Historical Evidence and Argument

3. The Anxieties of Ambiguity

3 THE ANXIETIES OF AMBIGUITY We all know that objective history is unobtainable . . . But while we know this, we must still believe that . . . it is 99 per cent obtainable; or if we can’t believe this we must believe that 43 per cent objective truth is better than 41 per cent. We must do so, because if we don’t we’re lost, we fall into beguiling relativity, we value one liar’s version as much as another liar’s, we throw up our hands at the puzzle of it all, we admit that the victor has the right not just to the spoils but also to the truth. For my part, as I went away, I reasoned with regard to myself: “I am wiser than this human being. For probably neither of us knows anything noble and good, but he supposes he knows something when he does not know, while I, just as I do not know, do not even suppose that I do. I am likely to be a little bit wiser than he in this very thing: that whatever I do not know, I do not even suppose I know.” I Hans Goedicke conceded that his hypothesis about the relationship of the two successors of Pepi I “cannot be confirmed by any written evidence (especially since the official tradition was changed later), but on the other hand no indi15 cation speaks against it, wherefore it possesses a high degree of likelihood.”1 Goedicke’s comment is a bald formulation of the common attitude that no known evidence against a hypothesis is tantamount to evidence for it. Proceeding on such a principle is certain to ease the path of any historian as he presses forward. Yet contrary historical evidence is hard to come by for most periods and places. For Goedicke, it would require some unambiguous evidence about the relationship of two rulers of VI Dynasty of Egypt, for which there are many missing genealogical links and where the proliferation of similar royal titulature complicates positive identification even when filiations are mentioned. In contrast, commenting on the work of another scholar, David Keightley was concerned: Professor Ho, I believe, is far more optimistic, far less austere than a historian should be . . . . I believe that the historiographical cautions required in other cultures are also required in dealing with early Chinese who were no purer, and no less human, in this regard, than other people. Professor Ho, by contrast, sees the Shang kings as honest rulers who kept true genealogical records, good and kind kings whose sayings have been faithfully preserved in [later] Chou and Han traditions that were equally pure in their historiographical intent; he views the early Chinese, in short, as different from, more pristine than, other peoples, and therefore deserving special historiographical trust. . . . I am not willing to concede his implied claims to an indigenous, uncorrupted, and credulous historiography.2 There is a potential hornet’s nest here of course, but the relevant issue concerns the different views of probing the past that Ho and Keightley espouse. One wishes to take gratefully whatever evidence has come to light, realizing that there is unlikely to be much more. The other takes this very unlikelihood as reason to be cautious in his embrace. II John Thornton poses a question: Historians . . . do not possess infinite data; indeed, they are lucky to possess data at all. They are in no position to generate data of their own, but must take whatever people in the past, for their own purposes, deemed appropriate to 16 ❖ Chapter 3 collect and record, winnowed by the inevitable losses of documentation wrought by the passage of time. As a result, historians have to start with the data they have and procede [sic] backwards (from the social scientists’ point of view) to the questions. Rather than asking, “What are the relevant questions that I should ask about a particular process?”, historians must say, “Here are my data, what questions can I answer with them?”3 This could be phrased in other ways. The historian might ask: “[i]s the evidence on my side”? Or he could ask: “[a]m I on the side of the evidence?” The second query encourages the accumulation of evidence, the exaltation of that evidence above the historian, and other salutary results. As noted, some historians view history as whatever we happen to know about the past and nothing more. The more...