Truth in Historical Interpretation

Suzanne Lipscomb writes about historians and the interpretation of the the facts of history in History Today:

History is debate, history is discussion, history is a conversation. Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote in 1957, ‘history that is not controversial is dead history’. While some of this controversy comes from the pronouncements of historians as public intellectuals addressing the present day, much of it comes from them arguing with each other. The collective noun for historians is – honestly – an ‘argumentation’.

This is not in contradiction to saying that historians aim at truth. What sort of truth we might achieve is debatable. Justin Champion, in writing about what historians are for, states that ‘historical claims to truth are aesthetic and ethical, rather than empirical and objective’. Peter Novick argued that historians make up stories and ‘make no greater (but also no lesser) truth claims than poets or painters’. I think this is to go too far. The past did exist, the events of history did happen. Our job as historians is to get at them as best as possible, on the basis of the evidence we have, in a way that is epistemic: that fits with the facts we can establish. It is this forensic, interrogatory process that is the joy of being an historian.

Yet the truth is, if you take a group of historians working on the same problem, writing at different times and in different places – even if they all use their evidence in a scrupulous, honest, critical and informed way – the conclusions they reach may differ. This is because we are all different people; our context, our formation, our insights are different and the histories we write are personal. If it were not so, there would be little point training up more students to be historians.

This is still a pursuit of truth.

Read the rest here. In another blog post, she offers some good advice for making sure that the facts historians use for their interpretative narratives are correct:

I thought I would presumptuously suggest a Code of Conduct for how historians should use evidence:

• Use evidence to support your interpretation and seek to understand that evidence correctly.
• Do not wilfully present evidence out of context, especially not in such a way that the lack of context will render the meaning of the evidence different, unclear or manipulable.
• Do not cite evidence from sources that you elsewhere discount.
• At best, do not waste a reader’s time on unsubstantiated sources.
• At least flag up evidence that is drawn from such sources; do not use it silently.
• Triangulate; search ardently for evidence that might undermine, as well as corroborate, your hypothesis.
• Avoid assumption creep: do not allow assertions to move from ‘possibly’ to ‘probably’ to ‘definitely’; do not build more elaborate layers of interpretation on a foundation that is rocky.
• Do not rely on the secondary assertions of other historians; ad fontes! Go back to the original sources.
• Guard against confirmation bias; interrogate the ‘facts’ anew and bring a fresh analysis to them; do not mould the facts to your interpretation.
• Root out and resolve any internal inconsistencies in your argument.
• Cite sources so that they can be traced, with page numbers, archival call numbers and publication details.

"A distinct, Catholic approach to history"

Kevin Jones of the Catholic News Agency interviewed the authors of a new book about writing narrative history from a Catholic perspective:

Front Royal, Va., Oct 17, 2014 / 03:41 pm (CNA).- The study of history is an opportunity to unite faith and reason and to recover a distinctly Catholic perspective that sees God acting in the past, present and future, the authors of a new book say.

“From its earliest centuries, the Church understood itself as possessing not simply a faith with a history, but a historical faith,” Christendom College history professor Christopher Shannon told CNA Oct. 13.

“That is, Church Fathers such as Eusebius and Augustine understood God as speaking to his people through history, and not simply Church history proper. The rise and fall of nations were to be understood in terms of God calling his people to himself.”

Shannon is the co-author of “The Past as Pilgrimage: Narrative, Tradition, and the Renewal of Catholic History,” from Christendom Press. Through the book, he and Christopher Blum – a history and philosophy professor at the Augustine Institute in Denver – aim to cultivate the awareness of “a distinct, Catholic approach to history” among both professional historians and the general reading public.

“Catholic historians, like non-Catholic historians, use reason to discern facts and establish relations of causality in history, but they also draw on their faith to discern the meaning and significance of events,” Shannon said.

Blum explained that “The Past as Pilgrimage” aims to aid “the recovery of Christian memory” that Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis have called for.

The scholar said that Catholic approaches tend to avoid a “critical” history that debunks ideas or a “scientific” history that aims to be “encyclopedic or technical.”

