Pseudo-history, and related issues

[Jona Lendering]

First, could you reference the work by Weber that deals with this?

Max Weber, "Kritische Studien auf dem Gebiet der kulturwissenschaftlichen Logik", in: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (1973), esp. blz.286-287.

But more pertinently, why couldn't he have merely disagreed with the thesis you (and perhaps Weber) are putting forth?

Because Weber's essay is not just an essay on the Persian Wars with arguments based on sources which you can move this way or that way - it is the very foundation of the critical study of historiography. The difference between a real historian and a classicist writing about history, is that the first one understands what a cause is, can define a fact, and is able to explain why he uses the hermeneutical, the comparative, or the positivistic explanatory models. It was Weber who founded this discipline and offered a quality standard that was missing in the nineteenth century. He is for the critical study of historiography what Winckelmann is for art history, Gibbon for Late Roman studies, and Schliemann for archaeology.

Here in the Netherlands, any first-year student knows what Weber has written (usually through an excerpt in his handbook on theory by either Lorenz or Ankersmit). It may be that in other countries, this is not treated in the first year, or perhaps not treated at all, but it is simply impossible that a professor in Cambridge is fully unaware of the logical foundations of his discipline.

I read between the lines that you're surprised that I am so angry at Cartledge. You are right - I should be a bit more quiet. I am sorry; my anger did indeed get the better of me.

Still, he should never have reviewed Holland's book and he should have taken Weber in account. If only he had offered counter-arguments, things would have been better; then we would be talking about a scholar discussing truth. Now we see a Cambridge professor ignoring valid criticism. That's below the standard of the university of scholars like A.H.M. Jones, M.I. Finley, and Keith Hopkins.