Historical sciences are rooted in a rich array of data that, while not replicable, are valid as sources of information.

What is history?
 Consists of empirical components (records auditory, visual, etc) and explanatory components (interpretations of the empirical components to make sense of them).  Thus, history is the interpretive study of the events of the human past.

Can history be objective?
 Historians strive to provide narrative interpretations that are closer to more of the empirical components than previous narratives.

 Objective could refer to the correspondence between a historical narrative and the events that are described.  However, this is unlikely.  Even photographers could have used a different angle on a picture.

 Objective could refer to the attempt to present all sides of an issue including providing a fair account of a perspective with which the writer disagrees.  However, there may be many true histories that disagree on details.  Historians disagree on the causes of the civil war.

The data of History

Experimentation depends upon quantification, replicability, and the identification of a few explanatory causes.

However, the data of history are not open to replication.  Time is directional and historical events cannot be repeated.  Moreover, not all of the information needed as evidence for establishing historical accounts may have been preserved or are available.   So, how can we know whether an historical account is valid and not just a subjective story?
 
Although historians use fragments to reconstruct the past, the validity of the reconstructions may be judged according to several evaluative criteria:

    1.  Details of the description - The account must be highly detailed in its description.  Too vague or general an account and it will be judged unlikely to be useful or valid.
 
     2.  Consistency of patterns in the account especially from convergent sources (external consistency).  The account must have a consistent pattern that matches information from other sources not originally incorporated into the account.  The account also must exhibit internal consistency.

    3.  Accuracy of the account to the details of the evidence incorporated.  If others examine the evidence and spot an inaccuracy, then the entire account is suspect.

    4.  Validity of the evidence.  There must be some independent evidence for the validity of some bit of evidence.  Evidence from only a single source is not considered valid.  A famous person statement about what influenced him or her would be suspect unless there was some other source supporting this statement.

    5.  The account must conform to standard rules of reasoning (internal Consistency).

    6.  Ability to account for all of the apparently relevant information.

 Even when some historical account passes all these criteria, it is only accepted provisionally.  Additional evidence or an account that covers a greater scope of evidence will supersede any account.  In this manner, historical accounts are much like scientific theories that depend upon their evidence for acceptance.

The provisional acceptance of an historical account is based on its greater scope and more support from converging sources than competing accounts.

An accepted account can be overturned either when a more complete account is offered or when new evidence come to light that is inconsistent with the accepted account.

Historical data can be lost or suppressed (Freud) or distorted in translation.  Autobiographical or even biographical data can be self-serving.   Historians always search for corroborating evidence from other sources.

Historical data only appear to be paradoxical.  Historians obtain evidence demonstrating the weaknesses of previous or current accounts.  Reconstructions, like scientific theories, change with more evidence.  Both history and science are dynamic.

Recently, this notion of history has been challenged by a "post-modern" or "deconstructionist" notion. "Post-modern" historians’ express four theses about history (these are completely the opposite of typical historians' theses):

1. "The purpose of researching history is not to gain knowledge about the past but to satisfy the needs of the present".
2. "History is something we make rather than something we learn".
3. "What is 'true' depends on who is speaking to whom and in what context".
4. "The belief that there are 'facts' about history is merely on ideological position among several".

Bauerline (2000) argues that in most humanities departments across the Anglo-American world "truth" is treated as nothing but a claim, a compliment interested people pay to their own perspectives.  Also, a "fact" is an interpretation constructed into a presumption.  "Facts" are presumed to form the backbone of imperialist ventures and racist beliefs and maintain the oppressive activities of the power structure.  For example, for over 450 years, historians told the story of Cortes destruction of the ancient Aztec civilizations of Mexico as the triumph of Christianity over paganism and Enlightenment over savagery.

    Contemporary historians are less culturally ignorant, they are sensitive to difference - "the other".

In contrast to the "post-modern" notion, empirical study demands that evidence be dissociated from the conditions of its discovery.  The identity of the discoverer should play no role in the validity of the evidence.

Windschuttle (2000) argues that "history aims to record the truth about what happened in the past; second, it aims to build a body of knowledge about the past;  third, it aims to study the past through a disciplined methodology …." (p. 202). History must work with documentary evidence, submitted for peer review.

