 |
 |
Dear Klaus, While I'm still working on a response to your earlier post, it is possible to answer this (from my view) swiftly. The comment on epistemological baggage has to do with your assertion that I am weighed down with epistemological baggage, possibly unacknowledged, that makes my view unworkable. The epistemological baggage I refer to here is not the act of sorting. It is the fact that historians share a few notions in common with my epistemology: that something happened in a world external to the observer, that this happened whether observed or not, and that it is possible to attempt to represent it. Even knowing that this representation is imperfect, it is not fiction. Fiction is the purposeful art of representing an idea that we believe to be false or where we believe the truth of representation to be irrelevant. One quality of fiction is that we acknowledge as fiction. Here is the definition from Merriam-Webster's (1993: 432). I choose it to illustrate my meaning, and the meanings that the word "fiction" commonly describes: "1 a : something invented by the imagination or feigned; specifically : an invented story b : fictitious literature (as novels or short stories) 2 a : an assumption of a possibility as a fact irrespective of the question of its truth <a legal fiction> b : a useful illusion or pretense 3 : the action of feigning or of creating with the imagination." This is not what historians do. If an historian writes fiction without knowing that his work is fictional, he or she is wrong, mistaken, or incorrect. If an historian writes fiction knowingly while presenting it as history, he or she is a liar. There is also the case in which a scholar who practices history may also write fiction. Alan Lightman, Adjunct Professor of Humanities, Creative Writing, and Physics at MIT, does both. Lightman's history is history (f.ex., Lightman 2005a) while the fiction is fiction (f.ex. Lightman 1992, 1994). Lightman also writes essays that are neither fiction nor history, but his representation of his own views (f.ex. Lightman 2005b). If I were to believe -- which I do not -- that history is fiction and fiction is fiction while people have the right to speak for themselves in their own voice, I'd have to ask whether Lightman's essays are also fiction. If I were to believe -- which I do not -- that all writing is fiction, I assume the essays are also fiction. But if that were to be true, why would Lightman's idea of his own views be any better than anyone else's ideas about what Lightman thinks? This is the kind of odd trap that arises with the claim that history is fiction or that all writing is fiction while at the same time claiming that people know their own minds. Unless they know what they think until they write their thoughts, at which time their thoughts become fiction. That's what I mean when I suggest that your assertions are also weighted with epistemological baggage, and I'd say -- my view, not yours -- that this positions constitutes an unacknowledged metaphysics. The main point remains that history is not fiction, nor is it intended to be. This distinction has real consequences. In Lorenzo Valla (1922 [1440]) used historical and philological research to demonstrate that the so-called Donation of Constantine was a much later forgery of a document purported to be the fourth-century will of Roman emperor Constantine I. The forgery "gave" both temporal and spiritual rule over the empire to the Pope. It was used to create an effective theocracy, with the papacy holding power over all temporal rulers whatsoever. At a time when other methods of dating were impossible, only historical and philological methods allowed Valla's findings. One consequence of this was a first, early step in the long struggle of humanity toward democracy and self-rule from theocracy and even monarchy. Victor mentioned the Holocaust. If we are to consider history as fiction, what are we to make of the painstaking use of German sources in Hilberg's (2003 [1961]) account of the evidence for the Holocaust at a time when people still did not understand the enormity of what happened. Or perhaps I should wonder what "really" happened. Is it possible that the documentary films of dead bodies stacked like autumn leaves in the liberated death camps were artful reconstructions somehow selected to represent an enormous event that never took place, much as some assert the films of the moon landing to have been? I do not suggest that you deny this historical event, but I suggest that your epistemology leaves an opening for those who do. And then there are those who do not exactly deny the Holocaust, but minimize its extent, as though, well, yes a few hundred or a few thousand or possibly a hundred thousand Jews, Gypsies, communists, homosexuals and others were exterminated in the death factories, but not millions. Historical evidence is certainly a fiction to them. Hannah Arendt, who was a sharp critic of Hilbeerg's work, nevertheless praised his careful accumulation and mastery of evidence. I do understand that "SORTING things out means rearranging things, selecting what fits, omitting what doesn't, putting things into plausible categories, filling in gaps, creating narratives from texts and artifacts that survived the time between an event that may have occurred in the past and the time of writing a history of it." I acknowledge that writing history is a creative enterprise. So is writing mathematics, physics, or philosophy -- but these are not fiction. Your concluding "if" takes the form of an incorrect syllogism: "if fiction is created, composed, sorted out and rearranged for others to make sense of, as i suggested, history is fiction with the claim that it is based on what happened." It is true that fiction is "created, composed, sorted out and rearranged for others to make sense of." It is false that everything "created, composed, sorted out and rearranged for others to make sense of" is fiction. That's like saying, "if grass is green and my cousin's car is green, my cousin's car is grass." Or, as John Z. Langrish (2000) used this kind of false syllogism in the title of a memorable article in which he noted that even though a fork is made of steel and a battleship made of steel, a fork is not a battleship. Sharing a common property does not make fiction and history the same thing. Neither does sharing that same property make history a science in the sense that physics is a science. Neither does it make history the same as mathematics even though both use artfully arranged sets of numbers -- one represents reality or tries to, while the other uses numbers of represent ideas. (And then there is the debate on whether the number of mathematics are real.) Sorting things out has consequences. I know this and respect the serious art of understanding the issues and consequences involved. This general field of study lies at the heart of most liberal arts, humanities, and sciences. Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star (2000) wrote a nice book on these issues. Closer to home, I've considered the issue of sorting things out in relation to theory construction (Friedman 2002, 2003). You've said on several occasions that the idea of theory is laden with epistemological baggage, but the enterprise of theory development continues to interest me. As with history, theory entails creating, composing, sorting out and arranging ideas and information for others to make sense of. None of this is fiction, either. The other day, you wrote that there can be better fictions and worse. This may be true, but the standards by which we judge fiction are different to the standards that allow us to judge history or design. For that matter, I'd guess that even a description of design or design activity would become fiction in your account by virtue of the properties that any description would have to share with any other. One would assume that a report on the likelihood and consequences of global warming occupy the same territory. If all history and all the world we know is fiction, I can't see how we would sort better from worse, more responsible from less, or that which we ought to do from anything else. Perhaps like fiction or like a blockbuster disaster movie, we'd choose among alternatives based on action, drama, or body count. I do not believe that any observer can stand outside himself to observe a real world that lies outside our nervous system. I do believe that a real world exists, over against the observer, and that responsible observers try to understand that world and the people in it. That's one task of historiography. I think that's the point Victor tried to make. (If I'm mistaken, Victor, or if I'm missing some nuance that I ought not to overlook, please correct me.) Good historical writing is a creative act. It requires composition, sorting, and arrangement. Historians intend that others should make sense of the narratives and accounts they put forward. They do not intend their writing to be fiction. Writing history has a different goal and serves a different purpose. Yours, Ken -- References Bowker, Geoffrey C., and Susan Leigh Star. 2000. Sorting Things Out. Classification and Its Consequences. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. Friedman, Ken. 2002. "Theory Construction in Design Research. Criteria, Approaches, and Methods." In Common Ground. Proceedings of the Design Research Society International Conference at Brunel University, September 5-7, 2002. David Durling and John Shackleton, Editors. Stoke on Trent, UK: Staffordshire University Press, 388-414. Friedman, Ken. 2003. "Theory construction in design research: criteria: approaches, and methods." Design Studies, 24 (2003), 507-522. Hilberg, Raul. 2003 (1961). The Destruction of the European Jews. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hilberg, Raul. 1996. The Politics of Memory: The Journey of a Holocaust Historian. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. Langrish, John. 2000. "Not Everything Made of Steel is a Battleship." Doctoral Education in Design: Foundations for the Future. David Durling and Ken Friedman, Editors. Staffordshire, UK: Staffordshire University Press. Lightman, Alan. 1992. Einstein's Dreams. New York: Pantheon Books. Lightman, Alan. 1994. Good Benito. New York: Random House. Lightman, Alan. 2005a. The Discoveries: Great Breakthroughs in 20th-Century Science, Including the Original Papers. New York: Pantheon Books. Lightman, Alan. 2005b. A Sense of the Mysterious: Science and the Human Spirit. New York: Pantheon Books. Merriam-Webster, Inc. 1993. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. Tenth edition. Springfield, Massachusetts. Valla, Lorenzo. 1922. Discourse on the Forgery of the Alleged Donation of Constantine. Translated with an introduction by Christopher B. Coleman. New Haven: Yale University Press. -- Klaus Krippendorff wrote: you are saying: "one kind of epistemological baggage would be the notion that we cannot sort out reasonably well that some things have happened, even though we did not see them or experience them personally. That's what historians do -- imperfectly, as Victor notes, but not unreasonably" i don't think there is an epistemological baggage involved when historians try to SORT out REASONABLY WELL what happened. what you don't seem to get is that SORTING things out means rearranging things, selecting what fits, omitting what doesn't, putting things into plausible categories, filling in gaps, creating narratives from texts and artifacts that survived the time between an event that may have occurred in the past and the time of writing a history of it. surely, as i suggested earlier, historians do not record the past the way video cameras would. they make it interesting, relevant, and far shorter to read than what they describe. good history is a creative enterprise as every historian will readily agree. (bad historians are not particularly creative) yes, in composing their narratives, historians are REASONABLE, employ REASONS for their claims. plausibility is an important criterion for all stories. perhaps more important is coherence. coherence has nothing to do with representational truth but much with the claim that things hang together logically, are REASONABLE, can withstand critical examination by competing historians who would dismiss a history if they contained contradictions. if fiction is created, composed, sorted out and rearranged for others to make sense of, as i suggested, history is fiction with the claim that it is based on what happened. their representational truth is not accessible.