are multiple camera angles and eyewitness
testimony. However, with ancient history, we do not have that convenience.
Instead, we have writings from people who had a particular worldview and biases
which influenced their writing. And oftentimes, we do not have multiple
"angles" as we would today. Instead, we have one writing (or a few
writings) about a person or event, which becomes even more problematic when the
person wrote with a bias.
Should we give up on figuring what
happened in ancient history because of these problems? I do not think so.
Although we cannot have absolute certainty about what happened in ancient
history, we can come to a reasonable conclusion about some events that happened
using the evidence (i.e. the copies of writings that did survive through
thousands of years) that we do have.
Historians tend to "want"
certain things from ancient writings in order to help them determine the truth
about a particular event or person. Some of these things include:
1. Multiple attestation -
This goes along with the "multiple angles" idea that I discussed
above. Historians prefer having multiple perspectives about, for example, a
particular event. Even though there are biases that affect how the writers
describe that event, multiple attestation can allow historians to determine if
the event did indeed occur.
For example, assume there are two
sources about Alexander the Great conquering Persian. One of these sources is
from the perspective of one of Alexander's soldiers. The soldier essentially
lifts Alexander up as a god when talking about his conquest. The other source
is from the perspective of the Persian King, and the king writes constant
insults about Alexander and complains about being conquered by him. Even though
these are two completely different perspectives, and certain details about the
conquest likely differ, historians can still determine that Alexander most
probably 1. existed and 2. conquered Persia.
I used the term "most
probably" there because possible theories could be made that Alexander did
not conquer Persia. It is possible that someone made up the story 100 years
later to elevate Alexander's status after his death. However, in this case the
best explanation for these writings (after consideration of other factors) would
likely be that Alexander's existence and conquest of Persia are true. I
personally like New Testament historian NT Wright's use of the terms
"extremely unlikely", "possible", "plausible",
"probable", to "highly probable" in reference to the
certainty we have about a particular historic event.
2. Date of original writing close to
the events written about - This one is pretty simple. The
closer that the writing was to the events, the better. There is less time to
fabricate a story to the point that the main events that the writing discuss
are false. Legendary material (i.e. elevation of the details of an event or
person) tends to build up over time. This is especially true in ancient
history, when stories were usually passed down through multiple generations
before the story was written down. If the author used source material that has
an earlier date than the original writing, is can also strengthen the
reliability of the writing.
3. If we do not have the original
writings, there are multiple copies of the original writings that are close to
the date of the original writing - this factor
is important to determine if the copy of a source that we have today matches
the original source. If there are multiple copies, then historians can detect
if errors have been made from some one copying either the original source or
another copy. If the copies were written close to the time of the original
writing, there is less time for these types of errors, as well as manipulation,
to occur. It is important to point out here that we do not have ANY original
writings from ancient history, so these problems are present for every ancient
writing we have today.
4. Archeology backs up what was
written down - this factor does not
lead someone to prove that an event happened, but it can build up
the reliability of a writing. If findings from archeology do match up
with details form a writing, it shows that the writer was not just making
things up; there was some care with getting the facts right.
5. Embarrassing material - this is information that historians would not expect the
writer to include in the writing based on historical context. This is a minor
factor compared to the others, but still something to look at.
There are more factors, or
"criterion", that historians consider to help determine if an event
occurred. The first two are most relevant for historians to determine what
happened, number three helps determine the accuracy of writings we do have, and
4 and 5 provide additional evidence for the reliability of a source.
I also want to point out an important
distinction to make - historical facts vs. interpretation of those facts. Once
a historian determines the events that happened at a time in history, there may
be different conclusions about what those events mean.
For example, two
historians could agree that Alexander conquered Greece, Persia, and then turned
back once he got to Asia. Virtually ALL historians who study Alexander may
agree that this is true based on the writings we have. However, the two
historians could disagree on why Alexander turned back. Maybe Alexander just
got tired and thought he conquered enough, or maybe his soldiers complained
enough to force him to turn back. No matter what answer is correct to the
question of why Alexander turned back, the base historical facts of his
conquering and turning back are still true.
I know my example of Alexander is
simple and probably not historically accurate. However, I am just using that
example to show why multiple attestation is important (in factor #1 above) and how
interpretation of facts do not take away from the truth of the facts
themselves. And by historical facts, I mean events that almost certainly
happened based on the data we have". As discussed earlier, complete
certainty in ancient history is nearly impossible.
There is more to talk about with
ancient history too, especially the difference between oral tradition and how
we record history today. But I'll leave it at this for now, and move on to the
next area we can use to discover truth, philosophy.