"Othereness-thinking" maintains the opposite: evidence is always conditioned by the persons wielding it, by their values, politics, and interests.

Instead of different versions of an event being judged for their adherence to facts so that a synthesis might winnow the truth from each, history becomes, in post-modern otherness-thinking, a competition of rival stories, favored only for their representation of an identity.

Otherness-thinking argues that to record the truth is to pretend that a partial interpretation is a pure rendition of things.  To build a body of knowledge is to judge, organize, and administer interpretations, which draw boundaries and make exclusions.  To sustain a disciplined methodology is to rule out innovative methods and subject matters.  The history of historical accounts shows that historians have served as apologists for tyranny, lackeys for rulers, who hide their allegiances behind a spurious idiom of objectivity.

However, that historians have acted as spin doctors does not invalidate history or subvert objectivity.  Indeed, these notions enable us to rebuke spin-doctors as bad historians.

It is important to point out that historians have been coerced by political pressures, swayed by racial and sexual biases, and indoctrinated into social attitudes.  However, without an appeal to the empirical protocols of research, there is no objective standard by which to measure and identify bad history.

When insisting on the political nature of historical study, the otherness-thinkers must include themselves in their indictment of historians.  They certainly are not superior in their archival research or their handling of the evidence.  These new historians remove disciplinary constraints from inquiry, encourage scholars to play fast and loose with documentary evidence, and deny peer review criteria.

Once historical treatises are no longer judged by empirical standards, only fashion, personalities, and politics is left.  Verification, fact-checking, archival digging, and peer-review on empirical grounds kept researchers honest, forcing them to slog through a mass of historical material judiciousness. The "new historians" dress up an easier way with a morality of other awareness.

Consider “Forced into glory” by L. Bennett Jr. (2000) Chicago: Johnson Publishing Co.  (Reviewed in NY Times Book Review 8/27/00 by J.M. McPherson Author of “Drawn with a sword: Reflections on the American civil war” and “For cause and comrades: Why men fought in the civil war”.)

Bennett believes that Lincoln was a white supremacist.  Argued Lincoln supported segregation in the north, only reluctantly embraced Emancipation after congress enacted it (halfway through the civil war), and persisted in his belief that “deportation” of blacks was the best solution for race problems.
In statements Lincoln supported “voluntary emigration and without expense to themselves”.  Lincoln told a delegation of black leaders in 1862 “your race are suffering , in my judgment, the greatest wrong inflicted on any people.  The legacy of that wrong in the form of discrimination would long prevent their being placed on an equality with the white race”.   Bennett labels that racial cleansing as in Nazi Germany and in Bosnia.

McPherson criticized Bennett for selecting evidence, suppressing contradictory evidence, taking evidence out of context, especially the cultural and political climate that constrained Lincoln’s options.

What’s correct?

 Lincoln shared the racial prejudices of his time and place.  He supported colonizing blacks abroad (but retreated from this policy in 1862 and created a policy of assimilating 4 M freed slaves as equal citizens).  Lincoln did lag behind abolitionists in supporting Emancipation and in enlisting black soldiers.

What’s distorted in interpretation?

After the Sioux uprising in Minnesota in 1862 that killed hundreds of settlers, Lincoln did approve “one of the largest mass executions in military history” – the hanging of 38 Indians.  However, the military court sentenced 303 Sioux to death and Lincoln pardoned or commuted the sentences of 265 – the largest act of executive clemency in American history.

Selective quotation.

 Citing a letter Lincoln wrote in 1855 to abolitionist Owen Lovejoy, Bennett argues that Lincoln did not oppose the anti-immigrant “Know-Nothing Party” because “they are mostly my old political and personal friends”.  However, Bennett fails include quote that Lincoln anticipated “the painful necessity of my taking an open stand against them.  Of their principles I think little better than I do of those of the slavery extentionists”.
 Because the American constitution prohibited interference with slavery in states where it existed, Lincoln and others focused on the question of slavery in the territories, where they insisted that Congress had the constitutional power to ban it.

