Gen Eds H1: History Overview

World history starts today. Last week, I finished twelve posts overviewing philosophy as one of ten subjects you might study in a general education or "liberal arts" core at a university or college. I'm calling this series, "General Education in a Nutshell."

Today we begin the second series of posts on World History. The format will be similar--an opening overview, ten posts, and a concluding wrap-up. I'm going to try to present multiple perspectives when I know them.
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1. As part of my philosophy series, I did a post on the philosophy of history. In it, I mention the famous quote by George Santayana that "those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it." This quote suggests one of the key benefits of studying history, namely, to get a sense of how cause and effect work in history so that we can get some sense of what certain decisions and events might lead to next.

Is a particular candidate for office similar to some political figure from the past? How did that work out? Is a particular world situation similar to a situation of the past? How did that work out? Of course a great deal of subjectivity is often involved in such comparisons. History never repeats itself exactly. But there is a reason why generals study military history and politicians study political history. There is the hope that it will sharpen their decisions toward the future.

2. Of course the past has always been a tool of rhetoric. We tell stories of our origins to instill pride and a sense of identity. We tell family stories to do the same. Human storytelling is seldom "critical." That is to say, we are typically gullible when it comes to our history-telling. We omit the warts of the story and key figures take on a legendary character.

"I cannot tell a lie," the young George Washington says. "I chopped down the cherry tree." Serious historians have examined the primary sources and have discovered that this story is unknown before 1806 in the sixth edition of Mason Weems' sensational The Life of Washington. Almost no serious historians think it is historical. But the story has done its work. Even when he did wrong, George showed himself the ideal, rational, repent-er.

More often real history is like the words of Oscar Wilde in The Importance of Being Earnest: "The truth is rarely pure and never simple."

We are also fond of the "grand narrative" (grand recit), the overarching story that claims to explain the whole of history or of some era. Recently, Dinesh D'Souza has given us the "nefarious" history of the Democratic party (Hilary's America). Unfortunately, a quick switching out of the names and we might find a similar version could be made of the Republican party.

Responsible historians at least try to be dispassionate rather than partisan. [1] Like any true academic discipline, scholars engage in an "agonistic" enterprise where interpretations are brought against contrasting interpretations. Primary evidence is weighed against primary evidence. Sometimes there are consensuses. Sometimes there aren't. Often there simply isn't enough evidence to draw a firm conclusion.

There is no book of the Bible that gives God's specific perspective on the last two thousand years. Different Christian groups certainly have their own versions of certain parts of the story, but none of these have any definitive divine endorsement (although we sometimes treat our "grand narratives" as if they had more authority than the Bible itself).

3. In reality, aside from learning from the past to predict the future, the past is only relevant to the present if it is still "touching" it in some way. The etymological fallacy is the belief that the past somehow determines the meaning of the present. But in fact that past only impacts the meaning or the nature of the present if it is still "touching" it directly in some way.

This "touching" can take place in two ways. First, the past can touch the present materially. For example, there can be a geographical or environmental feature that is the result of some event from the past. If you go to Chernobyl, the past "touches" its present with radiation. My great-grandfather may be materially relevant to my present if he has bequeathed me with certain genes.

The second way in which the past can impact the present is when human beings bring the past into the present with our ideas, always in fragmentary form. [2] This can be conscious or unconscious. Sometimes we do not realize the ideological impact of the (almost always recent) past on us. At other times, we use some version of the past rhetorically, as I mentioned.

But we are always selective, simplistic, and skewed in our ideological use of the past. It is usually not the real or literal past that we resurrect in such cases but a narrowly perspectivized version. The ideological use of the past is as much or more the present influencing the past, as it were, than the past influencing the present.

Ideas from the past only impact the present when they are in someone's head today. As ideas, they do not have a life outside of the specific people in specific places and times that have those ideas in their heads. Meaning is always a matter of now, not of the past.

It is true that God is a constant who touches every moment throughout history. But his movements are often complex, mysterious, and unpredictable. We make ourselves feel good by saying we know exactly what he was doing at a particular point in time. Maybe we are right sometimes, but we have no way of verifying for sure. The Bible doesn't give details on a definitive interpretation of God's movements in the United States in 2016.

Any attempt to reduce God movements or actions to a simple scheme says far more about the person looking back at history than it does about the real God.

4. Accordingly, I am going to treat world history moving backward. [3] We can learn from the distant past to be sure, but far more often it is virtually irrelevant to the present. [4] Indeed, the overwhelming majority of all the past has completely disappeared from our view. We have only the barest of archaeological remains from thousands of years of human history, and even what literature remains represents only the elite of the elite. [5]

I am also going to start inevitably from where I sit on the historical bus. I am a twenty-first century citizen of the United States, a person of English, Scotch-Irish, Dutch, and German descent. So that is the center point from which I will start, although my intention is to connect with a broad range of groups and places. That is my starting point but hopefully not the ending point. Ten posts clearly won't allow much.

