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HISTORY FROM WAY ABOVE Recognizing Patterns through the Fuzz and Fog of the Past

HISTORY FROM WAY ABOVE Recognizing Patterns through the Fuzz and Fog of the Past This contribution to part 4 of the Common Knowledge symposium “Fuzzy Studies: On the Consequence of Blur” shows how the reputedly radical position that history is not about eternal truths but about the creative construction of a convincing narrative of past events is not an argument of recent vintage. In the days when postmodernism was a technical term used mainly by scholars of art and architecture—and indeed, decades before then—professional historians were grappling with the incapacity of facts to write themselves into a universally satisfying, single version of history. Successive presidents of the American Historical Association such as Andrew Dickson White, Carl Becker, Charles Beard, and William McNeill admitted that writing history is a desperate attempt at pattern recognition in a fuzzy discipline. Pattern recognition is a tool, valuable as a stage in historical thinking, but destined ultimately to come undone. What remains, then, is fuzzy thinking. It can be a good thing, the article concludes, to let our thinking about history remain a blur or, at least, to bear in mind that any patterns we recognize in the past are liable to dissolve under a different light. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Common Knowledge Duke University Press

HISTORY FROM WAY ABOVE Recognizing Patterns through the Fuzz and Fog of the Past

Katz, D. S.
Common Knowledge , Volume 19 (1) – Dec 21, 2013
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11 pages

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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Duke Univ Press
ISSN
0961-754X
eISSN
1538-4578
DOI
10.1215/0961754X-1815642
Publisher site
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Abstract

This contribution to part 4 of the Common Knowledge symposium “Fuzzy Studies: On the Consequence of Blur” shows how the reputedly radical position that history is not about eternal truths but about the creative construction of a convincing narrative of past events is not an argument of recent vintage. In the days when postmodernism was a technical term used mainly by scholars of art and architecture—and indeed, decades before then—professional historians were grappling with the incapacity of facts to write themselves into a universally satisfying, single version of history. Successive presidents of the American Historical Association such as Andrew Dickson White, Carl Becker, Charles Beard, and William McNeill admitted that writing history is a desperate attempt at pattern recognition in a fuzzy discipline. Pattern recognition is a tool, valuable as a stage in historical thinking, but destined ultimately to come undone. What remains, then, is fuzzy thinking. It can be a good thing, the article concludes, to let our thinking about history remain a blur or, at least, to bear in mind that any patterns we recognize in the past are liable to dissolve under a different light.

Journal

Common Knowledge – Duke University Press

Published: Dec 21, 2013

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