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The Truth of History
Modern relativism and postmodern thought in culture and language challenge the 'truth' of history. This book considers how all historians, confined by the concepts and forms of argument of their own cultures, can still discover truths about the past.
The Truth of History presents a study of various historical explanations and interpretations and evaluates their success as accounts of the past. C. Behan McCullagh contests that the variety of historical interpretations and subjectivity does not exclude the possibility of their truth. Through an examination of the constraints of history, the author argues that although historical descriptions do not mirror the past they can correlate with it in a regular and definable way.
Far from debating in the abstract and philosophical only, the author beds his argument in numerous illuminating concrete historical examples. The Truth of History explores a new position between the two extremes of believing that history perfectly represents the past and that history can tell us nothing true of the past.
The Truth of History presents a study of various historical explanations and interpretations and evaluates their success as accounts of the past. C. Behan McCullagh contests that the variety of historical interpretations and subjectivity does not exclude the possibility of their truth. Through an examination of the constraints of history, the author argues that although historical descriptions do not mirror the past they can correlate with it in a regular and definable way.
Far from debating in the abstract and philosophical only, the author beds his argument in numerous illuminating concrete historical examples. The Truth of History explores a new position between the two extremes of believing that history perfectly represents the past and that history can tell us nothing true of the past.
- GenresHistory
336 pages, Paperback
First published October 30, 1997
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May 8, 2022
This excellent book was published in 1998 and is now out of print. My copy is second hand and has been discarded by a university library. I can imagine quite a few academics might prefer their students didn’t find it lying around as it discredits a great deal of the baloney they continue to teach and reproduce.
The history of ideas has been plagued since at least the time of Socrates with cynical bystanders demanding absurd levels of proof or insisting on the impossibility of knowledge, not simply to frustrate those developing constructive philosophical or scientific knowledge but really to avoid the responsibility to question let alone relinquish their own unexamined prejudices. John Locke notably observed, writing on education, that as long as we indulge in superficially logical arguments without agreed criteria by which to terminate disputes, there is scope for infinite digression and disagreement by countless bad faith tactics. Yet scepticism is in itself a valid and important stance from which to impose reasonable requirements on those who wish to promote new or contentious ideas. No matter how irritating, it must be answered.
McCullagh has the style of a good natured and conversational teacher, perfectly happy to explain and justify the grounds on which, in his view, professional historians continue to produce their work in the face of sceptical challenges. He generally takes a charitable view of the sceptics, in that he will acknowledge the value of their contribution where this can be found, but he is brutally blunt in his destruction of those critics that he finds (and shows) to be flatly wrong. A lot of scalps are taken in these pages. He is also respectful of his colleagues in the history profession, not because they are infallible or uniformly trustworthy, but because taken as a whole the history profession is demonstrably willing to tear apart any work that falls short of its standards. This is possible because history does have very strong standards and it is those standards he defends against the assault of the sceptics.
McCullagh structures his presentation around eleven distinct and important topics. It’s a lot of ground to cover – and could arguably be expanded – but it enables him to confront, for each topic, a number of specific types of argument confronting historians, illustrate them with practical examples which are tangible, interesting and sometimes amusing but above all he supplies convincing replies in every case.
McCullagh suggests that two related criteria are important to historians. One is truth, which is a far less difficult concept than the sceptics want it to be. For him a statement is true if it corresponds to a relevant case in the world. In other terms, a statement that has truth conditions is true if it can meet those conditions and there are a great many statements for which such conditions can be shown to apply. Related to this is the concept of fairness. It is perfectly possible and not uncommon to make truthful statements in such a way as to give a false impression, so in addition to being truthful it matters that a historian gives a fair account of their subject matter; notably by reporting inconvenient or contradictory information and hopefully resolving any resulting conflict of evidence.
If there were no procedures for historians to arrive at truthful and fair histories, there would also be none to discriminate between versions that are better or inferior, or between those that are honest or manipulative. By the same token, both historians and their critics must necessarily pay proper attention to these procedures if they are to engage in a serious way with the issues. This is why a writer like Hayden White, in Metahistory, is so misguided. White argues at length that history writing is not different to any other genre of literature, structuring its material around comic, tragic, romantic or satirical narratives but White resolutely fails to engage with the procedures adopted by historians to ensure that they nevertheless meet truth conditions and fairly represent their subject. McCullogh accuses another influential sceptic, Lyotard, of equivocation, because he relies on reasoned arguments about certain types of “meta narrative” such as Enlightenment or Marxist theories of progress, to make the unjustified claim that all general theories about historical change are false. For instance, Lyotard fails to notice that even the most basic, narrative histories provide explanations that depend on theories of cause and effect. “Only chronicles are structured with absolutely no reference to a general theory of historical change.” In different ways, such arguments render history impotent and futile, disregard the ways historians overcome their criticisms and fail even to describe what historians actually do.
