Posted: May 07, 2015 11:32 am
There is a thread, not in this section (History) , but with 'Historical' in the title. It's not hard to guess which thread I'm alluding to! I want to stay well away from that topic. But I'm interested in people's opinions on a question which sometimes gets touched on there. Namely, what is it we are doing when we ask, and try to give answers, about ancient history. We aren't doing science (though we might do scientific tests on artifacts, for example) and we aren't trying to prove something (as we might try to prove a case beyond reasonable doubt in court).
So what are we doing? Just offering personal interpretations? I tend to think we at least want it to be more than that, because people talk a lot about 'evidence', and evidence is something that is used to try and make some sort of objective case. And if it isn't anything more than personal interpretation, does that mean we can't say anything meaningful about the past?
An example is found in this thread: http://www.rationalskepticism.org/histo ... l#p2062383. Some folk did some digging and found a structure. There no doubt followed a lot of hard work, a lot of tests, comparisons with other finds, etc etc. But at every stage along the way there will also have been subjective interpretation, guesswork and so on, involved.
Anyway, that's enough of my waffling. I'd be interested to hear whether other people think historical research ultimately amounts to anything more than subjective opinion? (And, if so, why and how!)
So what are we doing? Just offering personal interpretations? I tend to think we at least want it to be more than that, because people talk a lot about 'evidence', and evidence is something that is used to try and make some sort of objective case. And if it isn't anything more than personal interpretation, does that mean we can't say anything meaningful about the past?
An example is found in this thread: http://www.rationalskepticism.org/histo ... l#p2062383. Some folk did some digging and found a structure. There no doubt followed a lot of hard work, a lot of tests, comparisons with other finds, etc etc. But at every stage along the way there will also have been subjective interpretation, guesswork and so on, involved.
Anyway, that's enough of my waffling. I'd be interested to hear whether other people think historical research ultimately amounts to anything more than subjective opinion? (And, if so, why and how!)