By "history," I mean "historians," who, as a group, do a pretty good job of research and of self-correcting. HCR is a wonderful example, but far from the only one.
I see real recording of history as a science, just as cosmology, archeology, and evolution can be considered a fastidious recording and reconstruction of history. Human history is has a disadvantage in that in the entropic one-way flow of broad and interactive snapshots of time makes results in some ways not testable by exact repetition, and yet, as in physics, certain recurring principles emerge. That and the fact that material part of history (like people) often decays without much of a trace, and we are forced to educate our guesses with hear-say. That said (as in a forensic analysis) a convergence of evidence can justify our (degree of) confidence in historical narratives that we trust. What emerges from careful research is often different from what people have been widely taught, one way or another. I have become aware of some of my own follies, and am surely ignorant of others.
Was "history" appointed by a Republican or a Dem? You be the judge...
By "history," I mean "historians," who, as a group, do a pretty good job of research and of self-correcting. HCR is a wonderful example, but far from the only one.
I see real recording of history as a science, just as cosmology, archeology, and evolution can be considered a fastidious recording and reconstruction of history. Human history is has a disadvantage in that in the entropic one-way flow of broad and interactive snapshots of time makes results in some ways not testable by exact repetition, and yet, as in physics, certain recurring principles emerge. That and the fact that material part of history (like people) often decays without much of a trace, and we are forced to educate our guesses with hear-say. That said (as in a forensic analysis) a convergence of evidence can justify our (degree of) confidence in historical narratives that we trust. What emerges from careful research is often different from what people have been widely taught, one way or another. I have become aware of some of my own follies, and am surely ignorant of others.