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Telling the Truth about History

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Written by three distinguished historians, this is a well intentioned but only partly successful effort to develop a systematic approach to historical truth. The authors open with a set of historiographic chapters covering the development of history as a discipline since the 18th century. This is a generally concise and nice precis of the importance of the natural sciences as a model of inquiry, the idea of history of a teleological and progressive model of modernity, the development of secular and nationalized professional history in the 19th century, and especially the emergence of a strong and rather distorted triumphalist historical narrative about the USA. This is followed by some good descriptions of how this tradition then began to run into problems. The somewhat "heroic" model of scientific history became its own form of dogma, and with the Progressive era, serious doubts aroase about the 19th century triumphalist model. The authors are also justly and conventionally critical of naive positivist views of historical explanation.

This is generally well done, though the need for concision may have led the authors to some incomplete and inaccurate statements. For example, the authors' facile attribution of late 19th century racism as the inadvertant consequence of Darwin's theory ignores the substantial contribution of influential non-Darwinist thinkers like Gobineau and Agassiz. Similarly, the authors' discussion of 19th century historiography ignores the fact that the greatest 19th century American historian was the disenchanted Boston Brahmin Henry Adams. Adams' work is a sustained and brilliantly written presentation of history as irony.

The authors really go astray in the middle of the book with their chapter "Discovering the Clay Feet of Science." This is a description of the misleading nature of the "heroic" model of science and how this "discovery" provoked an intellectual crisis. I don't doubt the authors' assertion that this was a major issue in the community of historians, but the authors' implication that this was a general intellectual crisis is fairly silly. As the authors point out, one of the major features of academic life in the last 50 years is the enormous expansion of universities and the democratization of access to a university education. The authors seem to be unaware that the other great change in universities over that last 2 generations is the enormous expansion and investment in the natural sciences. At my large research university, a majority of the faculty are in the natural sciences or related fields like Medicine or Engineering. In terms of funding, the natural sciences are even more dominant. The discoveries the authors that authors see as uncovering the clay feet of science had no effect on natural scientists or the university administrators who hire them. The suggestion that the writings of a few historians of science or literary critics provoked a general intellectual crisis is hyperbole. THe authors make a similar series of inaccurate claims about the Cold War, which they see as producing "distortions" of science. While there were real problems with Cold War administration of science, the fact is that rivalry with the Soviet Union was one of the factors that turned the Federal government into the major patron of American science. The Cold War was partly responsible for the enormous progress made by American science in the last 50 years.

Because the authors exaggerate the effects of historical revision of scientific progression, they similarly exaggerate the importance of post-modernism/deconstructionism. The authors characterize this movement correctly as an intellectual deadend. But the amount of attention and number of pages devoted this is essentially inconsequential movement is wholly out of proportion to its actual importance.

The authors positive contribution is an attempt to define an approach to history they call "practical realism." The authors have a good discussion of the problems with establishing truthfulness and causal relationships in historical analysis. Their recommendation, epistemically based on Peirce's fallibalism, is a modestly realist approach based on careful accumulation of data, constant testing of defined hypotheses, skepticism about data, peer review, and a community of scholars open to alternative interpretations. If this sounds familiar, its because it is. Its essentially a version of the best practices of modern science. This is crashing through an open door with a vengeance. As an aside, the authors contrast their position with the "metaphysical realism" of Karl Popper and his logical positivist "associates." Popper would be surprised to find himself grouped with the Vienna Circle philosophers of whom he was so critical. In fact, Popper's work has a strong fallibalist orientation with strong kinship to Peirce's work.

The authors also get themselves into trouble with some fairly careless statements. For example, "the exclusive dominance of European cultural forms in the United States in now consignable to a specific period,..." This from authors whose recommended approach to historical analysis is a clear mimic of western scientific practices and based on a philosophical approach articulated by a 19th century American man. Fallibalist epistemology is based on the work of several imporant 17th and 18th century European philosophers and has roots in Hellenistic Greece. This is about as European as it gets. I don't see the authors recommending nor would they recommend authentic non-European approaches like Theravada Buddhism or Confucianism.

Finally, the authors would like a form of American national history suitable for a democratic society. What does this mean? The authors are appropriately critical of instrumental uses of history like the triumphalist version of 19th century America and they are cautious about the dangers of making the same types of error in things like 'Afrocentric' history. So what is their solution? They are not completely explicit but it appears they wish a systematic, accurate, unbiased account of the past that is fair to the historical experiences of all relevant actors, a kind of inclusionary multiculturalism. But how is this different from naive positivism?

