Friday, June 28, 2019

APPLYING LEGAL REASONING TO HISTORY


[My recent book on Darwin's racism, A Short But Full Book on Darwin's Racism, can be found here on Amazon.]

There is no such thing as a type of reasoning that is unique to a particular field. Good reasoning is the same wherever you go. The goal is always to think so clearly that all deception becomes impossible. That’s the essence of scientific thinking. The lessons learned in one field about how not to deceive yourself or anyone else are easily transferred to other fields. Courts of law provide some of the best examples of how to reason well. Historians could learn a lot from them.

I can give two examples from TV small claims shows. On an episode of Judge Judy, a litigant was relating an incident when he and his friends were attacked by some rowdy drunks. He began by saying that this group approached him and his friends in a hostile manner. Judge Judy said this was a conclusion. She wanted evidence. He tried again and said something like, “Well, they were very aggressive.” No, she said, you’re offering a conclusion again. Tell me what you saw and what you heard.

He was frustrated and could only say they were threatening him and his friends. Judge Judy would not accept that either. Finally, she helped him out by asking him, “Were they saying anything, were they making any gestures?” Now his expression lit up and he was able to offer more proper testimony. “Yes,” he said, “they were cursing at us and saying we’re going to get you, and they were waving their fists and empty liquor bottles at us.” Now you’re telling me something, Judge Judy said.

The second example is a little more subtle and comes from The People’s Court with Judge Marilyn Milian. The plaintiff, a doctor, had not been paid by a lawyer, the defendant, for his expert testimony in another court case. The lawyer’s secretary testified that at one point, the doctor had called their office to complain about not getting paid. She said the doctor was not happy about not getting his money. Judge Milian pointed out that this was a conclusion, not a fact, a hard piece of evidence. Like the litigant in the Judge Judy case, the secretary was frustrated and did not know how to explain it. Judge Milian made it simple for her. “Tell me exactly what the doctor said to you on the phone.” The secretary answered, “He said, ‘I’m unhappy that I did not get paid yet for my testimony.’” Now that was a fact that Judge Milian could evaluate.

To many people, the difference between the two portions of the secretary’s testimony is so slight and so subtle that it is hardly worth dwelling on. But from the point of view of logic, the difference is huge. Consider these two propositions. #1: “The doctor was unhappy that he had not been paid.” #2: “The doctor said to me, ‘I am unhappy that I have not been paid.’” To a careless thinker, they are basically the same, but #1 and #2 are not at all the same thing. The first is a conclusion. We have no idea how the secretary arrived at this conclusion. It is inadmissible in a court of law because it does not give us any concrete facts to go on. The second is a fact that we can then investigate by cross-examining the doctor, the secretary, and possibly others.

Examples like these from TV court shows should encourage historians to be more precise thinkers. We have many examples in history of conclusions, or people leaving us their conclusions about what they thought of persons and events in their time, but we don’t always have the facts their conclusions were based on. And by a fact, I do not mean something that is necessarily true, but merely a piece of evidence, something potentially observable, something that could have been seen or heard, if it actually happened, and then we can think about whether it is a true fact or a false fact.

Suppose we had the diary of a colonist from America or Australia or anywhere else. In the diary, we find this statement: “The other day, a group of natives approached us in a hostile manner.” (There may also be follow-up statements like “So we engaged them in battle and slaughtered them all,” but I am only concerned with the initial statement.) Too many scholars would assume the statement in the diary must be true and proceed from there—as if only one hypothesis could explain that statement.

In fact, there are three hypotheses that could explain the diarist’s statement. But the first thing to pay attention to is that “hostile manner” is not a fact. It is a conclusion. Or we could say that it is a fact that the diarist drew this conclusion, but the conclusion is not a fact in itself. The three hypotheses to explain the appearance of this conclusion in the diary are as follows: Number one is that it is true, the natives really were hostile (making certain gestures and shouting specific words in one language or another, which would be the facts we really need). Number 2 is that “hostile” resulted from a misperception of the colonist as to the meaning of the natives’ gestures, etc. And number 3 is that the colonist outright lied in his diary in order to cover up a wanton massacre.

All three of these hypotheses have to be considered. Assuming only the first is possible is simply bad reasoning and it would be bad in any field of study. What we have in historical studies is a situation where 1) scholars often confuse conclusions and facts, and 2) they fail to see that different hypotheses could explain what are really conclusions. Both conditions are common to so many fields of historical study. Tell this to scholars and they get as frustrated as the people testifying in those small claim cases. They don’t want to hear that they have been presenting conclusions, not hard evidence.

The story of Judas in the Gospels is a good example. When you examine the verses very closely, we can see that there are a lot of conclusions being offered and precious little in the way of facts. Traitor (which accusation appears only once and it’s in the Gospel of Luke) is a conclusion or accusation, not a fact. The facts, if any, would be the details that support the accusation. Those details are absent in Judas’s case.

Once upon a time, somebody wanted to stick the conclusion of traitor on Judas and there it has remained. But when you sort out the few facts we do have (e.g., Judas leaves the table and returns with soldiers, no one at the time levels the accusation of traitor at him, and a few more), it is surprising to see that they are consistent with the hypothesis that Judas was an innocent man falsely accused of being a traitor; even the conclusions we have in the Gospels are consistent with that hypothesis. My books on the historical Jesus go into more detail.

Historical Jesus scholars do not examine the Gospel verses concerning Judas with any great degree of care. They simply take the conclusion of traitor that was presented once upon a time and refuse to look at other hypotheses, especially any that point towards Judas’s innocence. An innocent man falsely accused of betrayal is a legitimate hypothesis that has been erased from consideration.

Scholars of Charles Darwin are another good example of indulging in bad reasoning. It may be a little more subtle here, but in essence, we get a lot of conclusions and little in the way of facts. The facts here are primarily what did Darwin actually say in his published works. We are given the impression that his work is a great example of objective science, but this results from a careless reading of what he created.

Is On the Origin of Species an objective work of science? Did Charles Darwin inject racism into his study of evolution? Are there notions of superior and inferior in his writings? Most scholars present Darwin as a great humanitarian, a conclusion that they will not permit any challenge to. They slant the facts of what Darwin’s work is like so that it appears he was a calm, reasonable scientist who had no ax to grind. That he spoke often of the extermination of lower races is something they would rather not pay attention to.

In their view, Darwin was a modest man who proceeded very slowly. One of the myths about Darwin’s Origin is that he does not address the matter of human evolution in it. They say he spoke of human beings only once in a cryptic remark in the last chapter—in some future time, “Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.” In fact, Darwin addresses the human condition many times throughout Origin, including an earlier statement that light will be thrown on the racial differences among humans (though he does not explore this any further here). While Origin is in part a work of science, it is equally a work to advance the cause of European imperialism and to put each organic group, including human beings, in their place, “groups subordinate to groups,” as he frequently says. My books on Darwin clearly demonstrate the truth of that.

When you collect the facts of what he actually wrote—how often he spoke of superior and inferior, higher and lower, groups subordinate to groups, domination of the weak, let the dominant become ever more dominant, and more—his work certainly seems to have a lot of racism and genocide in it, and much of it appears to be composed to justify European imperialism. Those are conclusions I am offering, or you could also call them alternative hypotheses, but there is a plethora of facts to support them. Learn to think like Judge Judy or Judge Marilyn Milian and you can make great discoveries.

The lesson here is to remain humble. Lessons from a TV show can take you far. Never reject anything as a potential source of knowledge. Even TV shows may be a source of profound wisdom, if you’re paying close attention.

© 2019 Leon Zitzer