The sense that history should be told from the beginning to the end fits with the way the human mind works and it fits with the nature of cause and effect. However, history in terms of its true impact and relevance, is most relevant and impactful in terms of the recent past, and it becomes increasingly less relevant as we move backward in time.

5. So, moving backward in time in broadening circles, I suggest the following ten posts in this series:

• From 9-11 to the Present
• From the Cold War to the Millennium
• From Waterloo to World War II
• From Cromwell to Napoleon
• Renaissance and Reformations
• The Age of the Church and Jihad
• The Age of Rome
• Waves of Conquest
• Classical Civilizations
• The First Humans

Next week: History 2: From 9-11 to the Present

Classic Reading

• Will Durant, The Story of Civilization

[1] We live in a climate where the public scarcely even knows what the critical investigation of history looks like, which aims at objectivity and evenness in the use of sources. Conspiracy theories are prevalent, which by their very definition are not likely to be true (since they suppose that factors which are not evident are central to the supposedly correct interpretation of history).

Extremely skewed versions of history are rampant, versions that do not really try to arrive at the most likely conclusion given the evidence but that explicitly let certain ideological presuppositions drive the organization of the data. In other words, critical history is inductive (looking for what is most likely true) rather than deductive (assuming certain perspectives and then reading the evidence in that light).

[2] I run the risk of letting back in the door a whole host of fallacious thinking by saying ideas can continue from the past unconsciously in fragmentary form. I believe we have to accept that there are often fragments of past ideas bouncing around our heads. What I am not saying is that ideas from the past have some life of their own that transcends or determines how a person uses that fragment today. Specific people in the present determine what an idea fragment means now. The sense of an idea in the past does not determine what it means now.

[3] My colleague Keith Drury had this brilliant idea for studying American church history when we were designing the curriculum of Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University.

[4] As Christians, of course, we believe in some major exceptions to this general truth. The fall of Adam and Eve, the incarnation, atonement, and resurrection of Christ--these still touch the present in an overwhelming way, for example.

[5] Of course, some of what has survived has survived by coincidence. E.g., the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Oxyrhynchus Papyri.

Liberal Arts 3: The Value of History

Third post in my series on the importance of the liberal arts for civilization. Previous posts include:

A Vision for the Liberal Arts
The Value of Philosophy

1. If you think about it, every single bit of knowledge and experience is part of history. Every truth about God that has ever been known or experienced by the creation was a part of history. Much as philosophy reflects on everything, history encompasses everything.

Salvation unfolded in history. Science and math developed in history. Literature was written in history.

2. Perhaps the most valuable gain from history is a sense of identity and self-critique. The history of political rhetoric is bad history, propaganda. That's not history well taught. That's not history taught by expert historians. That is skewed history taught to rouse or manipulate the masses.

Hitler taught history that way. History taught rightly shows us our blind spots. History taught rightly reminds us when we are acting just like "your fathers who killed the prophets." History shows us when our practices are not as eternal as we think they are. History shows us the cultural influences on our thinking and practices and pops the bubble of our self-ignorance.

History shows us the warts of the "greatest generation." History shows us that there were prostitutes and the vilest of men alongside the revivals of the Old Northwest Territory and the Wild West. History shows us that the US is only one among many great nations. History is self-knowledge.

I often affirm that God can speak to you through the Bible wherever you are in your knowledge, whether you know what the Bible meant originally or not. But having a sense of the Bible's meaning in history changes you. It lays bare a thousand ignorant interpretations you thought were God but were really looking at yourself in the mirror or the burrito you had last night for supper. The deeper the sense of the Bible in his historical context, the less embarrassment we are likely to bring to God and the less abuse we are likely to bring to others.

History shows Protestants that the doctrines they see in the Bible sometimes took centuries to unfold, that there would scarcely be a canon without the church. History shows catholics that the Pope was once merely the bishop of Rome, not even first among equals at the beginning. History deconstructs the fairy tales we tell ourselves to make ourselves surer, smarter, and better than we really are.

3. "Those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it" (Santayana). There is another utility to the past. There is a reason why generals study the wars and battles of the past. There is a reason why great leaders read the biographies of leaders of the past. There is a reason why aspiring businessmen read the stories of past businesses.

There are great lessons to be learned from the successes and mistakes of the past. Why try to reinvent the wheel? In my own field, the history of biblical interpretation has the power to make me a better interpreter than anyone who has lived before me, because I can build however feebly on the best insights and mistakes of the past. I do not have to build an aqueduct or a dome from scratch. The feat was accomplished in history, thousands of years ago.

History is immense power. Those who know it can see into the souls of men. Those who know it can anticipate their opponent's next move. Those who know it can rule as kings and queens--or become them. History wins elections. History conquers enemies.

