(no subject)
прекрасный комментарий на HN, отзыв на стандартную статью о "пользе истории":
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5349274
History doesn't need to justify itself any more than Literature or Dance does.
But trying to turn it into something it's not -- a way of discovering new facts about the world -- is incredibly dangerous. Most educated people are aware that there are limits of reason, such as situations where the facts are so thin that the only honest answer is "I don't know". They are aware of the limits of science, where there is no practical experiment to falsify a claim and you have to fall back on tentative strategies like Popper's.
But then these people look at history, and see this giant pile of anecdotes, and all the sudden it's the Middle Ages again and we can hermenutic our way to wisdom by staring at it really hard, or as this website puts it, "having repeated experience in historical inquiry". But I don't get it; if there's a heuristic for knowing when trying to solve problems with history is worse than nothing, I've missed it. Until I figure that out I'm going to have to stick with "always", and this webpage doesn't give me a lot of reason to think otherwise.
How can history possibly be harmful? The OP makes the case repeatedly:
"History Helps Us Understand People and Societies", but it doesn't give us any basis for knowing if that understanding is based on broad stereotype or outright lies, or worse yet, someone else's interpretation of history: a game of telephone stretching back to the dawn of communication. Merely becoming an experienced historian so that you're less likely to fall into that trap isn't sufficient; you're starting at worse than zero so you have to assume you've just gotten less terrible until you have some solid reason to think otherwise.
"History Provides Identity." Identity, of course, being an organized system for dehumanizing other people. That history, true or false, is an incredibly powerful tool for doing this does it no favors as something you should voluntarily poison your mind with.
"Studying History Is Essential for Good Citizenship." Here we're getting back around to a better excuse for studying history: If it really is unavoidable, and history is somehow part of us that we cannot destroy, then maybe we need to fill that hunger with a nice pablum like the US civics curriculum. It's a harm minimization strategy, like giving opiate addicts a supply of quality morphine so they don't stick whatever they find on the street into their veins.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5349274
History doesn't need to justify itself any more than Literature or Dance does.
But trying to turn it into something it's not -- a way of discovering new facts about the world -- is incredibly dangerous. Most educated people are aware that there are limits of reason, such as situations where the facts are so thin that the only honest answer is "I don't know". They are aware of the limits of science, where there is no practical experiment to falsify a claim and you have to fall back on tentative strategies like Popper's.
But then these people look at history, and see this giant pile of anecdotes, and all the sudden it's the Middle Ages again and we can hermenutic our way to wisdom by staring at it really hard, or as this website puts it, "having repeated experience in historical inquiry". But I don't get it; if there's a heuristic for knowing when trying to solve problems with history is worse than nothing, I've missed it. Until I figure that out I'm going to have to stick with "always", and this webpage doesn't give me a lot of reason to think otherwise.
How can history possibly be harmful? The OP makes the case repeatedly:
"History Helps Us Understand People and Societies", but it doesn't give us any basis for knowing if that understanding is based on broad stereotype or outright lies, or worse yet, someone else's interpretation of history: a game of telephone stretching back to the dawn of communication. Merely becoming an experienced historian so that you're less likely to fall into that trap isn't sufficient; you're starting at worse than zero so you have to assume you've just gotten less terrible until you have some solid reason to think otherwise.
"History Provides Identity." Identity, of course, being an organized system for dehumanizing other people. That history, true or false, is an incredibly powerful tool for doing this does it no favors as something you should voluntarily poison your mind with.
"Studying History Is Essential for Good Citizenship." Here we're getting back around to a better excuse for studying history: If it really is unavoidable, and history is somehow part of us that we cannot destroy, then maybe we need to fill that hunger with a nice pablum like the US civics curriculum. It's a harm minimization strategy, like giving opiate addicts a supply of quality morphine so they don't stick whatever they find on the street into their veins.