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Re: revisionism

To: prestokelvo at yahoo_com (Kelvin Bailey)
Subject: Re: revisionism
From: Don Smith <dasmith at rotse2_physics.lsa.umich.edu>
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 14:27:31 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: Kendrickjd at aol_com, fionaeval at yahoo_com, Over-the-Rhine at actwin_com
In-Reply-To: <20010621201422.17448.qmail at web11505_mail.yahoo.com> from "Kelvin Bailey" at Jun 21, 2001 01:14:22 PM

Hi,

> Once again, you're speaking about perspective and
> interpretion of a thing.  I can say 2+2=7 until I'm
> blue in the face, but that won't make it so.  

Perhaps we are talking about apples and oranges here.  I tend to agree with
J. Marie: if history were just a list of facts, what's the point?  No, history
is a *narrative*; a weaving of those facts into a story that provides meaning
to those facts and puts them into a perspective that sheds light on our
contemporary situation.  The kind of history I'm talking about is not the sort
that asks "Was an atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima?", which is the kind of
2+2=7 questions that either are or aren't regardless of what we think.  The
sort of history I'm talking about asks "Why was the bomb dropped on
Hiroshima?", and that is a question in which perspective and interpretation are
crucial and unavoidable.  When someone writes a new history book, they are
usually not just listing new facts (if they list any new facts at all), they
are usually weaving the same facts into a new fabric.  If they do involve
new facts (like, say, new ancient scrolls found in the desert), they don't
just list them off, they ask "how does this impact the story we thought we
knew about what happened back then?"

Even in the physical sciences, where I work, there is ambiguity as to how the
sort of 2+2=7 questions interact with what *really* happens.  The predictions
of Quantum Mechanics are built on a set of assumptions that include such
oddities as indeterminite location.  General relativity demands curved space.
If the tests all confirm the predictions, does that mean the assumptions are
true?  What if (as with these two examples) they both lead to accurate
predictions and they have contradictory assumptions?

-- 
Don Smith                    Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu                          http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/

The Iron Chef in The Matrix:       "I know Kung Pao!"       "Show me."


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Re: revisionism

From: Kelvin Bailey <prestokelvo at yahoo_com>

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