4. Why? Because history is full of examples, and humanity in the end is still the same humanity it always was. From a moral perspective, history is full of examples to emulate and examples to shun. Isn't this what Hebrews 11 is all about, a crowd of historical (and literary) examples meant to spur us on? And what is the wilderness generation of Hebrews 3 but a bad historical (and literary) example meant to dissuade us from a bad course of action.

History is full of heroes and villains. Perhaps most of the time they were more complex than the flat characters we make them out to be. Was Richard III a fiendish child murderer or the loser whose story was ultimately told by the winners?

5. It is a sin for history to be boring. There are too many delights here, too many insights, too much to be gained. The professor of any history class that is boring should be shot.

History is power. History is immensely useful. A knowledge of history is key to the perpetuation of civilization.

Feynman 5: Telling the Past from the Future

This is the fifth of seven chapters in Richard Feynman's, The Character of Physical Law, a series of lectures he gave at Cornell in 1964. The four previous were:

• Gravitation as an example of physical law
• The relation of physics to math
• Great conservation laws
• Symmetry in physical law

Another fascinating lecture. It was a little disappointing at the end because for most of the chapter I might have been listening to an apologist presenting the cosmological argument for the existence of God. He did mention God at the end but did not venture to address ultimate questions. He ended by only saying that those who look at the small workings and those who ask the big metaphysical questions should not look down on each other or on any of those who figure out the stuff in between.

1. Most of the chapter was about the irreversibility of things on a large scale despite the theoretical reversibility of everything on a small scale. So on a small scale, "there does not seem to be any distinction between the past and future" (109). He does mention friction and beta decay as irreversible.

Perhaps the clearest example he gives in the chapter is of mixing together blue and white water. Gradually, they will combine into a whitish blue throughout the whole tank. Nothing in theory would keep it from becoming unmixed again into blue and white corners. We just know it isn't going to happen in a lifetime.

"One of the rules of the world is that the thing goes from an ordered condition to a disordered" (113).

He then hypothesizes an obscure device that might turn because of random air molecules against a vane only allowed to go one way. The illustration didn't work for me but I got the point. Eventually, heat evens out in a system and reaches equilibrium.

2. This sounded exactly like versions of the cosmological argument that I grew up with. He even mentions entropy (121), the famed second law of thermodynamics that Christians often use to argue that the universe had a beginning. Things go from ordered to disordered and the process seems irreversible. That suggests there must have been an orderly beginning.

Feynman doesn't go there. Indeed, like a novel reader, I kept waiting for the denouement. In a universe this vast, it is possible to find a small pocket of random order, but then we would expect complete bluish-white everywhere else. But we don't. So what was the order with which it all began?

3. At another point, Feynman gives us an amazing instance of the anthropic principle of which I had never heard. Apparently, it is easy to suggest how hydrogen atoms might come together to form helium atoms in a primordial soup of hot atoms. But cosmologists hit a snag when it come to the formation of larger atoms like carbon.

Fred Hoyle found a possible way. If one of the electron levels of carbon was at precisely 7.82 million volts, then three helium atoms could stick together just long enough for carbon to form. And so it was. Carbon does have an energy level in its electron orbitals that is 7.82 million volts. If it didn't, there would be no universe other than a random collection of cooling hydrogen and helium atoms (for the most part).

"The most important things in the real world appear to be a kind of complicated accidental result of a lot of laws" (122).

4. He ends the chapter with a concept he calls a "hierarchy of ideas." At the bottom of this hierarchy are the fundamental laws of nature. Then above them are basic principles like heat. Then there are bigger items like surface tension or refractive indices, properties of substances.

Still further up are waves, sun spots, stars. Then things like frogs. Then further up is history, "man," political expediency. Then evil, beauty, hope. It is here that he finally mentions God, although he does not believe that either end is truly closer to God. By implication, both ends point to God.

"The great mass of workers in between, connecting one step to another, are improving all the time our understanding of the world, both from working at the ends and working in the middle, and in that way we are gradually understanding this tremendous world of interconnecting hierarchies" (126).

Development of Societies 1

Some of you may know that I have been dawdling through writing a philosophy textbook for over five years.  I have about 275 pages written.  The situation has gone critical to finish it, so you will probably see a fair bit of philosophy here until the end of the month.  I am currently working on chapter 13, called "Living Together in Society."  I have about half the material written.

I will probably put this section after a section already written called "Ways to Govern Society."
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By all accounts, the earliest forms of human society involved extended families, which over time became tribes.  We see this in the account of the origins of Israel in the Old Testament.  The family of Jacob becomes over time the tribes of Israel.  Whether it is true in the case of Israel, tribes often trace their origins to an "eponymous" individual--a legendary, heroic figure from whom the tribe or group took its name.

