The Role of History Writing in Contemporary Academia
Lecture 10, Term 2
The Return to the Grand Narrative? ‘Deep History’ and Big Data
•
How to explain human ‘agency’
•
What is human ‘experience’ and how to explain it?
•
What is historical ‘change’ and what causes it?
•
What is the relationship between historical ‘facts’ found in
the archive/texts etc. and their wider meaning?
•
What is a historical ‘fact’? Is there such a thing?
•
What is the role of the historian in the production of
history:
•
Can she be neutral and objective or discuss an
historical event?
•
Is history writing a ‘science’ (in the sense of a natural
science discovering ‘laws’) or an ‘art’ (a form of fiction)?
Or both?
Central questions in regard to the practice and purpose of history writing sinc
the Enlightement
Central claims in this module
•
Since the Enlightenment ‘history writing’ is part of the ‘Science of Man’; it tells us
something about ourselves in the present; God’s decision? Laws of nature? Moral
lesson? critique (Foucault)?
•
Historians knowledge is not ‘objective’ or neutral’ (nor is scientific knowledge as we
have seen!) but at certain moments in time it was believed to be (e.g. positivism,
Buckle)
•
‘Before you study the historian, study his historical and social environment. The
historian, being an individual, is also a product of history and of society: and it is in
this twofold light that the student of history has to learn to regard him.’ (Carr,
What
is History? P.
38)
Why this enthusiasm for ‘Big Data’ and evolutionary psychology (Deep history) right now?
Are we in search of new ’grand narratives?
The overarching question is:
Jo Goldi ad David Armitage,
The History Manifesto
Big Data NOW!
The History Manifesto, 2014
Jo Goldi and David Armitage
https://www.cambridge.org/core/what-
we-publish/open-access/the-history-
manifesto
‘A spectre is haunting our time: the spectre of
the short term.’
Claim: Short-term history is an expression of a
general short-term thinking (critique of
today’s short-term economic thinking)
‘Administrators, academics, and students alike struggle to face all these
challenges at once. They must strive to find a way forward that will preserve
the distinctive virtues of the university–and of the humanities and historical
social sciences within them. Importantly, they need experts who can look
past the parochial concerns of disciplines too attached to client funding, the
next business cycle, or the next election. Indeed, in a crisis of short-termism,
our world needs some where to turn to for information about the
relationship between past and future. Our argument is that History–the
discipline and its subject-matter–can be just the arbiter we need at this
critical time.’
‘Our Conclusion ends where we started, with the problem of who in our
society is responsible for constructing and interpreting the big picture. We
are writing at a moment of the destabilisation of nations and currencies, on
the cusp of a chain of environmental events that will change our way of life,
at a time when questions of in equality trouble political and economic
systems around the globe. On the basis of when we write, we recommend to
our readers and to our fellow-historians the cause of what we call
the public
future
:
we must, all of us, engage the big picture, and do so together, a task
that we believe requires us to look backwards as well as ahead.’
‘Renewing the connection between past and future, and
using the past to think critically about what is to come,
are the tools that we need now. Historians are those best
able to supply them.’
The ‘big data’ is now available to do this future orientated history writing:
Is this Big Data enthusiasm the reason for the rise of digital humanities?
Deep history
is a term for the
distant past of the human species.
As an intellectual discipline, deep
history encourages scholars in
history, anthropology, archaeology,
primatology, genetics, and to work
together to write a common
narrative about the beginnings of
humans,
and to redress what they
see as an imbalance among
historians, who mostly concentrate
on more recent periods.
Deep history
forms the earlier part
of
Big History
and looks at the
portion of deep time when humans
existed, going further back than
prehistory, mainly based on usually
ventures, and using a wider range
of approaches.
The Grand Narrative of Human Evolution: Deep History
Daniel Lord Smail,
‘Deep History’ combined with ‘Big History’ in
Sapiens
Are we going back to E.O. Wilson’s ‘New Synthesis’ (1975) and its suggestions of
‘sociobiology’?
