Probably the most frequently
repeated error made across all scientific and scholarly disciplines is
confusing facts and conclusions. It is an important distinction often raised in
legal proceedings, in order to achieve greater accuracy in witness testimony,
but it is generally overlooked in other fields, particularly in historical
studies.
A legal example would be someone
testifying that a group of men had approached him in a hostile manner. An alert
judge would not allow such testimony. “Hostile manner” is not a fact, it is not
something one can observe. I should stress here that for purposes of this
entire discussion, I do not mean by “fact” that it is true or that it actually
happened. I only mean that it is something that could have been observed, had
you been transported to that time and place. You cannot observe someone being
hostile. You can observe the details that support this accusation—details such
as what they were saying and what gestures they made—those are the details that
give us the facts, but hostile is a conclusion we attach to the facts. In a
legal case that strictly follows this distinction, we will get the most
accurate testimony. Passing off the conclusion as a fact makes a mess of
getting at the truth.
The distinction often seems a
trivial one and so we ignore it all the time, but ignoring it even in trivial
cases has serious consequences for our intellectual honesty. Benedict Arnold
betrayed his country. Is that a fact or a conclusion? Quite obviously it is a
conclusion. The facts would be his contacts with the British, what actions he
took, what happened after he was exposed, etc. The problem is that his betrayal
has become such a well-established conclusion that we forget it is a
conclusion. It is now simply a fact of history.
And that is wrong. You cannot
observe someone betraying. What is observable are the facts that add up to a
betrayal. We almost never discuss these facts which establish the conclusion.
Those are the real facts of history, and traitor may be the most certain
conclusion, but it can never be more than that. In Benedict Arnold’s case, this
may not be of the greatest consequence. But it creates a huge problem when in
the case of Judas’s alleged betrayal of Jesus, we take this allegation as a
fact. It is not a fact and the accusation can never be used to prove Judas
betrayed Jesus. When we start looking for the facts to back up this conclusion,
we find a lot of ambiguity and nothing really solid. But I have discussed this
elsewhere.
George Washington was the first
President of the United States. Fact or conclusion? This is a borderline case.
It is tempting to say that this is simply a well-known fact. But when you start
to break it down, conclusion seems the better category to put it in. The facts
that can be observed are that the Constitution is the document that created the
office of the Presidency, the various state legislatures or conventions
ratified the Constitution, achieving final ratification in March 1789, and then we
observe an election and Washington being sworn in, and we also observe that no
one was sworn in before him. If those are the facts, then Washington as the
first President is a justified conclusion, but not really a fact.
It may seem petty and
hairsplitting to analyze history this way, but as I said, ignoring the
distinction between facts and conclusions can have devastating consequences,
which is why the law is so careful at maintaining this distinction. The
sciences have not been so cautious.
Almost every anthropologist in
the 19th century was a lousy scientist. Almost all of them claimed
that the inferiority of Indigenous peoples was a fact. In reality, it was their
highly subjective judgment or conclusion. They had no good facts to back it up.
And their conclusion of inferiority, which they falsely presented as a fact,
colored the facts they did report and caused them to leave out facts that
contradicted their conclusion. Charles Darwin was as guilty of this as anyone
else.
German anthropologist Georg
Gerland was a rare exception. Darwin read his book Über das Aussterben der Naturvölker (On the Extinction of Primitive
Peoples) (1868), but he did not get it. Gerland was very clear that the
so-called inferiority of these peoples was a judgment, not a fact, and it was a
very questionable judgment. This false fact had led everyone, including Darwin,
to declare that the extermination of primitives was inevitable. Gerland criticized this too. Inevitable extermination had no facts to support it and it was an inhumane conclusion. Gerland made all these points and more.
Other anthropologists would have liked to label the extinction of Native peoples as a fact, but as it had not happened yet, they could not do that. Instead, they called it an inevitability which was the next best thing to fact. For Gerland, it was a very biased way to study human life on earth.
Other anthropologists would have liked to label the extinction of Native peoples as a fact, but as it had not happened yet, they could not do that. Instead, they called it an inevitability which was the next best thing to fact. For Gerland, it was a very biased way to study human life on earth.
The consequences of 19th
century scientists failing to observe the difference between facts and
conclusions have been devastating. It continues to have this effect as long as
we go on pretending that certain conclusions are facts.
© 2019 Leon Zitzer
