My dingy, banged-up cardboard box arrived today from Amazon. After a couple of months sitting at the top of my wishlist I decided to take the plunge and purchase C. Behan McCullagh’s examination and defense of the objectivity of history. I’ve only skimmed the table of contents (for the 10th time) and read through a few pages of the introduction, but it looks promising. Here are a few quotes to give you an idea of why I’m looking forward to this read. Of course, it could be that I’m fascinated by the “knowledge problem” manifested in various forms across many disciplines.

“..the facts of cultural relativism and of the relation between language and reality require historians to give up any naive assumption that historical descriptions correspond exactly to the events which they describe in the past.”

It seems as though McCullagh understands the challenges of describing the past in ways that are reflective of the reality at the time.

“Nevertheless there is a sense, which I shall define, in which historical descriptions can be true of the past, allowing that they are always couched in the concepts of a particular culture.”

Again, he understands that both the writer and the historian are selective and constrained to varying degrees by their particular culture, ways of thinking and previous experiences. Coming to the table with this acknowledge goes a long way towards uncovering, as much as we are able, the truth about the past.

“It is normal for there to be more than one true characterization of an event or historical period. The variety of historical interpretations does not exclude the possibility of their truth.”

Behan is quickly responding to those the would claim that the plurality of interpretations is an indication that we cannot recover anything truthful from this enterprise.