Vorkosigan

An excellent and thoughtful OP, Celsus.

I don't think that being an agnostic on the HJ is anti-realist. As a scientific realist myself (of the evolutionary naturalist strain), I thought it was an act of fidelity to realism to acknowledge the essentially polemical and theological nature of the texts, treat them as fiction, and then say that with the evidence we now have, we cannot make a decision on whether there really was an HJ who bears some serious resemblence to the stories in the NT and elsewhere.

Celsus, have you read Kuhn's The Essential Tension? I think his remarks on historians versus philosophers and the way they treat history are well worth exploring in light of the philosophical/methodological crisis in HJ studies. Kuhn's perception, writing about history of science, was that historians tend to assemble narratives that are conservative in their application of modern ideals to the past, whereas philosophers tend to read their ideas about reality into the past, so that the ancients come out holding positions that they never really dreamed of. Looking at the NT scholars as a group, one could see this tension at work in the theology/history distinction, with people doing theology and calling it history, reading their ideals into the past...a tradition Josephus and Tacitus both warned about, and practiced themselves! Another work I recommend is Appleby, Hunt and Jacob Telling the Truth About History, not so much for its arguments, but because they start out in defense of realism, arguing for a "middle ground," but founder because they cannot find what that middle ground might be. Reminds me very much of Crossan, and of the journey that you might be embarking on. That book came out during the so-called Science Wars several years ago.

I agree with Peter than the inability to write history about the NT events does not in itself say anything one way or another about realism in history. All of our evidence -- the various gospels, Acts, Paul's letters -- are themselves probable forgeries, and even if "true" in some sense are highly polemical and worthless. The issue here is not realism itself but simply the quality of the sources. As a number of scholars point out, once Acts goes, there is no source for the history of early Christianity.

Looking over the methodological claims of NT scholars, in particular Meier, and Brown, who borrows his criteria, but also people like Sanders and Crossan, it strikes me that the HJ is an invention of this drive for narrative realism in telling history. He is an artifact of realism, not its discovery.

In any case, I do not understand how you can argue for realism in science, but not in history. I mean, what happens then to history of science?

Vorkosigan

Peter Kirby

Bah. If you do read it, tell me what the point was.

Of course ancient texts can be used as reliable evidence. For example, the Epistula Apostolorum proves that some second century Christians held that Jesus rose from the dead. That is a fact about the reality of ancient history. QED.

What kind of discussion do you think is nonexistent in biblical studies?

A definition of the "realist position" would help here.

best,
Peter Kirby

Bede

Hi Celsus,

It is clear that if you take a metaphysical realist position in science (as apposed to a methodological one) then you must take a realist position elsewhere too - especially in history. Otherwise you are just trying to have your cake and eat it. It looks like you've decided naturalism in science pisses off theists and anti-realism in history does the same. I assume this is not the case.

HJ/OT studies are a bad place to start as the field is hopelessly muddled by the assumptions that liberal theologians (who are hardly ever realists nowadays)/apologists and anti/pro -Jewish polemicists have brought to the table. It's a mess. On OT history, for instance, its blindingly obvious that OT minimalists are making a political point about modern Israel and OT maximialists are making various religious points. The whole field is in danger of disappearing up its own arsehole. Vork's excellent demolition of Crossan exposed the problems with HJ studies very starkly. (OK, so Vork is utterly wrong in his conclusions, but that doesn't effect the brilliance of his destructive work).

Now we've shaken free of Marxism and the silliness of EH Carr, philosophy of history is about a contest between radical post modernists who deny it's possible and everyone else who goes and does it anyway. Alternatively, there are those who think history is and should be political and everyone else, who admit it is, but want that aspect minimised. Richard Evans 'In Defence of History' is an excellent, if polemical, starting point for understanding where the mainstream stands and why. Beware internet reviews of this book - he was involved in the Irving trial and the Nazis have been putting about a lot of crap about him.

