John, First, the sad part, it is unclear how any of this relates to gaining consensus about individual events. I think it should, but others shouldn't. Let me lay out the problem:
We wonder whether a given baseball is the one thrown for a particular strike during a particular game. What unique properties would such a ball have? There are two types of answers we might seek. One is a unique configuration of differences, i.e., the ball had a mixture of resin and spit used by a particular pitcher to doctor their pitch, and was the only one of its kind to have been made at the factory with a one-off improper spelling of the company name. In such a case we may apply the scientific process to determine if the ball in question has those properties, and (potentially) determine the extent to which those properties are actually unique. That is, we could test through empirical method, all consequences of the claim that the ball in question is The Ball. The other type of answer we might seek is via "providence"; i.e., there is nothing unique about the ball itself, but there is other evidence it might be of historic importance. We might have a picture of the ump tossing a ball to a particular kid, record of that kid giving it over to an auction house several years later, that auction house selling it to Rich Guy A, who owned a storage unit, in which Rich Guy B found *a* *ball *(after A's death) along with the paperwork referenced and associated photos. Here we could test, through the empirical method, all sorts of claims about the providence itself (was it printed on the right type of paper, does the signature look authentic, etc.) but there is nothing to test about the ball pre se. In *either *case it is unclear that investigating history would resemble making a scientific claim, because scientific claims are about generalities, not individual events. To claim that vinegar will dissolve calcium build ups is a very different type of thing than to claim that this ball is The Ball. The science above is not direct at the veracity of the historical claims, but rather it is directed at some things that would be true about the objects in front of us, were those historic claims true. Even worse, I think Peirce would assert that unless there is something about the ball itself that is in question, the question of whether it is The Ball is nonsensical. Whew! I hope some of that was relevant. Best, Eric ----------- Eric P. Charles, Ph.D. Lab Manager Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20016 phone: (202) 885-3867 fax: (202) 885-1190 email: echar...@american.edu On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:51 AM, John Kennison <jkenni...@clarku.edu> wrote: > I don't know it I am following all this correctly, but I would like to > apply it to the question of doing History scientifically. At the start all > we have are relics from the past --maybe we are uncertain which objects > and/or documents really go back to a historical period under > examination--but we have some way of testing for various relations between > these relics. Se then look for a theory of the past which best accounts for > the relics that we have. We may be able to measure how well different > theories do this accounting. And the set opf measutres we arrive at is then > history. > > But would some historian be dualists if they say there is a real truth > about what happened in the past, it's just that we this real truth may not > be recoverable. > >
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