Rather, Catholic forms of history should be “reverent” and seek to be “challenging and meditative.” Blum said the exemplars of this approach to history include Sts. Athanasius, Augustine and Gregory the Great, as well as Blessed John Henry Newman.

Read the rest of the interview there. About the book, from Christendom Press (AmP Publishers Group):

In The Past as Pilgrimage: Narrative, Tradition, and the Renewal of Catholic History, Catholic historians Shannon and Blum challenge the secular bias currently prevalent among professional historians, and argue for the compatibility of faith and reason in the study of the past. Inspired by the understanding of tradition developed in the work of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, the authors first critically examine both the internal contradictions and the enduring faith commitments of secular objectivity, then proceed to explore various traditions of Catholic historical thinking capable of synthesizing the technical advances of modern history with distinctly Catholic historical narratives. Their argument seeks to foster a conversation about the ways in which Catholic historians can integrate their faith traditions into their professional work while still remaining open to and engaged with the best of contemporary, non-Catholic thinking and writing about history.

Misquoting Blessed John Henry Newman, Example #2

I mentioned the dangers of taking a sentence or two of Newman's out of context last week, citing the example of the "live is to change" quote. On Saturday, I found this example, in which the author of an article not only takes a quotation from Newman out of context, but also, because he uses a secondary source (not Newman's letters, collected so meticulously by Oxford University Press in 22 volumes) repeats an error from that secondary source. The citation is used in the context of a review of a book about Intelligent Design, and discovering the context of the quotation includes finding out what the ellipsis left out.

Here is the quotation:

In the end, Darwin’s Doubt boils down to a fundamentally weak argument — the argument from personal incredulity about the origin and evolution of life on earth. As John Henry Newman wrote in 1872: “I have not insisted on the argument from design. . . . To tell the truth, though I should not wish to preach on the subject, for 40 years I have been unable to see the logical force of the argument myself. I believe in design because I believe in God; not in a God because I see design.”

Here are the first problems--chronology and sourcing--which the author of this article discovers:

I’d now like to pass to what Mr. Farrell has to say about John Henry Newman (who was later made a Cardinal) [and is now a Blessed of the Catholic Church]. His first error is one of chronology: Newman did not write the words quoted by Farrell in 1872, but in a letter to a Mr. Brownlow, dated April 13, 1870, quoted in Volume 2, Chapter 28 of Wilfrid Ward’s Life of Cardinal Newman. Why does the date matter? Actually, it’s quite informative. It is highly unlikely that two authors would independently make the same idiosyncratic error in their writings. Thus when I discover that Professor Michael Ruse, in an article he wrote in 2007, makes exactly the same error in chronology – in his article, Ruse refers to “a letter written in 1872″ by Newman, about “his seminal philosophical work, A Grammar of Assent,” and I can find no other source on the Internet making a similar mistake – I am forced to conclude that Farrell copied his information directly from Ruse’s article, without bothering to check his sources. (I hope Mr. Farrell will not accuse me of resorting to an “argument from personal incredulity” in making this inference.) But there’s more. Mr. Farrell’s quote from Newman’s contains an ellipsis … and that got me wondering what he’d left out.

Then the author, Vincent Torley, finds the entire letter and cites it:

‘The Oratory: April 13th, 1870.
‘My dear Brownlow, — It is very pleasant to me to hear what you say about my new book—which has given me great anxiety. I have spoken of the argument for the being of a God from the visible Creation at page 70 paragraph 1. “Order implies purpose”;. I have not insisted on the argument from design, because I am writing for the 19th Century, by which, as represented by its philosophers, design is not admitted as proved. And to tell the truth, though I should not wish to preach on the subject, for 40 years I have been unable to see the logical force of the argument myself. I believe in design because I believe in God; not in a God because I see design. You will say that the 19th Century does not believe in conscience either — true — but then it does not believe in a God at all. Something I must assume, and in assuming conscience I assume what is least to assume, and what most will admit. Half the world knows nothing of the argument from design — and, when you have got it, you do not prove by it the moral attributes of God — except very faintly. Design teaches me power, skill, and goodness, not sanctity, not mercy, not a future judgment, which three are of the essence of religion.’ (Emphases mine – VJT.)