Rather than HJ studies, the life of Charlemagne might be a much better area if you want to examine the real roots that lie underneath legendary accretions. The temperature is a bit lower and we can all agree he stayed dead.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Celsus

Hi Bede,

Just a quick response before I go to bed:
The question being begged here is: are there ontological differences between the practice of history and science? (You should be able to tell me ) Quite clearly (to me, anyway), there are, the most obvious of which is that there must be more filters for historical evidence then there are for scientific evidence (and is it possible that with so many filters, even light can't pass through?). History is not a physical science--so what inferences does one draw from this implication? Archaeology is slightly different, and the extent to which history is based on archaeology can test its rigorousness as a method.

This isn't meant to be a pissing contest between theism/nontheism (though it can be read as such). It's just that I've been doubting the reliability of historical evidence (time being a crucial factor here--in which evidence is lost forever, lest this post be misconstrued as Marxist/Nazi revisionist ammo) for quite some time now, because it fails in so many of the crucial points where science succeeds (or could succeed, ideally). That might have been the better starting point for discussion. I'll try to respond to everyone else later (and no, I'm not going to use this thread to flog any pet theories).

Perhaps my attempted position here is still a realist position, but one that simply acknowledges empirical impossibilities? Anyway, to reiterate, I am testing this position, though I didn't anticipate such a hostile reaction.
Dammit Vork, ssshhhhhh.

Joel

Edited to add: I don't subscribe to a metaphysical realist (what does that mean?) position either, AFAIK.

Hugo Holbling

At Joel's request, i'll de-lurk here briefly to respond to the OP in the spirit it was intended.

Firstly, it's entirely possible to be a scientific realist and and an historical anti-realist since the methodologies involved could be considered different (if we assume for now that there is a scientific methology). Moreover, we could suppose that the answers provided by science, though expressed probabilistically or via a ceteris paribus clause, can be divorced from the political and other motivations of the scientist making them; that is not to say that such factors play no role in science, but it seems in principle possible to separate them from the result, whereas the historical texts seem irretrievably tainted, for want of a better term.

We may also consider that the methodological questions at issue here are different in kind: the scientific realist is concerned with whether his reality can be discovered by the approaches he adopts or if it is meaningful to posit its existence, but given these things he is able to infer that his efforts may result in approximating it. His facts may be theory-laden, but at least they do not depend on the myriad other elements that Joel identifies. The historian, however, makes a metaphysical assumption of a wholly different magnitude if he chooses to posit the existence of the way it really happened; his facts are themselves historical, whereas the scientist presumes his own to be ahistorical and - what's more - cannot adopt his methodology without so supposing.

To put it another way, a remark like il n'y a pas hors du texte seems to apply more to history than science.

The history of science is concerned more with an explanatory account, i'd say; perhaps the distinction to make is between an history that endeavours to explain how we got from A to B and another that purports to tell us how it really happened?

Another difference that Joel hints at is the context of theory formation. The scientist may consider the reality he posits, compare his data against it and conceive of theories to explain it; the historian, however, does not have the second option, even if he does the first. Maybe i misunderstand: how do we compare a text to reality? Perhaps the major difference is that the scientific realist's reality is constituted by ahistorical facts - to simplify - whereas the historian's is unavoidably historical and incomplete, even if he relies in part on the scientist?

I do not know enough about Biblical criticism, alas, which is why i lurk here. Do you talk of theories in terms of explanatory power or in terms of truth, or both?

godfry n. glad

I've always been a bit ambivalent about postmodernist deconstructionism, largely because I've been unfamiliar with it. I do, however, think that a major reconsideration of what history is as a practice and how it is practiced is long overdue.

To that end, I have acted upon the recommendations of a knowledgable poster on another forum to obtain and read the introduction to Hayden White's Metahistory and the entirety of Alun Munslow's Deconstructing History.

Now, I'm still wading through both of them, but find the Munslow book may be a pretty good overview for the advanced layman of the issues surrounding empiricist versus deconstructionist views of the process of doing history. I'd recommend the introduction to it as well (I have not read the rest of it, yet).

As for the difference between science and history....it seems that history is a narrative and, as such, is dependent upon the narrator, the narrator's linguistic base and presuppositions and the claims are untestable. The history of science is just that, a narrative the exposes the predelictions of the historian, rather than provides an accurate representation of the past. One commentator on the history of science I read noted that most such histories are misbegotten and misguided, in that they concentrate on the "victories" of the scientific endeavors, when, in reality, it has been the multitudinous "failures" of theoretical science upon which science has advanced. They have gone unheralded and largely unrecognized.

