Pseudo-history, and related issues

[Jona Lendering]

they are positivists, that is they believe that facts speak for themselves and thus do not need to have a sound theoretical basis or justification.

Yes, that is indeed the most precise expression to describe the errors that are so frustrating; and yet, it is not what I am looking for. It describes one specific error, not a category of related mistakes.

The solution to the problem of pseudohistory is not just in refuting the claims of pseudohistorians. We must also treat history as a scientific discipline, concerned not only with names, dates, and narratives, but with analyses and methodologies.

I could not have said it better.

Could you be more specific about Paul Cartledge? I just finished reading his Alexander the Great.

In his book on Themopylae, he maintains that the Persian Wars were decisive for the birth of western civilization. If we assume, for argument's sake, that there is indeed a connection between Greek and our own civilization (e.g., some kind of cultural paradigm was created in Greece that is still in existence), we must also prove that this would not have come into being if the Persian Wars had resulted in a Persian victory. The arguments for this thesis were for the first time put forward in the nineteenth century (Persian victory = eastern obscurantism, mysticism instead of rationalism, no democracy, no science).

Max Weber, more than a century ago, already explained that this was a counterfactual explanation - and how can we be sure about the contrafact? Note, for instance, that during the Persian age, the scientific method (empircal cycle etc) was invented in Babylonia, that Mardonius allowed democracy to continue in Asia, et cetera. Counterfactual explanations are almost never correct.

Cartledge seems to be unaware of this. There are only two possibilities: either he does not know the most basic theoretical concepts of his discipline (which I find hard to believe: he is a professor in Cambridge), or he is not looking for the truth and instead tries to use history for propaganda. As it happens, he explicitly writes that his book has a lot to do with The Defense Of The West Against Islam - which I take as a confession of the second option. He has gone too far to propagate his view: he has been adviser of Tom Holland's book Persian Fire, which is inspired by Cartledge's nineteenth-century vision, and proceeded to write a review (The Independent, September 2, 2005.), in which he praised Holland. Essentially, Cartledge is his own applause generator.

I do share Cartledge's believe in certain western values, which I think we must defend (and I seize this opportunity to express my admiration for some of us RATs who are now on duty in Afghanistan and Iraq), but no useful aim is served by sacrificing logic, and project our current conflict back upon the Persian Wars. Relevance is the enemy of history.