"History is more or less bunk" Topic

link

I nice little page (no longer new) that gets to the heart of the matter: i.e. arguing anything FROM history is more or less pointless, for the reasons stated….

Sorry but who is this guy? And why should his words be important?

Damon.

Henry Ford. He built cars. If you own a Chevy or a Toyota, probably not at all.

But in fact, he is right. It does however make for a good excuse to buy toy soldiers.

He also did not like Jews, Blacks, etc.

I wouldn't take him too seriously.

M.

I wouldn't take him too seriously.

I quite agree.

Damon.

Jeez Doug, you buy this guy's arguments?

Lets examine one of them:

You're in 1970, OK? I ask you to predict, to foretell the general sexual climate of 1994. Boy, would you have been wrong. And, you had all the data right under your nose, too. Syphilis, influenza, the Black Death. Two-thirds of the native populations of the Americas wiped out by imported diseases.

Let's see. In 1970 you couldn't predict the sexual climate 24 years later. All this despite the fact we know Europeans introduced smallpox to the New World. Ya,….riiiiiiight. Excellent insight!

BTW, syphilis already existed in the New World. It mutated with the European strain and became the more virulent version of today. In fact, syphilis ravaged Europe more so than the New World. Oh well, it's only a historical fact, and therefore bunk.

Ralph

The author of the article starts out with a number of misconceptions in regards to what can or cannot be learned from history. He then attempts to give credence to his argument by quoting a number of famous statements and offers this as justification for his beliefs without any supporting evidence.

He seems to think that the purpose in learning history is to be able predict the future. This is not the reason one attempts to learn from history. The lessons of history are to not repeat the same mistakes if possible or at least learn how to cope with current issues by looking at what has worked or not worked before. If we were to follow the writer's logic to its very false conclusions nothing would be learned from trial and error.

Does this now mean bunk is history? So aliens and the Aztecs built the Pyramids of Egypt using anti-gravity technology from Area 51?

I couldn't even work out what his argument was!

But you're basing that statement on his history.

In context, Ford was saying that History, as it is currently taught, is bunk. Naturally, wise asses have condensed his quote to its, err, more pithy essence.
It was as correct when he said it as it is today.

Ford became enamored of social history: with the lives of ordinary workers and the material culture of the past Today, he'd be lumped in with those sneered at as "Marxist historians". Eugen Weber, from UCLA, wrote, "The sort of history that Ford wanted is pretty much the history that we do today."

Oh, the irony.

Allen

Good point about how history is taught – that being said, the idea that we have nothing to learn from history is bunk as well – I would recommend reading some of Keegan or even Dyer

History is composed of stories created by people with their own agendas. Just as any lessons learned are.

"History is composed of stories created by people with their own agendas. Just as any lessons learned are."

Not always--if you take primary historical sources then it is pretty difficult to deny what happened and generally how it happened--IE The Battle of the Somme, the Blitz the Holocaust…the problems start when historians quote from either secondary(paperwork etc) or tertiary(other historical works) sources..Things get twisted and assumptions are made about events…One that I have heard is about the Tiger II's at Goodwood…A historian was saying at a talk about how the company of Tiger II's counterattacked and drove back the British etc etc, when this man put up his hand and said "er no you are wrong…All but 2 tanks were knocked out and all they did was long range shelling" The historian asked for his sources and the man said--"I was the Company commander of the unit!!!"

Also as has been said above about the quote--No you can't predict the future from the past but you can learn from it (although people still seem not to)--An oft used saying in Britain is that "Lesson must be learned"…

A pointless article or an article without a point
I cannot make up my mind. I have seen better writing in fortune cookies!

Still, he must have thought it was profound as he too the trouble to copyright it!

The article states that to aim of history is to allow folks to make a profit?
Look at the south sea bubble, the stock market crash and the recent financial problems. It will tell you that greed will overcome prudence.

His example on sex is flawed, do you base base the projection of the future based on a particular year?

What is wrong with reinterpreting history?

For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. – WWI General Max Hoffman

Cheomesh

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He also did not like Jews, Blacks, etc.

I wouldn't take him too seriously.

Just because someone does not like certain groups of people, you wouldn't take him too seriously? Even if what he was talking about was not related to his dislikes?

I intensely dislike , but I take him very seriously. I couldn't do otherwise as <censored political statement>.

"History is a set of lies agreed upon." Boneparte

Bigots were very common in Ford's day. No excuse by today's standards but those times were different. My grandfather was a bigot most of his life. It was only in his latter years that some of these feelings were diminished. We are for the most part a product of our upbringing. Thank goodness my father broke the cycle of bigotry and instilled in me much of what MLK said; to judge a man by his character and not by the color of his skin (or ethnicity)

So, long-winded as this is, my grandfather was quite intelligent, had several patents and a doctorate of electrical engineering. He contributed greatly in research and development in WWII through Bell Labs. Also, he contributed quite a bit to the Cold War era (White Sands missile delivery systems, etc.) So, because he was a bigot and a product of his times, does this make my grandfather someone to be ignored? Or does it make him a flawed human being whose contributions outweighed his flaws? I choose the latter and I also choose to believe that Ford had many great contributions and that his flaws do not outweigh these. And yes, history is sometimes bunk! LOL

Primary sources have the virtue of being the nearest at hand to events, but they're still filtered through a human being who has his own story to tell – often that means blurring over parts of the story that don't support their viewpoint and propping up those that do.

The first lesson a serious historian learns is that history, like all human endeavors, is flawed by its very nature.

It's a common saying among historians that a history book generally tells us more about the age in which it was written than the age about which it was written.

A good percentage of anything created by man is bunk. That's just our nature. It's also in our nature to approach the sublime. The ratio isn't even, though.

The dichotomy of the human being is something I am fascinated by--How some people who do great great evil (Hitler for example) are considered very often to be very nice chaps==Loving to children and kind to animals etc etc==by the people closest to them yet at the same time murdering millions in cold blood… Likewise in art/ music Wagner was a terrible anti-semite but his music is very good..Can you seperate the two facets of his persona??

Also public figures who stand up to be paragons of moral purity and virtue end up being found out as complete degenerates…

"Also public figures who stand up to be paragons of moral purity and virtue end up being found out as complete degenerates…"

Yep. Isn't it wonderful?

Before studying History – examine the writing of History and you will discover gems like these:

A lot of guys have had a lot of fun joking about Henry Ford because he admitted one time that he didn't know history. He don't know it, but history will know him. He has made more history than his critics ever read.
~Will Rogers

The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down.
~A. Whitney Brown, The Big Picture

History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there.
~George Santayana

It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world would occasionally swap history books, just to see what other people are doing with the same set of facts.
~Bill Vaughan

History is the open Bible: we historians are not priests to expound it infallibly: our function is to teach people to read it and to reflect upon it for themselves.
~George Macaulay Trevelyan

There is nothing more dangerous than history used as a defense, or history used for preaching; history used as a tool is no longer history.
~Marcel Trudel

History… is, indeed, little more than the register of the 'crimes, follies, and misfortunes' of mankind. But what experience and history teach is this – that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.
~Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History, "Introduction," 1807

Perhaps nobody has changed the course of history as much as the historians. ~Franklin P. Jones

Of course this gets really fun when you point out that the Bible (old testament) is just a history of the Jewish peoples.

"if you take primary historical sources then it is pretty difficult to deny what happened and generally how it happened"

What fantasy world are you living in? I know – one where you make up all the stories of how things work. (Just like we all do.)

Try reading up on current theories of historiography sometime.

Learning from history is not a case of securing small and detailed facts. History teaches the broad picture.

Here's the very essence of History 101: You cannot win a war in Afghanistan.

I can see the attraction of this article for those who delight in the authoritive ill informed statement.

History can teach us an awful lot. But only if we make the effort to understand it.

Old Bear, your example is a good case of TOO broad a picture.

You CAN win a War in Afghanistan. You just need to be an Afghan to do so.

Pat

This topic is bunk.

When a person displays obvious prejudices then his/her whole thesis or opinion is suspect since it clearly already lacks objectivity. Saying you don't like a certain actor or athlete is not the same as discriminating against a whole culture or "race".

Don't you think the Texas school book approval process is a test of how wish history to work for the purposes we propose? The process of writing history is easily influenced. Who appointed them that demand what goes into the books?The facts do not alter. the books are the lenses that focus on some facts while others fall out of view. This aint the first time Texas School books played a role. There's always the TSB Repository in Dallas to remember.

Matsuru, wasn't the Texas book issue more about eliminating the History unit on "Hip Hop Music", and other examples of, shall we say, mild historical signifigance, in favor of units like "The Civil War"? :)

:) :) :)

I don't know how studying crop yields in Westphalia circa 1300-1500 is bunk. It's just dull. Conclusions about stuff can be bunk. Don't get me started on the historiograpy thing either. Yeah, dull but enlightning.

That author is a very ignorant, ill informed man.

History is a jangle of accidents, blunders, surprises and absurdities, and so is our knowledge of it, but if we are to report it at all we must impose some order upon it.

~Henry Steele Commanger, The Nature and the Study of History

I think the author missed the whole point of study of history. But "displays obvious prejudices", I am more bothered by those claim that they are completely objective, with Al Sharpton or Russ Limbaugh you at least know where they are coming from.

History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
~Edward Gibbon

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
~Alexis de Tocqueville

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
~George Santayana

History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
~Ambrose Bierce

The past is malleable and flexible, changing as our recollection interprets and re-explains what has happened.
~Peter Berger

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
~Winston Churchill

And my all-time favorite…

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
~Napoleon Bonaparte

Cheers,
Scott

whatever

He seems to think that the purpose in learning history is to be able predict the future.

Nah, he is saying that if you can't guide the future by looking into the past, history is worthless. He obviously isn't a wargamer!….

