Trashing History as “Social Science”

 Trashing History as “Social Science”

This is to comment on Wilfred M. McClay’s, “History as a Way of Knowing”, September 17, 2021, https://lawliberty.org/history-as-a-way-of-knowing/.

I regard it a 2021-Constitution-Day-travesty.

I object to scholars quoting great thinkers without preserving the thinker’s persona, for example, the Ralph Waldo Emerson that RWE wrote. Conservatives defeat themselves by not being civic to every fellow citizen, keeping responsible private-pursuits’ personal. By “civic” I mean faithful human connections more than municipal-cooperation. By private-pursuits I mean spirituality, religion, metaphysics, promiscuity, spectator-sports, gambling, and such. Human living intends responsible personal happiness rather than subjugation to someone else’s vision for you.

I work to conserve, encourage, and facilitate human opportunity and think religious conservatism errs when it purports to impose its hopes and comforts on others. I think the issue should be negotiated and resolved so that all human beings can choose to establish peace on earth, which I assert is humankind’s collective purpose.

History shows that since the idea that peace is humankind’s independent responsibility, expressed some 5 thousand years ago, cultures have divided over the-God, an expression for the entity that controls consequences of human action or inaction. The human-being-division has become exponential, causing 2021 divergent chaos. RWE spoke plainly about these issues. I mimic him when I say “217 years ago, Emerson agreed with Phil Beaver”.

Professor McClay and other scholars can&should be responsive to civic-citizens who are fans of both history and thinkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson (the c&s syntax intended to indicate mutual necessity). Civic-citizens no longer subjugated to university-grades affirm personal-thoughts when they read RWE (the hyphens to invite the reader not to disassemble the phrase). RWE is alive&well, in our benefits-from recent discovery together-with corresponding RWE-expressions. The scholar who does not accurately&precisely represent RWE stains&weakens human-responsibility. Regardless, liberal-arts academia maintains metaphysics, repressing and regressing human-advancement. The ancient Greeks are repulsed by 2021 males participating in female-sports.

A fellow-citizen who is trained in research is incredulous that scholars shield each in “social sciences” other like popes protecting prominent-priestly pederasty. Researchers brutally caution each other against fictional-data or experimental-design to promote a personal-paradigm. Researchers know that physics and its progeny eventually expose lies. For example, the king who accepts acclaim as the-God must never bleed (Kipling). The scholar who quotes Emerson yet opposes Emerson’s persona chooses vulnerability.

The scholarly choir is satisfied to debate the truth, never being accurate&precise about the topic: discovering the-ineluctable-evidence which leads to the-ineluctable-truth and its responsible use. “Ineluctable” means “not to be avoided, changed, or resisted” (I prefer merriam-webster.com). RWE leads modernity to discover the-ineluctable-truth, unaccommodating toward personal-truths and eternal-mirages.

Here are 3 pertinent quotes from RWE’s essay, “History”, 1837, each with my affirming personal-experiences&observations. (McClay quoted “The Natural History of Intellect”, 1893, posthumously published.)

 

First: “All history becomes subjective; in other words, there is properly no history; only biography.” To me, this means that the student gains more from studying the history-makers than by reading a contemporary’s account of the actual event; 10 contemporaries author 10 accounts. Moreover, the reader can learn more from documents than from history about them. I view Emerson’s thought parallel to mine as affirmation and need not cite Emerson to express my opinion.

Second: “When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to me . . . time is no more. [I pierce] to the truth through all the confusion of tradition and the caricature of institutions.” The thought-study RWE refers to is not easy. From Agathon’s speech in “Symposium” I comprehend that a civic-citizen neither initiates nor accommodates injury to or from any person or institution. My thought is so distant from Agathon’s speech it is distracting to credit him 2,500 years later.

Third: “Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people. They cannot unite him to history, or reconcile him with themselves. How easily these old worships of Moses, of Zoroaster, of Menu, of Socrates, domesticate themselves in the mind. I cannot find any antiquity in them. They are mine as much as theirs.” In other words, RWE need not credit their thoughts to express his.

RWE asserts that the metaphysical-Jesus is a construct by the Church, drawn from the lives of the ancients. Conservatives mistakenly suppress RWE’s “Divinity School Address”, 1838, in order to preserve the public’s psychological-dependency --- Chapter XI Machiavellianism. Emerson unchained my perception that the Church errs to pretend Jesus is the-God. I was so indoctrinated into Christianity it took me 2 decades revisiting RWE to accept Jesus’ literal message: Phil Beaver, you can perfect your person before dying, if you accept the intention. Conservatives who ban “Divinity School Address” do themselves and humankind a disservice by not addressing it.

This reader is constrained to ask why McClay does not feel vulnerable to objections to misrepresentation of RWE and moreover to fellow-citizens experiences&observations. People typically say that I’m entitled to my opinion; moreover, Emerson is entitled to his writing. Scholars are entitled to their interpretation and unshielded from fellow-citizens’ oppostion. And fellow-citizens are not subject-to the-academic-coercion: grades and diplomas.

I turn now to six McClay statements.

First: “A great many of today’s academic historians believe that the chief point of studying the past is to demonstrate that all our inherited institutions, beliefs, conventions, and normative values are arbitrary “social constructions” in the service of power, and therefore without any greater legitimacy or binding authority.” Why doesn’t the other side’s argument deserve more than McClay’s dismissal? And is he making claims about them they would not affirm or admit to? Is “our inherited” a totalitarian excuse? Or is it selective to the choir? Does McClay feel vulnerable?