Now, I'm not ready to turn this blog over to a discussion of Intelligent Design, but I am ready to note that it's so dangerous not to check sources and try to go back to the original source, especially when using secondary sources. Or, as Mr. Torley so succinctly states:

If there is a moral to be drawn from the above, it is this: never quote from eminent people without checking what they actually had to say.

Writing with Pen and Paper

Paul Theroux writes in The Wall Street Journal:

Writing by hand is part of my creative process. The speed at which I write with a pen seems to be the speed at which my imagination finds the best forms of words. A long-ago introduction to the Paris Review Interviews said that authors spoke of pens and rewriting with such passion that it seemed that "writing is one of the plastic arts." I agree with this metaphor of sculpting. I was gratified to read in a Newsweek piece about intelligence last January, that "brain scans show that handwriting engages more sections of the brain than typing" and "it's easier to remember something once you've written it down on paper."

"To think he wrote it all with a feather!" What Sam Goldwyn reportedly said of Shakespeare's works is not as silly as it sounds. Henry James wrote with a quill pen too, until he hurt his arm, and with dictation his style changed. I have seen examples of many writers' handwriting: Thoreau's slanting script (sometimes written with a pencil he had made himself), Naipaul's precision, always in black ink. Henry Miller's handwriting was a model of clarity; so was Anthony Burgess's—and both were also speedy typists.

I write on paper with pen and ink, too. Theroux comments that he uses Lamy pens and a certain paper. I don't require special paper! I write my drafts on paper and then edit while I type. And then I have to print out my work to proofread and edit it again. If I am editing for word count, I will do that with word processing, but otherwise I cannot do edits or proofreading on the computer.

What tools do you use while writing?

What are You Working on this Weekend?

I have two projects to work on this weekend, in addition to yard work, housework, shopping, and walking two demanding terriers! I'm working on a more expanded article on Blessed John Henry Newman and Conscience's rights and responsibilities, and an article to provide context for the two historical movies out now: one on the persecution of Catholics in 20th century Mexico and the other on the genocide of the Vendee during the French Revolution.

I'll let you know when they appear in print or on-line. Also, I hope you have a subscription to OSV's The Catholic Answer Magazine, because I am going to have an article in the next issue (May/June) on the two types of saints in the Catholic Church--Martyrs and Confessors!

I am also thinking of joining this project in April, promoted by the Catholic Writers Guild, 30K for Christ, to write 30,000 words in April!

So what are you working on this weekend?

Popular History and Its Dangers

I have been mulling over this review essay by Felipe Fernandez-Arnesto from the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago. The author of the essay is a fine historian and academic and he is actually rather gentle in his dismantling of four amateur historians' books about Columbus and the Age of Exploration. But he wrote some things I've been wondering about:

History is the people's discipline—the only academic subject that demands no special professional training. Some of my favorite history books are by lawyers, journalists, scientists and nuns. To write well about history you do not need a Ph.D., just a few rare but accessible qualities: insatiable curiosity, critical intellect, disciplined imagination, indefatigability in the pursuit of truth and a slightly weird vocation for trying to get to know dead people by studying the sources they have left us. To write well about anything, of course, you also have to follow the advice that every writing course gives: Write about what you know. . . .

I have studied and continue to study the history of the English Reformation, so I am writing about what I know. I think that I do have the qualities Fernandez-Arnesto mentions: curiosity, critical thinking skills, imagination, pursuit of truth, and weirdness. So I didn't think I was too much in trouble there. But later in the article, after he has pointed out many of the four authors' errors, he focused on some of the causes of their trouble: deficiencies in using primary sources and particularly, the lack of  linguistic ability.

