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.

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarMarch 21, 2016 at 4:50 PM

    Good points.

    As 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!"

    ReplyDelete

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