 In an 1860 letter to Alexander Stephens (who later became V.P. of the Confederacy), Bennett quotes Lincoln “Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly, or indirectly, interfere with their slaves? There is no cause for such fears.”
But Bennett leaves out “I suppose that this is not the case.  You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted.  That I suppose is the rub.”

 Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was based on the president’s war powers as commander in chief.  After the war, the proclamation ceased to have legal force and Lincoln won re-election (1864) based on endorsing a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery.

 Lincoln was not a radical abolitionist but he did consider slavery morally wrong and seized every legal opportunity to move against it.  Was Abraham Lincoln no better than Adolf Hitler?  In 1863 black activist Frederick Douglas visited Lincoln and praised the president’s “entire freedom from popular prejudice against the colored race”.
 
History, Censorship, and Free Speech

 The survivors of the Holocaust are likely to have distorted memories and the “deniers” have identified some things that need further research.

The actual experience of an event fades but memories grow with each recollection because the memory must be reconstructed when succeeding events, the statements of others, and suggestions can get incorporated into the memory.

 Eyewitness testimony is faulty!  The distortions increase with time.

 Shermer – “government should never, under any conditions, limit the speech of anyone anytime, private organizations should also have the freedom to restrict the speech of anyone anytime within their own institution”.

Once a claim is in the public consciousness, it should be analyzed.

Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened, and Why Do They Say It?

How We Know the Holocaust Happened?

 In history there is not immutable canon of truth.  Holocaust historians are constantly debating the major and minor points of the Holocaust.

However, The deniers deny:

1. Intentional genocide based upon race,
2. Denial of the programmatic use of gas chambers and crematoria for mass murder,
3. Denial of the killing of 5-6 million jews.

The Methods used by those denying the Holocaust

Concentrate on opponents’ weak points without specifying anything definitive about their own position

Exploit errors made by scholars (e.g., human soap, and number killed at Auschwitz)

Use quotes out of context to give appearance of support for your position

Confuse debate within a field of inquiry for a dispute about the existence of the field itself

Emphasize what is not known and ignore what is known.

Convergence of Evidence
Any argument requires the use of evidence from several sources that corroborates the conclusions.  Hence, minor inconsistencies or errors cannot invalidate the argument.

Deniers ignore the convergence of evidence and select only the information that suits their theory.

Revision in history is the modification of an explanation based on new evidence or a new interpretation of old evidence that incorporates previous ignored evidence.

Revision should not be based on political ideology, religious conviction, or other human emotions.

Eventually the collective science of history separates emotional chaff from factual wheat.

Rationalization.
Post-hoc rationalization or after-the-fact reasoning is used to justify contrary evidence.  The historian need not disprove each post-hoc rationalization generated by pernicious nonsense.

Intentionality.
Adolf Hitler.
Ausrotten Among the Nazi Elite.
The Einsatzgruppen.

The Intentionalist-Functionalist Controversy
Intentionalist historians argue that Hitler intended the mass extermination of the Jews, that Nazi policy in the 1930s was programmed toward that end, that the invasion of Russia and the quest for Lebensraum were linked to the Final Solution of the Jewish question.
Functionalist historians argue for an original plan of expulsion but that the failing war effort resulted in the Final Solution.

History’s pathways are determined by the functions of any given moment interacting with the intentions that came before.

A. Gas Chambers and Crematoria.
B. How Many Jews Died?
C. Conspiracies.
The Nazis killed millions of homosexuals, mentally and physically retarded people, political prisoners, and Russians and Poles.
D. Moral Equivalency.
Genocide is a common characteristic of war.

Racism and Science.

A. The End of Race.
Cavalli-Sforza, et al. demonstrates that the concept of race has failed to obtain any scientific consensus because of the gradual variation in human existence.

Traditional popular racial categories, based on skin color, hair color and form, facial traits are superficial differences related mostly to climate and perhaps sexual selection.

Consequently, the number of human races varies between three and sixty depending on the individual doing the categorizing.

European populations are a hybrid of 65% Asian and 35% African Genes.

The differences among groups are smaller than the differences within groups.

B. The End of Racism.
Kinsey – “…the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separate pigeonholes.  The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects” (p. 249).

Variation and uniqueness are the norm.