E.O. Wilson popularized the term "sociobiology" in the 1970s as an attempt to explain
the evolutionary mechanics behind any social behaviour.
Hardly new! But daring at the time in view of then rather recent events which were
based on ‘sociobiology’ (e.g.Holocaust).
Basis for enthusiasm of evolutionary psychology
?
Our obsession with the
brain....
Thesis: Human mind and human brain are one and the same thing.
Steve Pinker, a key evolutionary psychologist today:
‘The mind is a system of organs of computation designed by natural
selection to solve the problems faced by our evolutionary ancestors.’
Because the mind is an evolved organ designed by natural selection it will
serve precisely those purposes that other evolved organs serve; namely, to
increase the probability of the survival of the genetic material expressed in
the organism that carry it through its parts in bringing about adaptive
behaviour.
Richard Darwkins:
‘An animal’s behaviour tends to maximise the gene ‘for’ that behaviour
whether or not the gene happens to be in the body of the particular
animal performing it.’
Charles Darwin in the 1840s,
The problem with the concept of human evolution
It is NOT coming from nature but
Darwin takes it from contemporary
social and religious thinkers
He did not ‘discover’ evolution; the
concept of evolution is a constrution
Darwin’s voyage on the HMS Beagle 1831-1836
Darwin’s Finches
He starts to think that
species adapt to their
environment
But what is the underlying mechanism of adaptation that pulls all this
data together??
Darwin finds this mechanism NOT in nature but in contemporary
writings on British society...
Darwin collects and observes.......begins to believe that species ‘adapt’ to their place
The Reverend Thomas Robert
Malthus, 1766 – 1834
1798; 1803 edition
read by
Darwin
‘The power of population is so superior to the
power of the earth to produce subsistence for
man…’
‘ongoing
struggle of existence
over subsistence
’ -- according to Malthus God directed
Note
: term’ survival of the fittest’ (not from
Malthus but Herbert Spencer who read Darwin.
Darwin then used it in later editions of his
book.
1. Darwin relies on Malthus
Jeremy Bentham 1748 – 1832
It follows: the appropriate mode of action is the one that
maximises utility -- maximising total benefit and reducing
suffering or the negatives effects of human action
Principle:
‘greatest happiness of all’ - which is
measurable through measuring ‘pain’ and
‘pleasure’ in humans
‘Nature has placed mankind under the
governance of two sovereign masters, pain
and pleasure. It is for them alone to point
out what we ought to do, as well as to
determine what we shall do. On the one
hand the standard of right and wrong, on
the other the chain of causes and effects,
are fastened to their throne. They govern
us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think
..’
(The Principles of Morals and Legislation
2. Darwin’s ideas also fitted well to another
accepted social and philosophical theory of the
time: Utilitarianism
Three central elements of Darwin’s argument AFTER he adopts
these social ideas:
•
in every population of organism, there are differences – or
variations between individuals.
•
Such variations ensure that certain organisms are better
suited to triumph in the
struggle for existence
than there
are other organisms.
•
Finally, better suited --or more ‘fit’ – organisms will produce
more viable offspring then those which are less suited. And
the characteristics of fitter organisms are therefore
selectively passed on to the following generation.
Overall:
Nature selects certain characteristics without any
foresight or conscious design. Over a number of generations the
characteristics of fitter organisms comet to dominate
population, and hence the characteristics of a species change.
Darwin’s offers his own view on the raging debate on ‘human evolution’ in
two, by now, famous publications
1871
1872
Inherent problem of such anthropomorphism in evolutionary theory until
today:
The reading into animal nature, which, in fact, is characteristic of human
nature. These ‘results’ from reading animal culture are then used to
confirm continuity between humans and animals.
Such logic, by the way, undergirds much of
contemporary Darwinian
discussion of human
behaviour of Darwinists today such as O.E. Wilson
or
and Richard Dawkins
.....and all those who use evolutionary psychology for history writing
:
Central claim: human history and culture is ultimately
based on our evolutionary biology; it is a history of the human species
‘Epigenetic processes thus give individuals and
populations the capacity to respond biologically as
well as culturally to changing historical
circumstances and to adapt quickly to new or
altered niches in the natural and social world.’ (p.
