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gwydionHere is a Thing I Wrote on Tumblr in Response to a Person raising points about Biases in How we Veiw History, Evolutionary Psychology, and Economics.
I agree, particularly on the Evolutionary Psychologists. A hundred+ years ago, pink was still generally considered a "boy" colour as it was a softer form of red, and thus associated with blood and war. Pink being a "girl" colour is really, really new. All those “evolutionary psychologists”needed to do was ask their parents and grandparents about cultural constructions of colour and gender roles.
I agree that history is constructed. One of the first assignments we had way back at the beginning of my Master's program in the early half of the '90's was to read a piece by a particular 19th century Historian. It was a stomach churning mess of Antisemitism and German Nationalism. I was horrified, but did the assignment as my professor was Jewish and I trusted that there was a good reason he had us read this bit of filth. There was. This historian was incredibly respected in his day and was held up as an example of the new ideal of writing "objective" history. This was confusing to us. How could this 19th century precursor to Nazism be considered "objective" when everything was so slanted? You see, up until then, German historians fell into two camps: the pro-Catholic and the pro-Protestant. (These had a geographic basis as well. The concept of a United Germany was very new at that point and people living in what had until recently been independent or semi-independent states had huge animosities, so there were pro-Prussian and anti-Prussian writers and the like). This monster of propaganda was considered by his contemporaries to be objective because he was even-handed along religious and regional lines. They couldn't see their own biases. Neither can we. We were given this as a warning and a reminder: to remember that no one is objective and that it generally takes someone from outside to spot assumptions and biases. This doesn't absolve us of trying to examine our unspoken assumptions etc., but it means that being human, we will fail to spot them all because we all have blind spots. We construct history out of a mix of sources and archaeological data, but those sources all have biases and archaeological data can be misread because we are looking through a cultural lens constructed from birth.
I think of this often. It can be spotted in the Etruscan "Princess" originally labelled a "Prince" because the mostly men who dug her up assumed only men would have weapons as grave goods, though her skeleton made them retract on further examination. You can see it all the time in Evolutionary Psychologists superimposing 1950's western gender roles on past cultures and in the mess various people studying animal behavior in 19th through most of the 20th century made out of the study of other species because they superimposed hierarchies or gender roles or hetero-normative behavior on other species, carefully omitting data and behaviors that didn't fit their notions of how animals should behave or by making assumptions that animals in captivity perfectly model behaviors seen in the wild. (See wolves, any primate but particularly chimps and bonobos, penguins, dolphins, and any species in the reference work "Biological Exuberance").
History is not a science, much as I love it and have been studying it one my own or under direction my whole life.
I agree also about Libertarians and their lack of grasp of the way a couple hundred years of good economic data tends to back Keynes and not Supply side economics, let alone their failure to study world history or economics across time. (I have a really long economics and the Roman Empire rant as well as one on a how a whole bunch of stuff that happened in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe over the last thousand years shaped modern economics. Oh and then there's my what banking regulation and tax policy in the U S has done to both the U S and World economy and my comparative economics rant, or my the Right is using massively flawed economic analogies for things that aren't analogous rant, or the rant about people who have no idea what it's like living on minimum wage or even had to live on strict budget are completely unqualified to make decisions that effect the whole economy rant.... I know, I know, time to stop writing).
I agree, particularly on the Evolutionary Psychologists. A hundred+ years ago, pink was still generally considered a "boy" colour as it was a softer form of red, and thus associated with blood and war. Pink being a "girl" colour is really, really new. All those “evolutionary psychologists”needed to do was ask their parents and grandparents about cultural constructions of colour and gender roles.
I agree that history is constructed. One of the first assignments we had way back at the beginning of my Master's program in the early half of the '90's was to read a piece by a particular 19th century Historian. It was a stomach churning mess of Antisemitism and German Nationalism. I was horrified, but did the assignment as my professor was Jewish and I trusted that there was a good reason he had us read this bit of filth. There was. This historian was incredibly respected in his day and was held up as an example of the new ideal of writing "objective" history. This was confusing to us. How could this 19th century precursor to Nazism be considered "objective" when everything was so slanted? You see, up until then, German historians fell into two camps: the pro-Catholic and the pro-Protestant. (These had a geographic basis as well. The concept of a United Germany was very new at that point and people living in what had until recently been independent or semi-independent states had huge animosities, so there were pro-Prussian and anti-Prussian writers and the like). This monster of propaganda was considered by his contemporaries to be objective because he was even-handed along religious and regional lines. They couldn't see their own biases. Neither can we. We were given this as a warning and a reminder: to remember that no one is objective and that it generally takes someone from outside to spot assumptions and biases. This doesn't absolve us of trying to examine our unspoken assumptions etc., but it means that being human, we will fail to spot them all because we all have blind spots. We construct history out of a mix of sources and archaeological data, but those sources all have biases and archaeological data can be misread because we are looking through a cultural lens constructed from birth.
I think of this often. It can be spotted in the Etruscan "Princess" originally labelled a "Prince" because the mostly men who dug her up assumed only men would have weapons as grave goods, though her skeleton made them retract on further examination. You can see it all the time in Evolutionary Psychologists superimposing 1950's western gender roles on past cultures and in the mess various people studying animal behavior in 19th through most of the 20th century made out of the study of other species because they superimposed hierarchies or gender roles or hetero-normative behavior on other species, carefully omitting data and behaviors that didn't fit their notions of how animals should behave or by making assumptions that animals in captivity perfectly model behaviors seen in the wild. (See wolves, any primate but particularly chimps and bonobos, penguins, dolphins, and any species in the reference work "Biological Exuberance").
History is not a science, much as I love it and have been studying it one my own or under direction my whole life.
I agree also about Libertarians and their lack of grasp of the way a couple hundred years of good economic data tends to back Keynes and not Supply side economics, let alone their failure to study world history or economics across time. (I have a really long economics and the Roman Empire rant as well as one on a how a whole bunch of stuff that happened in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe over the last thousand years shaped modern economics. Oh and then there's my what banking regulation and tax policy in the U S has done to both the U S and World economy and my comparative economics rant, or my the Right is using massively flawed economic analogies for things that aren't analogous rant, or the rant about people who have no idea what it's like living on minimum wage or even had to live on strict budget are completely unqualified to make decisions that effect the whole economy rant.... I know, I know, time to stop writing).