Just some naive musings.

godfry n. glad

p.s. - I found Whitelam's book to be exceedingly and annoyingly strident....but still worth reading.

Vorkosigan

I suppose, on methodological grounds, you could take an anti-realist position in history and a realist one in science. But does this reflect something about history in general, or just about our current level of knowledge and methodologies? In other words, your position seems to imply that one could take a realist view if we had substantially improved methodologies.

It seems to me that the advantage science has over history is that science does not have to impute motives, and thus, need a theory of mind. Nature just is.

But in Europe, isn't archaeology considered a branch of history? Whereas in North America it is a science.....

Vorkosigan

godfry n. glad

Not where I come from. It was classed as a subdiscipline of anthropology, which is a social science. Which, I hasten to add, is not the same thing as a science.

godfry

kenaz

A couple of admissions before I start:
1. I am hardly the person to speak up for a realist viewpoint.
2. I have scant knowledge of biblical criticism.

But here’s my 2 cents:

This is not so much an antirealist position rather than a defeatist position. Truths of the past can be known through insurrection of subjugated knowledges, as Foucault’s analysis of various historical narratives has shown. To elaborate, subjugated knowledges are historical contents that have been buried or masked in functional coherences or formal systemizations. They are knowledges that have been disqualified as nonconceptual knowledges, as insufficiently elaborated knowledges, hierarchically inferior knowledges, knowledges that are below the required level of erudition or scientificity. There are truths to be unearthed in such knowledges, and if the realist can lower himself to dig through the trash, so to speak, he will find the truths that can salvage his position. But not before he problematises the existing historical narratives, not before he conceives truths as takens, not givens.

Whether one subscribes to a realist or antirealist viewpoint, it is undeniable that historical contents alone allows us to see the dividing lines in the confrontations and struggles that functional arrangements or systematic organizations are designed to mask. The difference would probably be that while the realist privileges the existence and verifiability of the historical contents, the antirealist would privilege the divisive confrontations and struggles. Seen thus, the realist position is not beyond salvaging, if he furthers his analysis beyond empiricism.

As applied to biblical history, a realist will contest the verifiability of the knowledge claims and truths behind the mythico-religious historical discourse of the Jews to no end. An antirealist viewpoint, on the other hand, will contexualise the said discourse against the historical contents of the day, ie. at least from the second half of the Middle Ages, the bible was the great form for the articulation of religious, moral, and political protests against the power of kings and despotism of the church. As a protest against an eternal Rome, the bible was the weapon of poverty and insurrection; it was the word that made men rise up against the law and against glory, against the unjust law of kings and the beautiful glory of the Church. The biblical history of servitude and exiles served then as a counterhistory against the Roman history of sovereignty, and that inversion of power relation is weighted more than the verifiability of the truths behind that historical discourse.

Archaeology is inextricably linked to history. It is the discursive tool that enables historical contents to surface. It demonstrates its rigour as a method through describtive analysis of local discursivities, through constituting a surface on which things can be inscribed. But it alone does not a historical narrative on subjugated knowledges make. To construct such a narrative, genealogy has to be used as well. Once archaelogy has described the local discursivities, genealogy should be used as a tactic that plays the contents that archaelogy has brought to the surface off against unitary historical claims that has tried to filter them off, organize them into a hierarchy.

CJD

Very interesting discussion, folks. It's good to be confronted with some of the things we take for granted in our approaches to biblical criticism, etc. One thing, kenaz, if I understand you correctly, are you saying that "the realist position is not beyond salvaging, if he furthers his analysis beyond empiricism" [thus becoming an anti-realist]?

How can one go "intuitive," or change one's approach from induction to deduction, without giving ground to the anti-realist position?

Semi-non-foundationalist fool that I am, I doubt one can be a realist in science and an anti-realist in history (when all of us experience only momentary balances of synchronicity!).

If we weren't at iidb, my first response would be that it is the opposite of nominalism, in that metaphysical realism views "universals" to be independent apart from the mind that perceives them (e.g. Aquinas, et al.).

Regards,

CJD