History, from "Whig" to Partial
Back in 1931,
the historian Herbert Butterfield condemned the “Whig interpretation of
history”. Huh? The term refers to the interpretation of the past in terms of
modern knowledge. Butterfield minced no words:
“The study of the past with one eye, so
to speak, upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in
history.”
Most of
Butterfield’s criticism was about moral judgments on historical figures and
events.
Having read Jack
Weatherford’s brilliant book titled Genghis
Khan and the Making of the Modern World, I agreed with Butterfield. Sure,
Genghis Khan wasn’t a saint, but was he really worse than the savagery of the
Europeans of the day, asked Weatherford. No, Genghis was far better, concluded
the book.
While it does
make sense to not be “whiggish” in some sorts of history, isn’t it OK in case
of the history of science, asks
physicist Steven Weinberg. After all:
“It is clearly not possible to speak of
right and wrong in the history of art or fashion, nor I think is it possible in
the history of religion, and one can argue about whether it is possible in
political history… But we can say with complete confidence that the lapse of
time has shown that, about the solar system, Copernicus was right against the
adherents of Ptolemy, and Newton was right against the followers of Descartes.”
That led to a very
nice exchange with Arthur M. Silverstein who wrote:
“Scientific understanding is a
continuously advancing wave of knowledge, even in the physical sciences, and
one cannot be certain that similar progress will not continue beyond the
present day. Thus, today’s whiggish condemnations or validations of the
historical past, based upon what we now believe, may change with tomorrow’s
progress.”
I agree with
Silverstein entirely. Who knows what the future of science will come up with,
and which theory of today may get consigned to the dustbin? And so I was
inclined to agree with Butterfield who wrote:
“History is not the study of origins;
rather it is the analysis of all the mediations by which the past was turned
into our present.”
About the above
quote, Silverstein said:
“The accent is on the “all”!”
And then I
remembered Will and Ariel Durant’s The
Lessons of History:
“This is a counsel of perfection; total
perspective is an optical illusion. We do not know the whole of man’s history…
We must operate with partial knowledge; and be provisionally content with
probabilities; in history, as in science and politics, relativity rules, and
all formulas should be suspect.”
Perfectly put.
Good points.
ReplyDeleteAs said in this blog, we will never know the whole of man's history. The difficulty even if we manage to know "some" of man's history, that would remain quite interpretative.
I suppose finally it always comes to what Napoleon said, "History is only fable that has been agreed upon!"