Is History a lie that no-one disputes?

Answer 1

There are two aspects to history. One is the actual chronology of events which may or may not have happened. By this, I mean that history is a combination of things that most rational people can agree happened and things that honest disagreement over if the event occurred or not.

The second aspect of history is the interpretation of events in the context of the chronology. This is generally where the concept of lying enters into the equation as often events are speculated upon in order to fit a given conclusion.

As an example, an event that people will agree upon is that George W. Bush was inaugurated as President of the United States on 20 January 2001. Multitudes of witness and media recordings can verify that this event occurred, and it would have to take a highly irrational person to argue otherwise. However, the interpretation of how it was he and not Vice-President Gore was inaugurated is a matter of interpretation as many Bush supporters will argue that the Democrats tried to steal the election, which many Gore supporters will argue that the Republicans DID steal the election. The truth is obscured by incomplete data and bias.

Events that honest disagreement can occur are usually events lacking witnesses and documented recordings. For example, people disagree over who murdered John Kennedy in 1963, simply because no one was watching Lee Harvey Oswald at the time and the one piece of video footage of Kennedy's bullet impacts is rather blurry. We may never have full knowledge of the events of that day in Dallas, but objective historians can reach different conclusions as to whether Oswald was the assassin or not. This is indeed how the judicial system works, as a jury rarely gets every bit of relevant information and hence must decide if an event occurred or not.

Of course, this is all overruled by the philosophical idea that all history is a delusion that we create to reconcile our present environment with our current state of being. :-)

Answer 2

History, as in history text books, is written. How many people never write a word?

What would history be if all the dead children of the world had written it?

What would history be if all the worlds cultures annihilated or partially annihilated by genocide had written it?

We are taught as children, in the US anyhow, that News should be objective; but how many stories are written with objectivity in mind? Seems most are published with the dollar earnings in mind. And who can keep an objective mind, even the most astute, when barraged with an onslaught of misinformation aimed not at telling you the story but getting your dollar.
So we are conditioned in a way to believe the untruth by our media. And since the media of today often becomes the history of tomorrow. I would say that your question hits right on the money.

Yes, History is a lie that no-one disputes.

Answer 3

No.

A. For anything to be a lie is has to be a statement.
History can be thought of as all the events that have happened in the past. "World 1 History"
Alternatively we can mean by history a collection of statements about events that happened in the past. "World 2 History".

Now World 1 History is incapable of being a lie, so we must be thrown to World 2 History (statements about past events rather than past events in themselves) for the proposition to have a chance of being remotely true. I would strongly object to this being the use of the word history in everyday usage. However I'll let it slide to go onto "Lie"

B. A lie is a member of a class of incorrect statements.
Under most reasonable usage of the word "lie" not all incorrect statements are lies. There are, for example, innocent errors. There are also statements that almost, but not quite, hold true. A nice example is Newton's Principia: are we to hold that Newtonian Mechanics is a lie because it gives incorrect results when applied to very massive, very small or very fast objects?

To my mind "lie" involves at least negligence in making a statement. A deliberately incorrect statement is definitely a lie.

Are we satisfied that the incorrect statements within history are all deliberate or negligent? Although we can be sure that the statements of history to not fully and accurately describe past events are we satisfied that the errors are big enough? That is to say we know on picking up any book on any historical subject that there will be errors. Are we sure that the errors are numerous and big enough to make it hogwash?

C History is disputed. You can almost always find someone who will dispute a historical statement. "Undsiputed History" would be a very small body of work.

The study of history is of crucial importance in how we live.

1. "Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it" - history gives us, amongst other things, a huge database of how previous actions have worked out to help us plan our actions now. A slide into a wholly subjectivist view would prevent rational application of history to the problems of today.

2. If we allow that history is "just" a story we remove our ability to act against those who deliberately pevert the story of the past for their own ends.

3. A slide into a subjectivist view of history would underpin a subjectivist view of the world per se.

Answer 4

History is His Story, or the editors conclusion from the references he or she uses.

A lie depends on perspective.

If you went to see a concert with 3 friends then the 4 of you were asked to write a detailed story about the event, most likely you would notice a lot of differences. One friend might say the concert was too loud, another that it didn't sound good, while the other two might say the concert was perfect but write mostly about the journey getting there or what happened after the show.

None of these accounts are lies. They are just recorded accounts from people, the way they saw it.

Best Wishes

Boz

Answer 5

History is always becoming less true. It is a memory and the further it is from the present the less clear it is. A memory of your childhood will be less clear the older you get whether you wrote it down or not because of all the details, ideas and beliefs surrounding that event. There a to many factors to even list let alone record for every event in history. And it is all in the perspective of the person recording it or recalling the event so history is based on the bias of the historian.

Answer 6

There is what REALLY happened and then there's interpretations of what happened. I've heard about particular events in history that have had several different versions. No. History isn't a lie that no one disputes. History is a collection of events given by several points of view. And they are frequently disputed.

Answer 7

That presupposes that language can't get anywhere near truth. I don't believe that language can perfectly represent any situation but I do believe that many propositions are clearly closer to truth than others. For example all kidding aside.

1) Hitler was a monkey.
2) Hitler was a dirty nazi.
3) Hitler was a saviour
4) The Holocaust never happened

Which do you like better?

We don't have to be such perfectionists!

For example, would you like to have a perfect knowledge of what happened in a given massacre? Not possible since people are too busy during such events to gather statistics.

Answer 8

they might lie, “the 2nd Sino-eastern conflict and the Pacific conflict have been inevitable because of the fact Japan had already occupied the Senkaku(Daiyaoyu) Islands, and wouldn’t retreat from there.” “Manchukuo (the autonomous Manchuria ) and the final Emperor, Puyi performed an important place to make the chinese language human beings ignore the Senkaku islands till 1971.” They remembered the Nanking bloodbath after the WWII, mutually as not one of the eastern squaddies might desire to bear in ideas, yet could no longer bear in ideas the Senkaku islands for a protracted time. they are going to by no ability bear in ideas the bloodbath in Tibet that killed extra effective than a million.. interior the oldest chinese language checklist, one chinese language officer sailed to Okinawa alongside with an Okinawan pilot, and located the biggest island as a landmark. curiously the Okinawans had already stumbled on those islands on a thank you to China. faster or later, the chinese language government will declare that Okinawa belongs to China.

Answer 9

There are always two sides of history... The winners side, and the loosers side. So I think the best words would be history is a partial truth that is agreed upon by the side that wins.

Answer 10

Pretty much, yeah.
There's a great book called 'Lies My Teacher Told Me' by James W. Loewen. It focuses specifically on History textbooks in America.