by bertman on 12/26/24, 8:32 AM with 73 comments
by asimpletune on 12/26/24, 10:36 AM
Thucydides wrote an “inquiry” into the events of the Peloponnesian War, one of the world’s first histories. It is an excellent book and a masterpiece of literature. However you can’t help but wonder as you read it: how could simply writing what happened have been something so novel?
Throughout the book he makes clear his methods and objectives, almost as if to directly contrast them with some kind of default of the day. You get the sense that people of his day didn’t write history so much because if one were to go through the trouble of writing something it should be trying to advocate a specific conclusion for its readers. Something like a moral lesson or to elevate a specific polis.
Anyways, in the end Thucydides did end up advocating a specific conclusion but it’s one that could only be done through history. It’s subtle, detailed, balanced, and self-critical. I don’t know how to explain it other than history does something different to your brain, and in the end that is very worthwhile as literature.
However, after this new literary genre had been established, it’s not like the whole world suddenly changed. It certainly made a dent among those who read it, but I think everybody else sort of continues to operate under some set of default principles about what the point of a book should be, similar to what I described in Thucydides’ time. Even now, most people who cite Thucydides, for example in the news but also often in academia, don’t seem to have read the work in its entirety, at least based on the conclusions that they’re advancing. So it seems that things aren’t really so different from his time.
It’s a shame though because it really is something entirely new, and Thucydides proved, to me at least, that a careful account of the facts can be just as dramatic and entertaining as the best fiction.
by stereolambda on 12/26/24, 10:48 AM
This is a problem where historians look at what they're saying more as being a part of a continuing debate, where they can say revisionist stuff to sound more original in their field, with an understanding that their interlocutors will know the basics. There are many ridiculous views in public which form when historians effectively say "for a long time we have been thinking A <the basic thing about the subject>, but on the second/third order, if you look at it sideways, in some cases B". The whole part besides B gets cut off, because people stopped actively writing A 50-70 years ago. Now A is completely boring and passee and even suspicious to younger audience. But B can serve as fodder for video essays, tik toks, blog posts for us ancient peoples etc.
I think this might also explain much of WW2 revisionism. Of course knowing that especially for this period it can be ideologically motivated in some cases, and in the extreme can lead to someone like David Irving. This also isn't new.
Also, in general if a field of scholarship advertises consensus more than sound dispassionate methodology, then of course various randoms will think of having their own "consensus" because why not.
by fweimer on 12/26/24, 2:56 PM
Misrepresentation of WW2 history has been common long before the Internet and social media, see the enduring popularity of the Wehrmacht and some of its leaders, particularly in the U.S. That's not really a problem per se, either. Things get very, very iffy when alleged historical facts are used as justification. But in most cases, that issue won't go away if we had a way to be absolutely certain that we get the facts right and present them objectively. The past is just too different.
by throw73848788 on 12/26/24, 9:51 AM
What happens if we apply this analogy about crusaders to modern times?
by fedeb95 on 12/26/24, 10:41 AM
by anshumankmr on 12/26/24, 10:49 AM
by HellDunkel on 12/26/24, 4:59 PM
by kerkeslager on 12/26/24, 12:03 PM
This is a self-serving conclusion. Entertaining writing and accurate writing are not mutually exclusive. In fact, to some extent, writing is not accurate if it is not entertaining. If your writing fails to connect with your audience, they lose interest, and you fail to communicate the facts.
Walther blames this vaguely on a decline of literary culture--which is to say that he implicitly blames the failure of history communication on readers. Nothing could be further from the case. People read more now than ever, but they don't read pretentious web magazines and they don't read people who use words like "casuistry" and "imbroglio". The failure to communicate is not caused by readers, it's caused writers like Walther who refuse to use their audience's language, instead expecting the audience to learn the writers' language.
I don't know anything about Compact Mag--maybe Walther is writing for his audience there. But that just begs the question, why did Walther choose to write for that audience? Walther complains that history isn't reaching the general public, but his writing is clearly not written for the general public.
Walther, you're part of the problem. If you want people to read what you write, write for people.
EDIT: I've noted elsewhere on HN that some ideas are inherently complex, and therefore require more work from readers to understand, no matter how much work the writer does to make the idea clear. That's not what's going on in this article. The following sentence:
> His career—as far as I am aware, he has no plans to publish a book on Nazi Germany—suggests that we are no longer faced with a gap between specialist knowledge and what remains of the reading public, to be spanned by belletristic popularizers; but one between historians who write without any hope of reception, much less wealth or literary fame, and a very different, more or less post-literate audience who would prefer that whatever historical edification they might receive come via podcast or even tweet.
...could have been:
> Cooper's popularity suggests that the problem of communicating history to the public is no longer collecting specialist knowledge into big-picture descriptions. Now, historians interested in accuracy are failing to reach audiences that consume history in modern forms like podcasts or tweets.
This isn't communicating a less complex idea, it's just removing the pointless babbling to sound smarter.