Now in my fourth quarter-century (still influenced by the competitive-Protestant-metaphysics Mom and Dad divided to me), I’m still inspired by RWE’s “Self-reliance” and think it’s in McClay’s self-interest to challenge the constraints of conservativism enough to consider McClay-opposition among “today’s academic historians”.

For example, take seriously the political suggestion derived from the recent 5 thousand years’ discovery together with literature’s Genesis 1:26-28. I value my observation:  Whatever controls the unfolding of consequences holds humankind responsible for peace on earth. Everything that happened after that ancient suggestion convicts humankind of “’social constructs’ in the service of power” (McClay). It is not insignificant that the scribe who, 3 thousand years-ago related the 5 thousand year-old suggestion, attributed it to his-God. Since then, descendent-societies have each constructed their-God, in order to gain power. They’re arrogant toward both the-God (whatever the entity may be) and the human quest for peace. Civic necessity&justice drive the human quest.

Moreover, starting in Genesis 2, scribes attributed civilization’s bad fortune to females. Eve betrayed Adam, in “original sin”. Sarah suggested ancient, direct surrogacy, breaking the monogamy she and Abraham could have completed and creating a divided family. Embarrassingly, the rest of the canonized Bible expands the chaos Genesis 2 started against Genesis-1 advice, and in 2021, the chaos is divergent. It is in our self-interest to constrain chaos.

Second: “. . . the leap from a mountain of carefully compiled data to a compelling narrative or a persuasive theory will always be shrouded in mystery, propelled by the ineffable force of what Michael Polanyi called “tacit knowledge,” no matter the discipline in which the leap occurs.” The hapless Polanyi did not accept that physics does not respond to human constructs. He took a ten-year sponsored leave to write “Personal Knowledge”, in which he displayed his-misrepresentation of physics then abruptly concluded that his-religion is an equivalent path to the-ineluctable-truth. Polanyi presented this shocking premise on the last page of regrettable reader-abuse: metaphysics is as valid as physics. In reality, physics and its progeny eventually correct metaphysics. For example, there are no heavenly laws involved in NASA’s offer to carry your name to Mars on the next mission. In other words, physics does not conform to human reason and construction. Metaphysics does not trump physics.

While it’s true that a minister knows when his flock is emotional enough for salvation, when the-ineluctable-evidence is researched with integrity-to the scientific-method, there is no “leap” from the data. The research is repeated with different researchers and designs to affirm the-objective-truth. Then, research pauses for the invention of new instruments of perception which could alter prior conclusions. The human-research quest is to approach if not acquire the-ineluctable-truth and how to responsibly apply it. The-ineluctable-evidence does not depend on emotions.

In 2021, humankind is fully aware that the laws of physics and its progeny apply to psychology. The idea that “social sciences” can discover the-ineluctable-truth by statistically designing&conducting public interviews is a liberal-arts travesty. The human-being is too psychologically powerful for this ploy to survive.

Third: “We even can call what we are doing “social science” rather than history, if we like.” What folly and degradation of history: Research, whether physical or psychological, yields the-objective-truth using existing instruments for perception of the-ineluctable-evidence. As humankind invents new instruments, the-objective-truth is updated until it approaches the-ineluctable-truth.

This point, that research is iterative, until the-ineluctable-truth is understood, was missing for the Europeans 400 years ago who opined that reason is more reliable than physics.  Research employs the scientific method, which is very cautious against errors that can be introduced by statistics. In contrast, “social science” uses statistics to design public-opinion polls so as to favor the agenda being funded. For example, a poll to support gun control statistically silences hunters and persons who intend to protect themselves.

Fourth: Albert Einstein, whose political philosophy often represents me, unfortunately “liked” a social study: publically debating “Science and Religion”. He accommodated S&R language rather than using his own. Before he was a celebrity, he slighted genius --- his own --- by introducing his “cosmological factor” to force his mathematical paradigm to a static universe. About 10 years later, Edwin Hubble proved that the universe is dynamic and expanding. Einstein thanked Hubble for correcting “my greatest blunder”. But Einstein’s greater blunder is the nonsense “Science without religion is blind; religion without science is lame." The ethics-philosopher-Einstein expresses, in my language:  Research without integrity is ruinous; honesty without research is privation. If angels can read this from heaven, Einstein is saying “That’s right” and offering an improvement for my consideration.

Fifth, “By all rights, history ought to be among the most conservative of all the academic disciplines, given the degree of power and authority it accords to the past.” Emerson’s words counter for modern application: “Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.” In other words, there is a continuum of human thought that the considerate, living person expresses in their vernacular for the temporal circumstances.

Conservatives must&can reform to the humble-integrity that is required to individually practice RHI, the 5 thousand year-old Sumerian suggestion. With most persons practicing RHI, humankind may reform with majority-fidelity to civic-necessity&justice, reserving religion/none to personal-privacy with sufficient humility to the-God.

Sixth: there’s a statement too crass to recall.

Conservatives may choose religion, a private-pursuit, while practicing civic-humility: responsible-human-independence. If they continue to try to impose their religion on civic-citizens, the divergent chaos will continue, perhaps unto utter ruin.

The ancients, such as the Sumerians, and the not so ancients, such as Emerson and Einstein, suggest that we, the 2021 “ourselves and our Posterity” must&can reform so as to provide peace on earth. That-this-is-so seems obvious to every considerate, living human-being. I think conservatives are the most qualified to lead the civic reform, while preserving their privacy.

The first action We the People of the United States need to take is to amend the First Amendment so as to encourage&facilitate civic humble-integrity instead of civil religious pride, the 1791 Anglo-American-Bill-of-Rights tradition.

Copyright©2021 by Phillip R. Beaver. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted for the publication of all or portions of this paper as long as this complete copyright notice is included.