One of the concepts that he often refers to is “subvention” – the well founded understanding that the world operates at many different levels which each have their own character but each maps onto the other: every change in terms of A implies corresponding change in B; every human action corresponds to physical and chemical changes in the human body, mental thoughts and ideas, overt words and behaviours, social interactions at various levels, which can contribute to or participate in large scale social phenomena such as economics or war. Positivism, for example, is associated with the demand that only physical, material things are real and can cause a change, only tangible individuals can act, while society (for example) is an abstract concept with no causal properties. There are many variants on this attitude, but it has never made sense even for the hard sciences – nothing is more abstract and intangible than modern physics, or even Newton’s mathematical laws by which gravity operates over huge distances with no mechanism that Newton could explain beyond his excellent mathematical formula. It is self-evident that, for example, every social phenomenon arises through or from the behaviour of individuals, but it is no less easily shown that events (economic cycles, revolutions, industrialisation) that can be explained by theories at one level cannot be explained at all, never mind economically, at other levels. A social theory cannot be reduced to individual psychology, and that cannot be reduced to biochemistry, in any meaningful way, even though all levels of reality participate and may influence the scenario under scrutiny.
General statements and theories in history, including those that reflect the interests and subjective values of the historian, are perfectly capable of being tested against truth conditions, or evaluated for fairness, and McCullough has no difficult giving examples of theories favoured by a historian being abandoned in the face of the evidence. For example, Christopher Hill worked hard to explain the English Civil War within a Marxist framework of class based antagonisms and openly acknowledged that this cannot be reconciled with the evidence; other explanations were far superior. He also gives examples where one subject is examined in different ways by historians with different interests, pointing out that the subjective nature of their investigations has no bearing on either the truthfulness or the fairness of their accounts; some topics really can be seen in diverse ways that are each historically sound but that does not entail any sacrifice of the historian’s disciplined procedures.
McCullough works through a range of topics in history making, looking at sources for historical evidence and the types of problems historians address. Historians do search for accurate descriptions of the past, but they search also for an understanding of why things happened as they did, why alternatives failed to happen and how past circumstances gave rise to the present. Indeed, his account of history merges rather clearly into other disciplines and fields of study, since theories of human nature and social dynamics, of social change, of economics, or of the institutions and structures of society, not only require historical information but are in fact the concern of historians. “Without a knowledge of our history, we cannot understand our present society, nor plan intelligently for the future…those who would confine history to little narratives of particular episodes from the actors’ point of view would blind us to the structure of society and to the influence it can have on experience… Let us teach them [students] about the culture, society and institutions they have inherited, and of others which they should be careful to avoid, or which they should try to develop.” [309]
This is clearly a book that will be excluded from university libraries for the indefinite future. It is samizdat literature at its finest.
The history of ideas has been plagued since at least the time of Socrates with cynical bystanders demanding absurd levels of proof or insisting on the impossibility of knowledge, not simply to frustrate those developing constructive philosophical or scientific knowledge but really to avoid the responsibility to question let alone relinquish their own unexamined prejudices. John Locke notably observed, writing on education, that as long as we indulge in superficially logical arguments without agreed criteria by which to terminate disputes, there is scope for infinite digression and disagreement by countless bad faith tactics. Yet scepticism is in itself a valid and important stance from which to impose reasonable requirements on those who wish to promote new or contentious ideas. No matter how irritating, it must be answered.
McCullagh has the style of a good natured and conversational teacher, perfectly happy to explain and justify the grounds on which, in his view, professional historians continue to produce their work in the face of sceptical challenges. He generally takes a charitable view of the sceptics, in that he will acknowledge the value of their contribution where this can be found, but he is brutally blunt in his destruction of those critics that he finds (and shows) to be flatly wrong. A lot of scalps are taken in these pages. He is also respectful of his colleagues in the history profession, not because they are infallible or uniformly trustworthy, but because taken as a whole the history profession is demonstrably willing to tear apart any work that falls short of its standards. This is possible because history does have very strong standards and it is those standards he defends against the assault of the sceptics.
McCullagh structures his presentation around eleven distinct and important topics. It’s a lot of ground to cover – and could arguably be expanded – but it enables him to confront, for each topic, a number of specific types of argument confronting historians, illustrate them with practical examples which are tangible, interesting and sometimes amusing but above all he supplies convincing replies in every case.
McCullagh suggests that two related criteria are important to historians. One is truth, which is a far less difficult concept than the sceptics want it to be. For him a statement is true if it corresponds to a relevant case in the world. In other terms, a statement that has truth conditions is true if it can meet those conditions and there are a great many statements for which such conditions can be shown to apply. Related to this is the concept of fairness. It is perfectly possible and not uncommon to make truthful statements in such a way as to give a false impression, so in addition to being truthful it matters that a historian gives a fair account of their subject matter; notably by reporting inconvenient or contradictory information and hopefully resolving any resulting conflict of evidence.
