Friday, June 28, 2019
APPLYING LEGAL REASONING TO HISTORY
[My books on the historical Jesus, True Jew being the more recent and shorter one, are linked at the right to Amazon and Barnes & Noble.]
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
