Gamera

[QUOTE=neilgodfrey;4063308]

These constraints were never acknowledged until postmodernism. Indeed, it is the single characteristic of the modern period to write "grand narratives" that purport to answer all historical questions for all time. Thus, Hegel, Freud, Adam Smith, ect.

That "mental construct" that is the starting point of any "history" is obviously going to be a fluid term. Theories of knowledge will define the range of phenomena admissable as evidence for the hypotheses. Variable values and assumptions unavoidably underpin all questions, hypotheses and theories.

Good history is more like science when it asks the same questions that can be applied to a range of case studies. Here history really overlaps with studies in sociology, anthropology, environmental studies and such.

Almost exactly like, I would say. The human sciences are categorically different from the hard sciences, that require direct observation and repeatability. I'm not saying historiography is without rules. I'm just saying those rules are socially constructed and change as various institutions gain more or less power over other institutions. A history in the 1st century is unlike a history in the mediaeval world is unlike an early modern history is unlike a modern history. What changed is not the logical ability of historians, but the very definition of the rules of what constitutes history. And you can bet they'll change again once society changes.

Gamera

No, history is not about earthquakes, and no, artifacts cannot verify the historicity of anybody. Artifacts are created with an agenda just like texts. You have a naive veiw of history. We produce a lot of artifacts about Mickey Mouse, but I assure you, he doesn't exist.

aa5874

History is a record of events, whether earthquakes, people, epidemics or Mickey Mouse. History is definitely not about agenda.

The fact that there was a person named Abraham Lincoln, president of the USA, is not at all related to any agenda. World War 1 is an event that occured, it is history, not agenda.

Jesus is total agenda, not history.

Gamera

If Lincoln had lost the war, and the Confederacy wrote the history, the naivte of your claim would be clear to you.

Angra Mainyu

Great points.

Would that not put in question the meaning of the word “fact”?
What is a fact, in your view?

Suppose A kills B, then the investigators gather the evidence, interpret it, etc., and find out who did it.
Would that be a fact?
After all, they’re only interpreting documents and some objects they have (partial) access to.
50 years from now, would it still be a fact that A killed B?

Without the need for a police investigation, suppose someone argues that WW1, or the Holocaust, existed, and that those are facts…would that be accurate, or naïve?
If it’s the latter, how about the following claims:
The Vietnam war took place.
The Gulf war took place.

As for presidents, if the fact that Abraham Lincoln was the president of the US is not actually a fact, but based on an agenda (sorry if I misunderstand and you say that it is a fact, even if related to an agenda, in which case we could still have historical facts), what about the following claim:
Richard Nixon was the president of the US.
Is that a fact, or not?
Does it depend on how far back in time we have to go?

There’s always “facts outside the frame”, even when a person directly observes a situation.

There does not seem to be a qualitative difference. Just as a camera doesn’t cover the entire context, neither do a person’s eyes. In fact, a number of cameras, microphones, etc., can provide much more information about a given situation than being actually there, with no equipment. In addition, they can (at least potentially) record what they observe in a more reliable way than the human mind.

For instance, you see a man professing belief in God (no cameras involved), and you see that there aren’t any hooded men behind him. Yet, your perspective would be different if you could see that, in a building ten miles away, hooded men are pointing guns at the guy’s wife and children (or simply made it clear that they’d kill them all if he didn’t publicly professed his faith in God).

On the other hand, let’s say that C can only watch a video of the man professing his faith (unlike you, who can see it with your own eyes), but also has access to videos, documents, etc., that prove to him that groups of armed men are threatening to kill and in fact killing people if they don’t profess the religion the armed men want them to profess, and that the particular guy that you see professing his faith in God, has been threatened by them.

Then, C will have a very different interpretation of the event. There does not appear to be any essential difference (“essential” in terms of factuality) between that example and the original one you provided.

My point is: information is always incomplete, and it will always be so.
If one accepts the idea that there are such things as facts, then there does not appear to be any reason to argue that history, because of its sources, cannot be factual.

To be precise, I’m not arguing that it’s always going to be factual, no. There are many cases in which it’s not clear what happened.

My objection is not to the argument that there are different interpretations of many events that some people see as facts, but that the argument that rules out factuality in history (or in the information that one can get from a video), would seem to rule out facts in a much broader context, actually it would seem to rule them out altogether.

While that is also a possible stance (i.e., claiming that there are no such things as facts), if one is to keep a discourse about facts, there doesn't appear to be any good reason to make exceptions against videos - or, in general, against history.