HeeHee (I think he's onto me) ….

History is for those who read it.

He is right about not being able to predict the future from the past, but is that really what the proper use of history is? I find history interesting because it helps me to understand where I came from and why things are the way they are. And of course it is constently reintrepreted… if there was a definitive answer to any question in history it would make the past awful boring. Cheers!

-BY

History is more like predicting earthquake science, than other physical sciences. One can be assured that an earthquake will happen in certain places of the world, but so far science cannot discern exactly where and when they will occur, and to what magnitude.

There are no "laws of history" like physics (which even now are being fuddled with)….

One reasonable assertion about history is that people will get it wrong, especially when they rely on ex-bartenders, movies, and radio talk show hosts (i. e. those, who dropped out of college after one half course in Christology) as their sole sources of historical info.

Another reasonable assertion is that the majority will liken history to bend to its own agenda, and it is up to historians' to balk at this.
JJ

"Here's the very essence of History 101: You cannot win a war in Afghanistan".
What a load of Crap!
If you have the resources, support of YOUR populace and (most importantly) the WILL you can win a war (regardless of geographic location).

With all due respect and forgive me for this, but a lot of you are conflating the study of history, with the philosophy of history, with political science.

History, as in the discipline is epistemologically is not in the prediction business. Indeed it is not in the generalisable hypotheses business. It primarily is in the interpretation and coding business and usually with strict focus on specific areas.

Philosophy of History is in the grand trends-globally valid hypotheses about past and future. Philosophers of history look at all of past events and tease out general universal trends that can predict the future with an idea of a telos, or a cycle. That is what people like Spengler, Hegel and others primarily did. They tend to take a macro-historical view of things looking at units of analysis like civilizations, economic systems, or all of human history.

Political Scientists look at the past only as far as the past can be credibly considered to have a direct, rather then indirect, and measurable impact on the present, in order to tease out variable relations that can be manipulated to produce different results and predict those results. They usually focus on a timeframe where it is reasonable to trace direct influences of past events (usually the last 200 years).

History¡¦s job is to illuminate and explain the past. This doesn¡¦t mean it can predict the future. But that illumination can have an effect on the present and future by changing the ideational structure society is built on. But history cannot predict those changes. PoliSci tends to tackle such questions, and historiography could be a variable in polisci models. Finally the most vast predictions, and hardest to assess epistemologically, are those of the philosophy of science.

Thy are also the ones usually disseminated in popular knowledge in really distorted forms.

I think history has many uses. I can be used as data, to illuminate questions, to entertain, to undermine traditions or reinforce them. It can be used as propaganda, or as example. But by itself I don¡¦t think it can predict. Now then you can be a cyclical history person, or a Marxist and believe that history has a major trend or pattern. But be aware that most of your hypotheses will not be falsifiable and thus not really that different from Dogmaƒº If one has a serious problem with the mushiness of history, religion is an answer.

I disagree strongly with the statement "You cannot win a war in Afghanistan." The Afghanis have won as many wars in Afghanistan as others have lost, so clearly they can be won. You just have to be Afghani.

Anyway, the thing about history is that if you study it and understand and aren't in a position of power and influence, then you just end up being really well-informed of how completely screwed we all are and how incredibly unlikely that is to change any time soon.

Those who don't understand history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do understand history are doomed to watch it repeat itself.

I disagree strongly with the statement "You cannot win a war in Afghanistan." The Afghanis have won as many wars in Afghanistan as others have lost, so clearly they can be won. You just have to be Afghani.

Do you really perceive that my statement 'you cannot win a war in Afghanistan' was ever intended to be anything other than a reference to foreign armies? if you did then you are extraordinarily out of date, as it is a common military maxim and to my knowledge never has the addendum 'unless you are an Afghan' added by anybody other than those looking to be slightly smug about the glaringly obvious.

Old Bear – Like so many maxims yours is wrong.

Afghanistan has been conquered by

-The Achaemenids
-Alexander the Great
-The Bactrians
-The Parthians
-The Kiddarite Huns
-The Seljuks
-The Ilkhanids
-The Ghaznavids
-Timur Leng
-Genghis Khan "Hey, Genghis are you crazy? You can't win a war in Afghanistaaaaaaaargh"

And I bet I have missed a few.

Do you think your maxim should read 'the last three wars in Afghanistan, while admittedly under-resourced, dogged by poor political decisions and lack of will to succeed have suggested that such a war will be difficult to win, despite the last so-called British defeat being followed by 40 years of effective hegemony that only really ended 1919 when we realised the place was worth sod-all and went home' ?

Not quite so Pithy, but has the advantage of being less obviously wrong..

And no, I am not being smug. What you choose to call the "Glaringly Obvious" is only glaringly obvious if you choose to ignore the bits of history that don't support your maxim – which is rather the point of this thread.

Pat

An impressive list, but it omits Nadir Shah of Persia who conquered Afghanistan in the 1740s, razing Kandahar in the process.