Alex Wright
Dr. Hillmer
Directed Writing 1
September 3, 2010
Difficulty comes for historians when attempting to record
the past as a complete truth. Truth is
elusive to historians which creates obstructions in reconstruction of the
past. The misleading evidence must teach
historians to question the evidence they obtain. With ambiguous evidence comes doubtful history.
If history is so important, why is it so
easily altered? We should strive to
decode the past and acquire the truth no matter how complex the conflicts
develop into.
One
challenge a historian faces is biases of a witness account. Jerome states, "For we all are members of
minorities in one way or another..." which illustrates how everyone has a bias
(181). Whatever affects a historian will
therefore, subconsciously or not, be evident in his account of recording
evidence for history according to Jerome.
Observations can be altered to add the historian's own feelings to also
diverge truth to opinion. The witness
may also have bias when giving a testimony to the historian. I believe most people disregard
the conventional fictions because we already know not to believe them. The truths are what people might want to
alter in slight ways to wholly agree with their own beliefs or values. People enjoy initiating the thought process
mainly to fit their beliefs or to understand but will not argue if they already
know the statement is false. The
role of the witness is another important factor. If the witness in the place of two roles in
their life they might account for one role more strongly than another. In these cases the witness or historian is creating
the history and not allowing history to be pure. This creates a false validity
of the account and therefore misrepresents the past.
Old ways of recording also hinder the historian's ability
to reconstruct the past. Much of the
past is unwritten so "...how is one to know [the truth] when the eyewitness lived
over two thousand years ago?" (182). Ancient
history is made up of fragments that do not completely reconstruct the past for
a historian. Historians should search for
the undiscovered answers to strengthen the minimal evidence. Even if we have history accounts, the record
could be totally fictional or all opinion making the truth hard to discover for
the historians. Past historians or recorders
of events could also have limited intelligence that hinders the truth from being
fully revealed. Language is also a
conflict in ancient recording. Words
used in the past may not have the same meaning in the present, so a historian
may misinterpret the recorded history. These
situations create complicated analysis for the historian to first recognize and
then use to reconstruct the past. In these
cases the validity of the account of history is most likely falsified for the
historian.
The
witness of a historical account has great control over the accuracy of a
historian's reconstruction. In Binet and
Stern's experiments, tests were administered to discover how a witness could,
by their own means, flaw the truth of a statement. In both tests time was used as a method of
discovering accuracy. The tests revealed
that as more time passed the majority of the witnesses' accounts became
increasingly inaccurate. The memory of
the witnesses deteriorates as more time passes after a recorded event. Another discovery the tests unveiled was if
the account was similar to a memory the witness already contains, then the
witness will most likely add fill in the details they could not remember with
details from the past memory. Overconfidence
also plays a major part in these tests. In
one of Stern's tests only thirteen out of sixty-three failed to contain false statements,
all of whom were willing to take an oath that their statement would be completely
true. The overconfidence of the people allows
too much false evidence to be accepted as truth. The witnesses numerously alter the truth for
the historian in the restoration of the past.
I
believe the solution for producing truthful evidence of the past lies within abundance
and dedication. Dedicated historians are
more likely to be objective in evaluating the past. When an event is presented, many accounts
should be recorded to allow much evidence for the historian. Witnesses and historians will always have
their flaws. Recording many accounts
will present the historian with evidence that can be analyzed in the best way
possible. Many witnesses will provide
important opinions along with fragments of the truth that can be pieced
together easily. Abundance in dedicated
historians will also minimize the biases of analyzing the evidence.