To some extent, scholars may have encouraged these amateurs' imprudence by publishing English translations of many of the sources. Translated sources attract errors just as translated scriptures foment heresies, and when the inexperienced attempt their own translations, the results can be even worse. Mr. Bergreen, Mr. Cliff, Mr. Hunter and Ms. Delaney do not have the linguistic skills to master the literature on their own. They all seem to be illiterate in Latin and imperfectly assured in handling the sources in Romance languages. In Mr. Hunter's case the deficiency is fatal, as his grounds for linking Cabot and Columbus rest largely on a glaring mistranslation, which warps a difficult but perfectly intelligible and well-known document, in which a Spanish ambassador in England compared the two explorers. Mr. Hunter mistakes a neuter pronoun for a masculine one, making the ambassador call Cabot the man "from the Indies," whereas the text really refers to "the business of the Indies." . . .

Now my Latin is rusty, except for liturgical Latin which has been revived by our attendance at Masses in the Extraordinary Form almost every Sunday. Once when I was in graduate school, a great professor taught a class on Dostoevsky. We read all his great works and some of his diary and short stories. He almost did not teach the course because he could not read the originals in Russian! He could read the French translations, however, and told me that all that would be required for doctorate level study of Dostoevsky would be French and German--one could get by and be able to keep up on the scholarship with those two languages. By now, my facility with French is weaker, although I can understand it when I read it--but I cannot translate it--and I have never studied German. So I would fail the author's test and could find myself in trouble.

I could multiply the dispiriting litany of errors, but it is more interesting to try to understand what drives these writers to parade their inadequacies in the marketplace. It is tempting to blame postmodernism, which has blurred the difference between drivel and truth; or the popularity of television-history, where no standards of veracity or scholarship apply; or the temptations aroused by vulgar sensationalists, who have made fortunes by proclaiming the peripeties of the Holy Grail and "proving" that the medieval Chinese discovered Rhode Island. I suspect, however, that the very virtues of my discipline are responsible for the vices of the writers who abuse it. Because history is the people's discipline, books about it are relatively salable—invitingly so, to indolent cupidity. History's accessibility to non-specialists makes it seem dangerously, delusively easy.

Academic historians tend to welcome recruits from other ranks, like owls nurturing cuckoos, and applaud the intrusions of neophytes with a glee that physicians, say, would never show for faith-healers or snake-oil salesmen. I am afraid it is time for historians to wipe the smiles from our jaws and start biting back. If escape from the poverty of your own imagination is your reason for exploiting the stories history offers, or if you are taking refuge from another discipline in the belief that history is easy, without bothering to do the basic work, you will deserve to fail.

I certainly don't think that history is easy--I think it is hard to write about the past because I have to balance the details of the facts with their relevance and interpretation. And all the while, I try to make it interesting and let the story shine through so it's not boring. At the same, I don't want to sensationalize or over-interpret. "Indolent cupidity"--if I desired wealth from writing, I certainly have failed.

"Parade their inadequacies": that phrase is scary to any writer who chooses to publish on a blog, in a magazine, or a book on the shelf (and in the e-reader device). It takes a mixture of chutzpah and humility to write and publish. Fortunately for me, I found myself standing on the shoulders of giants like Eamon Duffy, Blessed John Henry Newman, Father John Lingard and even Alister McGrath, who helped me confirm my interpretation of the English Reformation. When I read his book on the Protestant Reformation, Christianity's Dangerous Idea, I was exceptionally pleased to see that he confirmed my views about Henry VIII's political reformation, the legislative compromise of the Elizabethan religiouis settlement, and even some of my thoughts on the continuing Stuart and Puritan manipulation of religion in the established church. I don't think that I have written drivel.



Brandy as a puppy



Professor Fernandez-Arnesto is particularly correct about the television history which irritates me so much that my little dog Brandy gets scared when I react to a show on the historical Jesus or the Crusades, or anything on Church History. The way the programs are structured to avoid getting to the truth, or even, once the truth has been revealed, casting doubt upon the truth--it upsets me so! Brandy thinks I'm mad at her, so I quickly change the channel, calm down, and tell her she's a good dog. She is really, when she isn't stealing socks.

Please let me know what you think about reading or writing popular history, dear readers.