Since this book was written in the wake of the intellectual `wars' at U.S. universities involving multiculturalism, political correctness and the subsequent backlash to these, it primarily focuses on the history profession in the United States rather than worldwide. Thus, some of the book's shortcomings in not dealing adequately with non-American or non-Western European views or concerns can be forgiven. Despite these flaws, "Telling the Truth About History" very successfully addresses the many criticisms hurled at the scholarly pursuit of history in recent decades, and the three authors' conclusions can be useful and edifying even for those historians living and working far beyond America's borders. In line with the pragmatism and practical realism the authors extol in their last several chapters, they essentially call for a middle ground between the extremes of postmodern relativism and the apparent absolutes of the Enlightenment `heroic science' model. This means not abandoning the pursuit of verity while incorporating many of criticisms and even methods of the postmodernist theorists. Truth may still be elusive as ever (to say nothing of absolute truth) but, as they say at one point, even provisional truths are better than ignorance or outright falsehoods - with a nice example from the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev years to illustrate this point. This is a very well-written and persuasive argument for history as a rigorous and expansive (and mind-expanding) academic discipline. Along the way, the authors also provide a very informative overview of historiography from the Enlightenment era to the present, albeit in a largely American context.

I found this book to be one of the most valuable and most hopeful books I have read in a long time. As a High School teacher of American history, I have long grappled with the question of historical truth and how best to teach it to students. I have also wondered if I could justify my own profession, since American history instruction so often seems to be simply political indoctrination in one form or another. This book gave me hope that my efforts are not in vain. The book traces the evolution of history from the enlightenment model of scientific history through postwar issues of postmodernism and relativism;. and the authors persuasively argue that historical truth is possible, even if not absolute. The book is not light reading - I was not able to race through the book, but had to wade through it, so to speak. However, I do feel the book is well worth reading. It is well written, balanced and fair-minded, and it transcends the simplistic conservative-liberal debate over the teaching of history. I feel the book should be read by everyone who is concerned with the teaching of history or the question of historical truth.

In this historiographical work, the authors convincingly argue that the overthrow of absolutisms which has characterized much of the historical and scientific scholarship of the past century does not carry in its wake the disavowal of all knowledge or truth. In place of the old absolutisms and of the new skepticism, Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob, offer a new model based on a more pragmatic understanding of objectivity and truth.

The authors spend the bulk of this book tracing the development of Enlightenment absolutisms in history and science and cataloguing their demise. While this section is more than adequate, the strength of this book lies in the authors' response to history's current postmodern crisis.

The authors are more than willing to acknowledge that the pursuit of knowledge is subjective and affected by the personalities involved, yet they insist that a greater diversity of perspectives also brings historical fact into greater focus.

As part of their argument, the authors provide the following illustration: let's assume we are all sitting at a table and an object is placed in the middle of it. We are all historians, and that item is a given part of human history. The postmodernists would say that because my perspective differs from yours, we can never know what the object TRULY looks like. The traditionalists would say that our perspectives must be the same, because the item is the same. A, H, and J would claim that our perspectives differ, but that they differ in such a way that, when combined, they provide a better and truer sense of the object's characteristics.

Overall, I find this argument very convincing. Multiculturalism (or, the pursuit of multiple perspectives) is not the enemy of Truth, but rather its friend. In effect, the democratization of the academic world ought to serve as a check against unsupported interpretations and theories, thus honing our understanding of the human past.

For a weighty, parallel look at some of these same issues, I strongly recommend HERITAGE AND CHALLENGE by Paul Conkin and Roland Stromberg. For those who are interested in a more theoretical book on the questions facing the field of history today, it is well worth the effort.

This is a *popular* historiography of history (i.e., don't expect many footnotes or sources). It reviews the history of historical consciousness since the Enlightenment--its initial emergence as a mimicry of Christian-medieval truth-seeking (as applied to the secular: i.e., power of God is transferred to Nature), the subsequent period of "heroic science" (the rational, "objective", scientific model of history), to the reformers and the birth of social history and the postmodern turn in the 20th century.

Appleby, Hunt and Jacob, outside of giving us an overview of historiography, also attempt here to show how a pragmatic middle ground between a "scientific objectivity" and completely fragmented postmodernism might look as method of doing history. Their thesis: neither extreme works, but both points of views bring valuable contributions to the study of history--and they can and should be used to complement each other. We cannot lose sight of "objectivity" (they don't mean Enlightenment objectivity, they mean the idea that *something* real exists out there, regardless of our interpretations or our problematicizing of our interpretations)--for if we did, we'd lose the "object" of history. But we have to always remember we are essentially subjective (even though our aims in doing history might be).