If there were no procedures for historians to arrive at truthful and fair histories, there would also be none to discriminate between versions that are better or inferior, or between those that are honest or manipulative. By the same token, both historians and their critics must necessarily pay proper attention to these procedures if they are to engage in a serious way with the issues. This is why a writer like Hayden White, in Metahistory, is so misguided. White argues at length that history writing is not different to any other genre of literature, structuring its material around comic, tragic, romantic or satirical narratives but White resolutely fails to engage with the procedures adopted by historians to ensure that they nevertheless meet truth conditions and fairly represent their subject. McCullogh accuses another influential sceptic, Lyotard, of equivocation, because he relies on reasoned arguments about certain types of “meta narrative” such as Enlightenment or Marxist theories of progress, to make the unjustified claim that all general theories about historical change are false. For instance, Lyotard fails to notice that even the most basic, narrative histories provide explanations that depend on theories of cause and effect. “Only chronicles are structured with absolutely no reference to a general theory of historical change.” In different ways, such arguments render history impotent and futile, disregard the ways historians overcome their criticisms and fail even to describe what historians actually do.
One of the concepts that he often refers to is “subvention” – the well founded understanding that the world operates at many different levels which each have their own character but each maps onto the other: every change in terms of A implies corresponding change in B; every human action corresponds to physical and chemical changes in the human body, mental thoughts and ideas, overt words and behaviours, social interactions at various levels, which can contribute to or participate in large scale social phenomena such as economics or war. Positivism, for example, is associated with the demand that only physical, material things are real and can cause a change, only tangible individuals can act, while society (for example) is an abstract concept with no causal properties. There are many variants on this attitude, but it has never made sense even for the hard sciences – nothing is more abstract and intangible than modern physics, or even Newton’s mathematical laws by which gravity operates over huge distances with no mechanism that Newton could explain beyond his excellent mathematical formula. It is self-evident that, for example, every social phenomenon arises through or from the behaviour of individuals, but it is no less easily shown that events (economic cycles, revolutions, industrialisation) that can be explained by theories at one level cannot be explained at all, never mind economically, at other levels. A social theory cannot be reduced to individual psychology, and that cannot be reduced to biochemistry, in any meaningful way, even though all levels of reality participate and may influence the scenario under scrutiny.
General statements and theories in history, including those that reflect the interests and subjective values of the historian, are perfectly capable of being tested against truth conditions, or evaluated for fairness, and McCullough has no difficult giving examples of theories favoured by a historian being abandoned in the face of the evidence. For example, Christopher Hill worked hard to explain the English Civil War within a Marxist framework of class based antagonisms and openly acknowledged that this cannot be reconciled with the evidence; other explanations were far superior. He also gives examples where one subject is examined in different ways by historians with different interests, pointing out that the subjective nature of their investigations has no bearing on either the truthfulness or the fairness of their accounts; some topics really can be seen in diverse ways that are each historically sound but that does not entail any sacrifice of the historian’s disciplined procedures.
McCullough works through a range of topics in history making, looking at sources for historical evidence and the types of problems historians address. Historians do search for accurate descriptions of the past, but they search also for an understanding of why things happened as they did, why alternatives failed to happen and how past circumstances gave rise to the present. Indeed, his account of history merges rather clearly into other disciplines and fields of study, since theories of human nature and social dynamics, of social change, of economics, or of the institutions and structures of society, not only require historical information but are in fact the concern of historians. “Without a knowledge of our history, we cannot understand our present society, nor plan intelligently for the future…those who would confine history to little narratives of particular episodes from the actors’ point of view would blind us to the structure of society and to the influence it can have on experience… Let us teach them [students] about the culture, society and institutions they have inherited, and of others which they should be careful to avoid, or which they should try to develop.” [309]
This is clearly a book that will be excluded from university libraries for the indefinite future. It is samizdat literature at its finest.
April 6, 2022
A remarkable book on the status of history, and what the assumptions are in its methods.
There is a deep and thorough discussion of what history is and can claim to know. It is not truth it ascends to but theories which have evidence for them, and can be overturned or refined with additional findings. The historical subject matter is intrinsically unstable and cannot claim to have ultimate truth such as in the mathematical axioms.
Compelling to have read this a number of years ago, and it would be worth revisiting some time soon again.
There is a deep and thorough discussion of what history is and can claim to know. It is not truth it ascends to but theories which have evidence for them, and can be overturned or refined with additional findings. The historical subject matter is intrinsically unstable and cannot claim to have ultimate truth such as in the mathematical axioms.
Compelling to have read this a number of years ago, and it would be worth revisiting some time soon again.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews