Linguist Roy Harris on history III: what should be expected of historians

Still am reading for duty right now more than pleasure….

Harris himself in his book, The Linguistics of History:

It is up to the historian to make clear at some point what kind of communicational authenticity the historia is presented as having in that particular case, which means explaining how its various components and materials are selected and integrated.  That is a considerable demand.  Historians are not accustomed to meeting it, because for generations they have coasted along on the built-up prestige that accrues to their discipline.  History is now prisoner to its own processes of historification. 

The demand I am voicing is not met by listing ‘sources’ in footnotes: that merely defers the accountability.  It requires the historian to come clean about, for example, what has been taken over unquestioned from earlier historians, what has been subjected to fresh research, what relationships have been reinterpreted through the perspective adopted, what has been ignored because deemed to be irrelevant, and what has been highlighted because it happens to have a bearing on contemporary concerns.  A historian may well protest that such a demand would require extensive expansions or annotations not just to every paragraph, but to every sentence, and perhaps to every other word.  So it might.  But if ‘truth’ is what is being claimed, a proliferation of caveats cluttering the text seems a small price to pay in the service of such a noble cause (223, 224).

I wonder if Harris is indeed asking too much.  And at the same time, it seems to me that many historians already take account of all of these things.  Then again, perhaps I don’t read enough history to really know. 

Linguist Roy Harris on history II: the inexactness of language

Still am reading for duty right now more than pleasure….

Another quotation in Roy Harris’ book, The Linguistics of History:

Only in the individual does language receive its ultimate determinacy.  Nobody means by a word precisely and exactly what his neighbor does, and the difference, be it ever so small, vibrates, like a ripple in water, throughout the entire language.  Thus all understanding is always at the same time a not-understanding, all concurrence in thought and feeling at the same time a divergence  (Humboldt, On Language, Cambridge U. Press, 1988 [1836], 63)

Harris says of this quote: 

Here we see one of the most penetrating of post-Renaissance thinkers about language struggling against the traditional assumptions of the Western Language myth (NOTE: one would need to read Harris here to do justice to his understanding of this myth).  The passage I have quoted deserves in itself a chapter of explication and probably a whole book, to say nothing of the work from which it comes, which is the Introduction to Humboldt’s posthumously published Uber die Kawi-Spache auf der Insel Jawa....(185, 186)

Elsewhere in his book, Harris says that, “Do we know what we are talking about?”, a question of linguistic epistemology, is the fundamental question of philosophy (47) (this, he says, is what Plato saw and tried to answer with his doctrine of the forms, 48).  Undoubtedly related to this are his questions like the following, which are especially important for the historian: “How do I know that my words actually mean what I think I am saying?”, “How can I be sure that my words mean what someone else takes them to mean?”, and “How do I know that my words state what is really the case?”(8).  

It seems clear to me that Harris deserves credit here for making questions such as these explicit – it really would be good and salutary for more historians (and others) to reflect here!  But at the same time, for Harris, these questions are asked not with the intention of offering modern historians a minor course correction, but rather to help throw the supposedly venerable institution of which they are a part of into doubt.  In other words, these questions are meant to assist as show-stoppers en route to paving the way for Harris’ own intellectual program, i.e. integrational linguistics.

 What does this look like?  Here is a taste: 

 ...the question... arises for Humboldt as to whether history is the same for any two individuals whose understanding of the past is based on the readings of texts... An integrationist would go further.  The determinacy, if there is any, has to be sought at the level of the particular communication situation. (186)

Thoughts about this?

Linguist Roy Harris on history: “post-structuralist panic”

Am reading for duty right now more than pleasure…. (not that duty cannot be pleasurable)

Came across the following quotation in Roy Harris’ book, The Linguistics of History:

Narrative form in history, as in fiction, is an artifice, the product of individual imagination.  Yet at the same time it is accepted as claiming truth – that is, representing a real ensemble of interrelationships in past actuality.  Nor can we say that narrative form is like a hypothesis in science, which is the product of individual imagination but once suggested leads to research that can confirm or disconfirm it.  The crucial difference is that the narrative combination of relations is simply not subject to confirmation or disconfirmation, as any one of them taken separately might be.  So we have a second dilemma about historical narrative: as historical it claims to represent, through its form, part of the real complexity of the past, but as a narrative it is a product of imaginative construction, which cannot defend its claim to truth by an accepted procedure of argument or authentication.  (Mink, Historical Understanding, Cornell U. Press, 1987, 199)

(whatever you think of the above quote, isn’t this well put?)

This, Harris says, is “post-structuralist panic, with ensuing rush for the lifeboats” (162).  Harris says that “the problem [here] is generated by its location in a post-structuralist desert.  There the language-user is found wandering in a no-man’s land, where no one (male or female, historian or histopathologist) is quite sure about how words relate to anything at all”. (162)

What do you think of the problem that Mink identifies?  Is it a problem?  What about Harris’ diagnosis?

Popper, Karl ; Conjectures and Refutations, chapter 1(d): On the sources of knowledge and ignorance

NOTE: the hope is to do one post/week in the coming months. 

Popper, Karl ; Conjectures and Refutations - the growth of scientific knowledge (1968, c1963)

Chapter 1(d)

Popper begins to discuss Bacon's induction, mentioning his distinction between "anticipatio mentis" (attempts to "interpret what is manifest in nature in the light of non-manifest causes or of hypotheses"-Popper's words, 14) and "interpretatio naturae" (which Popper translates: "the (true) reading of nature").  The latter, Popper says, is "the spelling out of, the book of Nature" (me: basically, Nature is a book and we study its essential parts of God's language, the letters that it is composed of).  "Interpretation" here is not meant to be subjective (all understandings of "interpretation" in the modern sense here should be avoided), but a simple reading of the objective text of nature.  Popper says its original meaning was: "reading aloud for those who cannot read themselves".  Today, a judge interpreting the law implies a certain latitude ; not so in Bacon's day: one applied it in the one and only right way.  The latitude allowed is no more than that of a sworn interpreter translating a legal document (13, 14).

Popper further notes that for Bacon, his method of induction results in certain knowledge (episteme) and not in conjectures or hypotheses (me: What is manifest in nature can only be interpreted by that which is manifest).  Regarding "anticipatio mentis" Popper quotes Locke: "men give themselves up to the first anticipation of their minds", which leads to guesswork and a misreading of the book of Nature (doxa).  It is basically "prejudice" or "superstition" (related to 'anticipatio deorum", harboring naive or primitive or superstitious views about the gods).  Evidently, Bacon himself (according to the Oxford English Dictionary) introduced the verb "to prejudge" ("to judge adversely in advance") in the English legal context.   

Popper now states that what Bacon rejects, he accepts: a method of interpretation ; of conjecture, or hypothesis, that is.  Bacon says that we must purge our minds of false beliefs, or idols, and this includes all anticipations, conjectures, guesses and prejudices - for these distort our observations (Nov. Org. i, 68, 69 end, 97) - our ability to discern "the kind of thing whose true essence or nature we wish to ascertain".  For our souls "to face the eternal light of essences or natures" (Augustine, City of God, VIII, 3), "our impure prejudices must be exorcised by the invocation of counter-instances" (Nov. Org. ii, 16 ff).  Then, we can begin to diligently spell out the open book of Nature, the manifest truth.  Popper says that fundamentally, Aristotle, Bacon, Socrates (maieutic), and Descartes (systematic doubt) are all similar: destroying false prejudices in order to get at the "unshakable basis of self-evident truth" (14, 15).  

Popper collapses their views into one by saying that the natural state of man is an "innocent eye which can see the truth", and state of ignorance due to the injury of the eye has to do with man's fall from grace, which can be partially healed by this purification.  Therefore, this optimistic epistemology - "not only in Descartes' but also in Bacon's form" - "remains a religious doctrine in which the source of all knowledge is divine authority".  He does note that "one might say that", "encouraged by the divine 'essences' or divine 'natures' of Plato, and by the traditional Greek opposition between the truthfulness of nature and the deceitfulness of man-made convention, Bacon substitutes, in his epistemology, 'Nature' for 'God'" - which may be why when our minds have been purified , even our sometimes unreliable senses (for Plato hopelessly impure) will be pure (15).    
 
My summary: Socrates, Aristotle, Bacon and Descarte all believed that one could determine essences, and arrive at "the unshakable basis of self-evident truth".  This is a religious doctrine rooted in divine authority: the source of all knowledge.  Popper's method of conjecture or hypothesis is different, he says.  

My comments/critique: Popper evidently sees himself as being an advocate of a more secular epistemology - one not rooted in divine authority.  Again, it is interesting that so much good has come from these religious folks.  Popper does talk about how it is very difficult to get to the truth - but evidently, the method he will discuss will have little to do with "purification" in the sense he sees these men holding to it.  I wish that he would have said more about how all of these men - who undoubtedly had many differences - specifically advised people to purifiy themselves.  Was this an intellectual, or a mind-emptying kind of purification?  Was it a purification that took place by looking to something inside of man or outside of man?  I think this especially interesting because a man like Bacon, for instance, who evidently believed the Bible, also believed that when it came to the earth's natural history, the Bible should not control our inquiry at all.  At the same time, I am guessing that turning to God and His truth may have had something to do with His purification (although I am somewhat familiar with the teaching of "idols" Bacon used where he critiqued common superstitions or biases men had).  Or maybe not.  Inquiring minds want to know - and I suppose this may mean reading Bacon.   

Apologies...

...to any readers I may have out there.  Life has happened, and time for this blog has been "backburnered".   Intentions are good though... (after Christmas?) 

Worldly self-worth

"Consumers who are deeply religious are less likely to display an explicit preference for a particular brand, while more secular populations are more prone to define their self-worth through loyalty to corporate brands instead of religious denominations."

Read more here (found here) 

I hope to do be back to Barfield and Popper in about two-threee weeks.  Until then, posts like this will be the norm. 

Ideas (or truth?) have consequences

Not of this world indeed:

The Roman world was brutal and generally indifferent to suffering. Sympathy and mercy were weaknesses, virtues anathema to those of Rome. The ancient world was both decadent and cruel. The practice of infanticide, for example, was widespread and legal throughout the Greek and Roman world during the early days of Christianity. In fact, abortion, infanticide, and child sacrifice were extremely common throughout the ancient world....

Historical research reveals that infanticide was common throughout India, China, Japan, and the Brazilian jungles as well as among the Eskimos. Dr. James Dennis, writing in the 1890s, showed how infanticide was common in many parts of Africa and was “well known among the Indians of North and South America” (Social Evils of the Non-Christian World, 1898). Suffice it to say, for much of the world and throughout most of its history the culture of death and brutality has been the rule, and a culture of life, love, and mercy has been the exception. It is to the cause of this exception that we now turn...

Read it all: (found here)