Appleby, Hunt and Jacob explain they have written this book because it's about time historians explain (to the rest of world) what they do.. As democracy's foundation is the educational enterprise, and as history is integrative of national memory and character, I was struck by this sentiment and theme as a thread through the work.

As an overview of themes for those interested in the historiography of history, this is definitely the book you want to read. For those with some background in historiography, this work is probably not rigorous enough (no sources, only a few pages per major thinker, i.e., if your life is Foucault or Derrida or any of the other people they discuss, you will probably find their discussion on your particular specialty to be lacking, and perhaps question the rest of the work).

This book is interesting from a couple of perspectives. First, it was written by three outstanding historians (including Joyce Appleby, a leading colonial historian, and Margaret Jacob, the virtual guru of scientific history) in the late 1990's to repudiate what they saw as a postmodern attack on the integrity of history as a discipline. So there is much disparaging discussion of post-modernism, multi-culturalism, absolurte truth, social history, relativism, cultural history, deconstruction, textualism, etc. I agree with Gordon Wood in his excellent "Purpose of the Past" that from today's perspective, this dimension of the book comes across as somewhat "overanxious and somewhat dated." History as a discipline continues to flourish and explore new areas. This section is really designed for professional historians and those interested in history from the standpoint of epistemology, since it can become somewhat technical, though of substantial value.

The second facet of the book, written as background but occuping about 1/3 of the total text of 309 pages, which I found of greater interest is a fascinating recounting of the development of scientific inquiry, from Bacon and Newton on. Probably due to the involvement of Margaret Jacob, this discussion moves into the linkage of science to history in the cultural wars involving the Enlightenment and the Counter-Reformation. Eventually, the narrative discusses the role of "Protestant science" in American universities; national identity history in the hands of Hegel; and scientific history in the west with Marx, Durkheim and Weber. The competing approaches of Beard and the Progressive historians then enters the stage, leading to social history and the rise of multi-culturalism. In turn, science itself comes under attack and the argument that there is no absolute truth, only relativism, emerges and we are into post-modernism. History becomes a target with allegations that historians have subconscious prejudices, face problems with their methods and very language, and that narrative is destructive as a technique ("history is the western myth"). This obviously is a lot of ground to cover in a couple hundred pages, but the authors do an outstanding job, although this section is really designed to educate the reader for the key discussion to follow, namely historical inquiry remains viable if not perfect.

So the most valuable section of the book may not be that was the focus of the authors' concerns, but that which is preliminary. Nonetheless, a book chock full of interesting insights and ideas, although somewhat dated by today's standards. Unfortunately, it lacks a bibliography, but does have some helpful footnotes as sources for further investigation.

When studying, researching, and writing about an historical event, it may take careful reading and an open mind to understand the foundations that construct a historical narrative. TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT HISTORY is a critical examination of the subject of history by three distinguishable historians, Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, which proves that history and science are essential elements when understanding truth and objectivity as it relates to the past.

TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT HISTORY is by no means a definitive study. However, it introduces the reader to the historical method, and how the discipline as traversed throughout the years with trends and theoretical approaches. The authors of the book are all eminent historians in each of their respective fields, American, European, and Cultural history, but their study is somewhat skewed when they briefly discuss the multicultural aspect to the understanding of history. Indeed, they cannot touch upon all the events that have occurred in world history, and a few of the subjects that they mention in their discussion do not fall in their area of expertise. But it was interesting to read the authors' tug of war discussion pertaining to postmodernist or revisionist history; at the time the book was published, 1994, postmodernism appeared to be an issue, which now and then is subtly discussed.

Overall, the book is very helpful when understanding why one studies, writes, or teaches about history. It is indeed an intricate subject that cannot be clearly understood without understanding other histories and the people and places that constituted a particular past. After re-reading TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT HISTORY, it takes intellectual maturity and experience to understand the premise that the authors were attempting to convey. This is an insightful book recommended for discussion.

The book argues that various types of absolutisms (political, intellectual, or ideological) have been dethroned. Ever since the "heroic model of Science" (which in the past centuries enjoyed an aura of absolute validity) has been shown to be less than "perfectly objective," a struggle has ensued to fill the vacuum in the interpretation of history.
On one extreme we find the radical projects of the so-called De-constructionism, championed by Derrida and Focault (mutually exclusive projects, by the way), claiming that the human subject is a fiction and that all attempts to retrieve meaning and valid interpretation from the past are doomed to fail, especially when we try to derive lessons for the future. These philosophers want to deconstruct the notion of the individual as an autonomous, self-conscious agent; to de-center the subject, his primacy as a location for making judgements and for seeking the truth. Human beings are hopelessly caught in the prison of language. They attack "logocentrism," namely the idea that words express the truth of reality. Thus, the direction taken by postmodernism leads to relativism and to nihilism. Putnam, in his Renewing Philosophy, p. 133, claims that "deconstruction without reconstruction" amounts to irresponsibility; this is true, I may add, if one embraces methodological skepticism rather than dogmatic skepticism, which is instead what the deconstructionists are doing. Apparently, Putnam's critique misses the mark.The other extreme is represented by Traditionalism, "fixed" in its classicism and in a hopeless resistance to what is known today as "multiculturalism". The authors blame the traditionalists for lumping together multiculturalism, postmodernism and social history, and for resisting a process that the authors call the "democratization of the university." The authors contend that this process has exposed the racist, sexist, homophobic and Eurocentric roots of contemporary historiography. (Bloom and Hirsch scoff at this process, and remain angry at "tenured radicals" and at the "philistine critics.")The position advocated by the authors is Pluralism and Multiculturalism (heavily influenced by Historicism). The authors call for a "democratic practice of history", for "practical realism" (that somehow embraces the correspondence theory of truth). They also argue in favor of Truth and Objectivity, though not in the traditional, fixed perspective and against what they call a "debilitating relativism." They seek for a qualified objectivity; no research is neutral, since knowledge involves struggle amongst various groups of truth-seekers ("Objectivity does not require taking God's perspective, which is impossible"). The authors claim that we need to come to terms with subjectivity, artificiality and language dependence. Against post-modernists, they argue that an inquiring mind is an operative tool: the past exists and we must try to reconstruct it, since it is knowable and real. What we need is methodical skepticism. They recall the words of Diderot: "All things must be examined, all must be winnowed and sifted without exception and without sparing anyone's sensibilities." (s.v. "Encyclopedia") and again: "The follower of the Enlightenment is an eclectic, skeptic investigator who trampling underfoot prejudice, tradition, venerability, universal assent, authority - in a word, all that overawes the crowd - dares to think for himself, to ascend to the clearest general principles, to examine them, to discuss them, to admit nothing, save the testimony of his own reason and experience. (s.v. "Eclecticism")". The authors talk about the tradition of Marxist historiography; of the French Annales School, which in the 1950s and 1960s paid attention to three layers: 1) Climate, geography, biology; 2) Social structures and patterns; 3) Politics, culture and intellectual life. This "history from below" pays little attention to what traditionalists care about (statesmen, generals, diplomats, intellectuals, ideas and institutions) in favor of social history, the history of workers, servants and the poor.
As far as I am concerned, in choosing the way to study and to teach History to my students and children, I will purposely ignore and neglect a) Social history (with its emphasis on ordinary people); b) Economic history (emphasis on how economic forces work); but focus and celebrate c) History of Ideas. Ideas and views shape the world and the course of events; everything else is secondary to me and not of much interest.

Telling the Truth About History is a passionate and insightful tract about the meaning and value of history as it relates in particular to American democracy. The authors, historians at UCLA who have written on American history and on the Enlightenment, argue for a pragmatic and empirical approach to studying the past, against the "absolutisms" of a reified, capitalized, and "heroic" Science, Cold War ideologies, strong post-modernism, and "traditionalism." Against all that they make the case that history is study of an objective and to some extent knowable past, which should serve democratic values by telling a story that embraces multiple narratives.

Three issues in this book particularly interested me: their take on the epistemology of history, conservatives on campus, and how historians with an ax to grind (basically, almost all of us) can support an idea by placing it in a larger historical context.

I noted with interest that the authors, who generally wrote as secularists, found themselves using the words "faith" and "belief" to describe the historical epistemology they found most reasonable: "Belief in the reality of the past and its knowability is essential to a practice of history . . . An openness to the interplay between certainty and doubt keeps faith with the expansive quality of democracy . . . a belief in the reality of the past . . . Such faith helps discipline the understanding by requiring constant reference to something outside of the human mind."

While I am not sure the adjective "scientific" best describes historical epistemology, such comments remind us that uncertainty and knowledge are always in tension, and that this state of affairs is healthy. History is never a matter of certain proof, rather of warranted belief based on good evidence. I have argued that this form of "faith" is very close to what informed Christians have always meant by the word. This is a common sense view of epistemology that finds middle ground between the positivism of a Richard Dawkins and "blind faith."

