True. I would just hope that the years in university have taught me to recognize my own biases, write them down to the readers of my texts to evaluate on their own, and to look at each research text I'm reading without thinking if I agree with it or not, but by thinking how it's written.

I would hope I wouldn't start blaming the bias of the writers at any point, but instead conclude on more scientific merits if their research is good or not. Likewise I would hope I could just shrug and chuckle the next time someone calls me a Soviet symphatizer because I didn't use 35 pages of the 40 page seminar thesis to tell how evil the Soviet cinema system was. (Not referring to this thread, as it hasn't happened here.)

I would hope that is what separates me, a future professional of history, from the countless of people thinking they are experts in history because they can read. For history is a difficult science, because it makes everyone an expert. Everyone who can read can also read history. They are usually even free to go and study the original sources themselves. They can do most of the things professionals can, but that doesn't make them professionals.

As a professor in my university so well summarized it: "It's very difficult to debate with commoners [poor translation by me, but he didn't mean it as an insult], because they know so much."

You mean he might know what "allegation" means and at what point the word can no longer be used?
perhaps patch should take bubbles place in lawskool:03:
But on the literacy level maybe that deserves some exploration, could it be that patch has taken the usual historical take on the co-prosperity enterprise and got to the words "racist" and "conservative" and hit a mental block?

@tater, you are just showing your bias there.:yeah:

Don't forget Eagle Against the Sun by Ronald Spector.

Phillippine Diary, 1939-1945 by Steven Mellnik
Corregidor: The Rock Force Assault by EM Flanagan
With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa by EB Sledge

I don't know, I tend to think of "Left wing academia" in the same way I think of the "Liberal media" - in the sense that it's something that the opposition always points to as a ridiculous source of bias, and yet when you look at it neutrally, you see that there's plenty of extremes on both sides, and that this is where a lot of the slogans and threads like this come out of. They don't come out of nowhere, after all. Working in academia, I have met many rather conservative people, including several fields of study (literature, philosophy, humanities/liberal arts) where Christian scholars at least a very large and vocal minority, and certainly a number of fields (business, public affairs, politics) where I have seen an overwhelmingly market-liberal majority whose social views often approach neoconservatism. Unlike some people, I've learned to not only live with but also appreciate their views, as long as they're not jerks about them and have the courtesy to follow norms of academic debate. And oh, there are plenty of jerks in academia, of any political persuasion, don't get me wrong on that. But that's pretty true of the rest of the world as well.

The idea that academia is some sort of spawning ground for communism and anti-patriotic feelings is pretty ludicrous though. It's just that to some people's narrow views, any questioning of their nation's and culture's inherent "rightness" constitutes betrayal, and apparently engaging in critical pitching of alternatives (and their refutation or reconsideration) is no better than treason. Such people have usually been given slogans by politicians who fear academia's acceptance of open debate and rejection of 'sacred cows', and have swallowed them up whole, without reflecting on the reality of things. Because after all, it's easier to live in a "patriotic" mindset than to be able to take criticism and stand up to it not with slogans, but with evidence, reason and respect for etiquette. There is no reason that the suggestion that Japan is the victim of aggression should make you angry - unless you were directly and mockingly approached by someone who screamed that repeatedly in your face and ran away. If you know it's false, then it shouldn't make you angry, because you should be able to give a substantiated, polite, logical response without resorting to ALL CAPS and attacking red herrings like Wikipedia and that mythical left-winger in California. The idea that America is "an evil empire" shouldn't make you angry, unless you are actually afraid that it's true. For everything else, there are critical methods and etiquette that can guide one through a discussion without compromising anyone's core values, accepting preposterous ideas, or resorting to personal attacks, slogans, and rhetorical fallacies. It is however woefully apparent that some people have no clue about critical methods and etiquette, but are walking encyclopedias of preposterous ideas (either their own or attributed to fictitious opposition), personal attacks, political slogans, and rhetorical fallacies. THAT, my friends, is what really makes me worried about the education system - far more so than the supposed encroachment of revisionism.

I would never pretend not to be biased. Being human, I can't help it. All one can do (if they even wish to) is to try and make it more subtle.

My bias is going to always be clear where "death by government" is concerned. Put 2 countries next to each other, and the one with the bigger democide body count is worse (bigger by number, or ratio of population). The US killed at least a few hundred thousand civilians that might not have been killed, but the japs bumped off millions (and that's without going into bombing actually saving net lives, which it very likely did (doesn't suck less if you're the one getting bombed, though)).

As for "professionals," it's more a matter of time than anything else. Primary sources, for example. I'm very well read in a few areas of history (ww2 in particular), and I am long past "popular" mass-market books in ww2, anyway. Still, I simply don't have the time or inclination to look at primary sources much except for some stuff on the net now (many of the post-war interrogations of japanese officers are now online, and are fascinating reads). It clearly gets far more complex as you get farther back into ancient history, as you need to start thinking about archeology, etc. "Primary sources" would be a dream come true for many areas/eras, no?


History is NOT a "science," however.

With me its quite opposite.
That's why i don't ignore jerks like Tribesman.