1497)
BUT epigenetic (which is defined differently in
science has not yielded convincing results yet for
humans (or indeed for animals)
‘Genes are but one of the many players that act
and are acted upon to determine how an
organism will develop and interact with its
environment.’
We are told that biology is no longer deterministic today
‘Both historians and biologists believe in the
importance of culture – in the ability of the member
of many species of birds and mammals to learn from
one another so they can improve their chances that
they, their kin, or their societies will survive and
strive.’ (p. 1495)
In recent history writings one can observe a bias
towards the knowledge of the natural sciences in use
of rhetoric:
‘Recent advances in neuroscience, for instance,
confirm
the intuition of historians who believe that
culture, class, and prejudice have a profound impact
on the human psyche.’
A history of the species? Is this what historians will do in the
future? A combination of history and evolutionary biology?
But the problems are:
•
What is ‘biology’? Only one subjects in over 30 within the ‘life sciences’
and they all depend on each other.
•
Science is today techno-science
‘
Most of the findings that have come out are essentially driven by the
technologies available. So you wouldn’t be able to do brain imaging without
the MRIs, the MEGs. So the science and the technologies are inextricable.
The machines both make possible the science and help shape how it is
understood…You can’t talk about science apart from the technology
anymore. It’s meaningless.’ (Steven and Hilary Rose)
Further problems for historians when using scientific knowledge
•
Unstableness of scientific knowledge (sciences moves much, much
faster than history; historians tend to use outdated scientific
theories)
•
Techno-science and capitalism: science is no longer done by people
but by machines; it is privatised which shapes what is researched and
what not
‘For the contemporary biotechnological corporation to exist and survive,
it is (to search investors, for instance, who would need to sink huge
amount of money into a biotech venture to enable it in the first place)
credibility rather than truth that is essential to start with. At some
fundamental level, it does not
matter
whether the promissory vision of a
biotech company are true or not, as long as they are credible.’
•
More investment into PR than into the new scientific developments
‘Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually
every field of medicine’, she reports, ‘particularly those
that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no
longer possible to believe much of the clinical research
that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted
physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no
pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and
reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The
New England Journal of Medicine .’ (Marcia Angell, Drug
Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption)
‘Life is big business’ –steep rise of fraudulent research
How to trust scientific results
?
Will we need an
Office of Research Integrity (ORI) as the sciences have to check our
scientific sources? Will historians be fired – as scientists are – if it is discovered that
we used ‘false’ evidence from the natural sciences?
Will the bio-turn lead us into a new exciting area of historical research?
Will we overcome the ‘lingustic turn’?
The discussion revolves around the practice and purpose of history writing post-Enlightenment, exploring concepts such as human agency, historical change, and the historian's role. It questions the objectivity of historical facts, delves into the influence of the historian's environment, and contemplates the contemporary enthusiasm for Big Data and evolutionary psychology in historical narratives.
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Presentation Transcript
Lecture 10, Term 2 The Return to the Grand Narrative? Deep History and Big Data
Central questions in regard to the practice and purpose of history writing sinc the Enlightement How to explain human agency What is human experience and how to explain it? What is historical change and what causes it? What is the relationship between historical facts found in the archive/texts etc. and their wider meaning? What is a historical fact ? Is there such a thing? What is the role of the historian in the production of history: Can she be neutral and objective or discuss an historical event? Is history writing a science (in the sense of a natural science discovering laws ) or an art (a form of fiction)? Or both?