The authors position themselves towards the middle of contemporary academic American "culture wars." They admit, on the one hand, that some "politically correct" talk goes too far in limiting free speech. I think their somewhat more emphatic criticism of the opposite tendency, what they call "traditionalism," is mostly overstated, though. They picture conservative colleagues as "muscular ideologues." They accuse those who oppose compulsory classes in women's studies or multiculturalism of carrying out an "all-out war on multiculturalism and the democratization of the university," "using the dead hand of the past . . . to muzzle the voices of the present" and creating a "national bogey in the form of political correctness." They position traditionalists as defenders of the "status quo" and de facto opponents of the "effort to democratize the university."

Much of their talk on this subject seems overwrought, and I don't think it accurately reflects the situation on American universities. The "status quo" is anything but conservative or "traditionalist" on American campuses. Making the university more "democratic" would entail participation not just by the assortment of neo-Marxists, radical skeptics, relativists, post-modernists, and "liberals" the authors describe, but also by that huge portion of the American populace that holds to "traditional" values. Forcing students to take politically radical classes, which often prove in practice to be taught by professors hostile towards the tradition in which those students have been brought up, seems by their own lights anti-democratic. The authors equate "the decision by an American university to recruit postmodernist faculty members" with "searching for scholars with a particular expertise," as if choosing ideologues of a particular stripe were the same as choosing people with expertise in a given field of study.

I have been told how an earlier generation of moderately liberal faculty members, in a desire to recruit more widely, elected scholars who were wed to some of the far-left agendas they mention. Unfortunately the new, ideological scholars did not always share an appreciation of philosophical diversity, so the faculty became more illiberal and exclusive. It would be naïve to equate radical stances with "liberality" in the ethical sense.

Towards the end of the book, Appleby, Hunt and Jacob make some interesting comments on the democratic value of historical study.
They point out that history can provide minority groups with a psychologically empowering social solidarity. Historical precedent can lend the oppressed a fellowship with the past: "roots," to use the term Alex Haley used to justify his own search for dignity as an African American descendent of slaves.

As someone who studies the process by which Christian thinkers relate their faith to pre-Christian traditions, I find this interesting. But of course historical precedent is a double-edged sword, because every tradition is diverse. Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob open the door to all kinds of "marginal" and "diverse" viewpoints to enter the mainstream, but do not help us judge between them.

The power of alternative historical narratives to strengthen marginal positions is ambivalent. One can find precedent not just for abortion, but infanticide or human sacrifice, in Western history. The Nazis also appealed to a real or imagined pre-Christian past to reinvent slave labor and a virulent form of human sacrifice.

The question, then, is what criterion one will use to decide which parts of the human heritage one should link to. For me, that's Christ. The authors make it clear that they think neither religion nor science provides an adequate criterion. The pragmatic alternative they offer seems fuzzy and open to manipulation. I guess that's the nature of pragmatism. They seem like reasonable people, though, and make many interesting points.

Telling the Truth presents a very solid overview of western historiography's evolution and provides a provocative argument for the broadening of perspectives of what is valid for historians to include in their search for accurate causes for past events. The authors' intent to model the democratic practice they preach through collective authorship of the essay was evident, and one wonders if it would have been strengthened further by an examination of the impact their own historical context has had on the creation of their individual ideologies. In short, use themselves as case studies. This would be revolutionary of course, but a potentially very interesting historical version of self-analysis: three professional historians, women educated in the United States, during the 1970s, examining how their own environment and training shaped their views.

The emphasis on the significance of the printing press and the loss of clerical authority over publication was well stated. Left unexamined was the importance of the rise of the merchant middle class in Southern Europe, which is surprising considering the social history described later in the text. The Civil War's nationalizing effect and the lack of Black America's inclusion in the traditional American narrative are well founded, but leaves the subject's treatment woefully incomplete. The authors would have been able to draw a more accurate picture of rising American nationalism by including the War of 1812 in their analysis for example. And the nation's history of immigration and resulting discrimination, which includes Asians and Latin Americans as well as Europeans and Africans, is far more complex than presented. In short, the opportunity to use the immigrant experience as historical evidence for the authors' views was under utilized. The passing reference to Native American experiences underscored the authors' main point, but is not drawn out. And for American historians promoting a more gendered approach to history to leave out the suffrage movement was shocking to this reader.