That's again may be due to lack of academic tools on my side.:haha:

"Revisionist History" is not necessarily a bad thing as new evidence emerges due to the declassification of documents, accessing previously unused sources or for any number of reasons.

All history is subjective and bias inevitable. Dig deep and most historical accounts of anything are riddled with mythology, propaganda and the apocryphal accepted as "Truth" or "Fact". Few historians have matched Thucydides for objectivity.

Here at SubSim some of the most respected historical works that are constantly referenced by respected Members of the Forum are in many respects "revisionist" in how their interpretation of event differ from the conventional account.

Shattered Sword rewrites the Battle of Midway in a manner that answered many of those nasty little logical contradictions in the mainstream narratives.

Hitler's U-Boat War changed the narrative of the Battle of the Atlantic by concentrating on the convoys that got through instead of the traditional merchant ship body-count and feasting on the Allied disasters that featured in most popular works.

Currently great work is being done on the history of World War 1 as German records believed lost in Allied bombing raids or carted off into captivity in 1945 are discovered in archives where they have laid for decades. More English language historians are using French, Belgian, Austrian and Russian documents previously ignored or unavailable and these are challenging the orthodoxy of the common accounts of the war and backing up the new narrative with some impressive evidence.

There are certainly some schools of thought that intentionally project their political or social agendas into history. Rather than raving about them, one should identify their bias, deconstruct their arguments and offer up evidence that suits your agenda. Because you know you have one: we all do somewhere.

It's a great time to have an interest in history if one can keep an open and skeptical mind.

I agree with both of you. Here in interwebz I don't mind that trench warfare to which discussion here often go (atleast with formula politics+usa). Face-to-face I prefer more hegemonic people.I try not to but sometimes temptation is quite high. Its good that discussions with Tribesman happen here in boards and not face-to-face.

Elaborate, please.

How do you test history using scientific methodology?

Want an unbiased account?

Read "flyboys"

War is hell, WWII in the PTO was a unique special kind of hell on earth.

I'll never read that book again. :cry:

I read it. There may have been worse places to get shot down over than Chi Chi Jima but none come to mind.

What does the dictionary say about "social sciences"? I'm genuinely curious.

Just for the record since I'm not a native speaker: the Finnish language doesn't in normal use make a distinction between the sciences. We naturally have a term for natural sciences as well as social sciences, but refer to these generally just as "sciences", for example "history science". If your definition of science in English concerns natural sciences, then I can understand the point.

However, if you exclude social sciences completely from the scientific field, then I must disagree.

You mix it with theological one sometimes.
To be good historian you need to be analytical and psychologist and have some good knowledge of the period in time and its mentality.
Then you make educated guesses(like in archaeology) when no concrete evidence exists-which is the fun part and problematic one also bias prone.
Some so called facts can be interpreted differently and given different wight therefore outcome can vary.
The question then is if those so called interpretation are within the established academic norm that also may vary in between between different institutions in some cases.

Boy I am I glad that I get my historical information from the most trusted source The History Channel.:D

Personally I think any "historian" is going to have some bias one way or another which is why the person digesting the information needs come in expecting there to be some angle this is why it is best to read about a given topic from multiple points of view(short of blatantly biased stuff) if you read every angle you can better understand the "truth" as they say.

I always like accounts written by ones that where there such as E.B. Sledge
just a person telling what they saw and did nothing more.

By they way some what related to the topic has anyone every seen the film "City of Life and Death" it is about Nanking in 1937 it a Chinese film but the Japanese
are all Japanese actors interestingly enough.

I don't know if this is the case with every Japanese but my friends wife is Okinawan and she obviously went to Japanese schools and they are taught a very revisionist
view on Japans role in WWII.

sleep science
 

double post

sleep science
 

The science label is thrown around pretty loosely these days but you should agree that there is a rather large difference between the natural and social when it comes to demonstrating cause and effect.

History, as in the research of the past, is an academic discipline taught in (Western) universities since the 19th century. It has formed its methods of systematically gaining knowledge of the unknown. It is as dedicated to this goal as any science should be. It changes when new discoveries are made and discussion is based on new interpretations of old theories. It aspires for knowledge of the past, while it may not ever be completely possible.

How is that not scientific?

Sorry, I replied before you edited. You are right, there is a clear difference between social sciences and natural sciences. It is much more easy (at least according to my layman knowledge of natural sciences) to prove that 1 + 1 is 2, than to prove what Julius Caesar thought when the invaded Britain. History can also use more definitive methods such as statistics, but it's still often based on the best material we can work with and in the end is always subject to interpretation because we can't ask Caesar directly.

I would consider history a science more because of the things I wrote in the first paragraph. Especially if you compare what "history" and writing it were before evolving into a more scientific direction.

The definition of natural science and evidentiality is also a problematic one. In the end, the tricky thing is that no science is free of values and observer bias - even the 'hardest' and most natural, which by the way are some of the more problematic ones philosophically precisely because of claims to positivism.

Historiography as a field of study exists exactly for that reason - to develop forms, norms and measures for history. In that sense, history is even somewhat more reflective than many other sciences on its methods, because it constantly returns to questions of "why" and "how", and doubts itself more readily.