Central claims in this module something about ourselves in the present; God s decision? Laws of nature? Moral lesson? critique (Foucault)? Since the Enlightenment history writing is part of the Science of Man ; it tells us Historians knowledge is not objective or neutral (nor is scientific knowledge as we have seen!) but at certain moments in time it was believed to be (e.g. positivism, Buckle) Before you study the historian, study his historical and social environment. The historian, being an individual, is also a product of history and of society: and it is in this twofold light that the student of history has to learn to regard him. (Carr, What is History? P. 38)
The overarching question is: Why this enthusiasm for Big Data and evolutionary psychology (Deep history) right now? Are we in search of new grand narratives? https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse2.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.1wjecgTwwVwqYxqKbiv4KgHaE7%26pid%3D15.1f=1 Jo Goldi ad David Armitage, The History Manifesto
Big Data NOW! The History Manifesto, 2014 https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse2.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.1wjecgTwwVwqYxqKbiv4KgHaE7%26pid%3D15.1f=1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/what- we-publish/open-access/the-history- manifesto A spectre is haunting our time: the spectre of the short term. Claim: Short-term history is an expression of a general short-term thinking (critique of today s short-term economic thinking) Jo Goldi and David Armitage
Administrators, academics, and students alike struggle to face all these challenges at once. They must strive to find a way forward that will preserve the distinctive virtues of the university and of the humanities and historical social sciences within them. Importantly, they need experts who can look past the parochial concerns of disciplines too attached to client funding, the next business cycle, or the next election. Indeed, in a crisis of short-termism, our world needs some where to turn to for information about the relationship between past and future. Our argument is that History the discipline and its subject-matter can be just the arbiter we need at this critical time. Our Conclusion ends where we started, with the problem of who in our society is responsible for constructing and interpreting the big picture. We are writing at a moment of the destabilisation of nations and currencies, on the cusp of a chain of environmental events that will change our way of life, at a time when questions of in equality trouble political and economic systems around the globe. On the basis of when we write, we recommend to our readers and to our fellow-historians the cause of what we call the public future: we must, all of us, engage the big picture, and do so together, a task that we believe requires us to look backwards as well as ahead.
The big data is now available to do this future orientated history writing: Renewing the connection between past and future, and using the past to think critically about what is to come, are the tools that we need now. Historians are those best able to supply them. Is this Big Data enthusiasm the reason for the rise of digital humanities?
The Grand Narrative of Human Evolution: Deep History Deep history is a term for the distant past of the human species. As an intellectual discipline, deep history encourages scholars in history, anthropology, archaeology, primatology, genetics, and to work together to write a common narrative about the beginnings of humans,and to redress what they see as an imbalance among historians, who mostly concentrate on more recent periods. Deep history forms the earlier part of Big History and looks at the portion of deep time when humans existed, going further back than prehistory, mainly based on usually ventures, and using a wider range of approaches. Daniel Lord Smail,
Are we going back to E.O. Wilsons New Synthesis (1975) and its suggestions of sociobiology ? E.O. Wilson popularized the term "sociobiology" in the 1970s as an attempt to explain the evolutionary mechanics behind any social behaviour. Hardly new! But daring at the time in view of then rather recent events which were based on sociobiology (e.g.Holocaust).
Basis for enthusiasm of evolutionary psychology? Our obsession with the brain.... Thesis: Human mind and human brain are one and the same thing. Steve Pinker, a key evolutionary psychologist today: The mind is a system of organs of computation designed by natural selection to solve the problems faced by our evolutionary ancestors. Because the mind is an evolved organ designed by natural selection it will serve precisely those purposes that other evolved organs serve; namely, to increase the probability of the survival of the genetic material expressed in the organism that carry it through its parts in bringing about adaptive behaviour. Richard Darwkins: An animal s behaviour tends to maximise the gene for that behaviour whether or not the gene happens to be in the body of the particular animal performing it.
The problem with the concept of human evolution It is NOT coming from nature but Darwin takes it from contemporary social and religious thinkers He did not discover evolution; the concept of evolution is a constrution Charles Darwin in the 1840s,
He starts to think that species adapt to their environment
Darwin collects and observes.......begins to believe that species adapt to their place But what is the underlying mechanism of adaptation that pulls all this data together?? Darwin finds this mechanism NOT in nature but in contemporary writings on British society...
