On 28 Sep 98, at 9:52, Joan A. Barcelo wrote:
> This is only to correct one of my points: we can study past activities,
> and how people acted in the past, but we cannot "understand" (in the
> collingwood sense of the word), because there is not any information
> about "intention".
I'm not sure that Collingwood would have agreed with this. My
reading from _The idea of history_ is that he was more positively
inclined toward what he called 'unwritten sources' (like potsherds).
More importantly, he perceived historical analysis as the critical
and imaginative examination of sources, any of which (written or
unwritten) might or might not be subject to distortion. "For any
source may be tainted: this writer prejudiced, that misinformed;
this inscription misread by a bad epigraphist, that blundered by a
careless stonemason; this potsherd placed out of its context by an
incompetent investigator, that by a blameless rabbit." (p. 277). I
don't think that evidence of intentionality is a priori lost when
materials enter the archaeological record, any more than I think
that it is a priori lost when reflected through the preconceptions and
world-views of producers of the historical record.
I don't agree with Collingwood on the blamelessness of rabbits,
though.
Scott
________________________________________________
Scott MacEachern
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bowdoin College
7000 College Station
Brunswick, ME 04011 USA [log in to unmask]
Now that's as plain as plain can be/To this conclusion we agree--
When every one is somebodee/Then no one's anybody!
William S. Gilbert, _The Gondoliers_
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