1. Darwin relies on Malthus 1798; 1803 edition read by Darwin The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man ongoing struggle of existence over subsistence -- according to Malthus God directed The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, 1766 1834 Note: term survival of the fittest (not from Malthus but Herbert Spencer who read Darwin. Darwin then used it in later editions of his book.
2. Darwins ideas also fitted well to another accepted social and philosophical theory of the time: Utilitarianism Principle: greatest happiness of all - which is measurable through measuring pain and pleasure in humans Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think .. (The Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 1748 1832 It follows: the appropriate mode of action is the one that maximises utility -- maximising total benefit and reducing suffering or the negatives effects of human action
Three central elements of Darwins argument AFTER he adopts these social ideas: in every population of organism, there are differences or variations between individuals. Such variations ensure that certain organisms are better suited to triumph in the struggle for existence than there are other organisms. Finally, better suited --or more fit organisms will produce more viable offspring then those which are less suited. And the characteristics of fitter organisms are therefore selectively passed on to the following generation. Overall: Nature selects certain characteristics without any foresight or conscious design. Over a number of generations the characteristics of fitter organisms comet to dominate population, and hence the characteristics of a species change.
1871 1872 Darwin s offers his own view on the raging debate on human evolution in two, by now, famous publications
Inherent problem of such anthropomorphism in evolutionary theory until today: The reading into animal nature, which, in fact, is characteristic of human nature. These results from reading animal culture are then used to confirm continuity between humans and animals. Such logic, by the way, undergirds much of contemporary Darwinian discussion of human behaviour of Darwinists today such as O.E. Wilson or and Richard Dawkins .....and all those who use evolutionary psychology for history writing: Central claim: human history and culture is ultimately based on our evolutionary biology; it is a history of the human species
We are told that biology is no longer deterministic today Genes are but one of the many players that act and are acted upon to determine how an organism will develop and interact with its environment. Epigenetic processes thus give individuals and populations the capacity to respond biologically as well as culturally to changing historical circumstances and to adapt quickly to new or altered niches in the natural and social world. (p. 1497) BUT epigenetic (which is defined differently in science has not yielded convincing results yet for humans (or indeed for animals)
A history of the species? Is this what historians will do in the future? A combination of history and evolutionary biology? Both historians and biologists believe in the importance of culture in the ability of the member of many species of birds and mammals to learn from one another so they can improve their chances that they, their kin, or their societies will survive and strive. (p. 1495) In recent history writings one can observe a bias towards the knowledge of the natural sciences in use of rhetoric: Recent advances in neuroscience, for instance, confirm the intuition of historians who believe that culture, class, and prejudice have a profound impact on the human psyche.
But the problems are: What is biology ? Only one subjects in over 30 within the life sciences and they all depend on each other. Science is today techno-science Most of the findings that have come out are essentially driven by the technologies available. So you wouldn t be able to do brain imaging without the MRIs, the MEGs. So the science and the technologies are inextricable. The machines both make possible the science and help shape how it is understood You can t talk about science apart from the technology anymore. It s meaningless. (Steven and Hilary Rose)
Further problems for historians when using scientific knowledge Unstableness of scientific knowledge (sciences moves much, much faster than history; historians tend to use outdated scientific theories) Techno-science and capitalism: science is no longer done by people but by machines; it is privatised which shapes what is researched and what not For the contemporary biotechnological corporation to exist and survive, it is (to search investors, for instance, who would need to sink huge amount of money into a biotech venture to enable it in the first place) credibility rather than truth that is essential to start with. At some fundamental level, it does not matter whether the promissory vision of a biotech company are true or not, as long as they are credible. More investment into PR than into the new scientific developments
How to trust scientific results? Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine , she reports, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine . (Marcia Angell, Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption) Life is big business steep rise of fraudulent research
Will we need an Office of Research Integrity (ORI) as the sciences have to check our scientific sources? Will historians be fired as scientists are if it is discovered that we used false evidence from the natural sciences? Will the bio-turn lead us into a new exciting area of historical research? Will we overcome the lingustic turn ?