It may take some difficulty for modern Westerners to get their heads around how recent an invention the nation-state arguably is in human history.  Some historians would argue that nations as we now conceive them are perhaps less than two hundred years old.  The default way of human thinking is local and "tribal," and it takes some effort for diverse social groups spread out over a wide area to think of themselves as a single group with a central point of governance that they embrace as their own rather than as an imposition of power on them.

Which came first, the nation or the people?  Arguably the people always come first, and the idea of a nation is a social construct, a way of looking at a collection of people that is not intrinsically based on who those people are. [1] It is a way of looking at a collection of people that cultures "create" and then put into effect by establishing certain power structures.  It is a set of glasses through which a people views itself, when it is quite possible they might view themselves in a different way.  It is a social construct that does not exist unless a group of people own and thus create it, as opposed to societies where it is clear that their leaders are "other," are different from them, who exercise power over them from the outside.

That is not to say that there are no concrete grounds for nation formation.  Location, language, common customs, common enemies--there are all sorts of concrete reasons why groups sometimes look beyond the local to form larger social groups. Historically, of course, the formation of social groups large enough to be called "empires" has more typically taken place because of war or military conquest, usually led by strong autocratic leaders.

[text box: nation-state, city-state, social construct]

It thus requires some cognitive effort on our part to think of ancient Israel more as a tribal collection, an "amphictyony" than as a nation per se.  For example, we should not think of the judges of Israel as being some kind of centralized leaders over Israel as a single entity.  These are rather charismatic leaders that some portion of the Israelite tribes gathered around in times of military engagement.

In the past, Western history was taught in a way that led many of us to think of Greece and Rome as islands of civilization in the middle of the barbarian, "bearded" world that surrounded them.  Of course this is how the Greeks and Romans viewed themselves.  We even find traces of this way of constructing reality it in the New Testament, such as in Romans 1:14 where Paul follows the convention of dividing the non-Jewish world into "Greeks and barbarians."

The result is that we have a tendency to think of places like ancient Greece and Rome in the same way we look at nations today.  But if we dig a little deeper, we find that the Greek and Latin words for places like Athens and Carthage are plural.  These cities were originally collections of tribes.  The city of Athens was originally hundreds of individual clans, which were combined to form 10 tribes in 508/7BC.  The city of Rome similarly consisted of numerous tribes. [2]  In the year 242BC, there were officially 35 tribes in Rome.

Prominent cities in the times before empires usually had their own kings--thus the idea of city-states...

[1] The classic work on the idea of socially constructed reality is of course, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Anchor, 1966).

[2] In fact, the very word "tribe" comes from the Latin word for three, since three tribes originally made up the city of Rome.

The Last Ten Years (Part 1)

With tomorrow being the ten year anniversary of September 11, I thought it was an appropriate time to reflect on the last 10 years or so.  I know these are sensitive and heavily debated issues, but I offer you my historical perspective.

November 2000
First, some background.  I couldn't decide who to vote for in 2000.  Even walking into the voting booth (then at Center School), I contemplated writing my wife in as a write-in.  I had the thought, "The country is pretty much running itself.  It doesn't really matter who the President is."  My Republican upbringing kicked in.  I voted for Bush.

September 11, 2001
9-11 changed everything.  No longer did I listen to morning comedy in the car.  Now I listened to NPR for any news I could get my hands on.  The climate of the news changed from hearing almost nothing international to a regular stream of news about places I couldn't then find on a map, like Afghanistan.

I've almost forgotten the climate of fear that immediately followed here in the States.  It's funny now but I felt the paranoia that led the then mayor of Marion to put concrete barriers around our court house.  I flew to Greece right before we invaded Iraq and was immensely paranoid on the plane.

It's hard to remember how we thought before.  I would never have believed someone could attack us here in that way before.  I really thought they were joking that morning when I heard about it.  No one ever worried about a plane getting hijacked back then.  Everyone wants to blame people after the fact.  We can't remember how we thought before.

2001-2002
We had the sympathy of the world.  There was broad international support for our invasion of Afghanistan and removal of the Taliban.  This was a great opportunity for us in the world, I thought.  So far so good.  

But then the Bush administration began to divert our attention to Iraq.  It has emerged after the fact that Powell and Cheney likely stood on opposite sides of this issue.  Most would say that history has vindicated Powell. The series of events that followed has taken a man I once hoped would be president and almost removed him from the public sphere altogether.

It would have been political suicide for anyone but those from the most liberal of districts to vote against authorizing President Bush to take action in Iraq.  It is a reminder in times like these where American emotions are on a similar high.  We're probably not thinking straight.  I have never been a big fan of Hillary Clinton, but I didn't hold it against her that she voted in favor of authorizing Bush.  It would have been political suicide not to.

I do not believe Ahmadinejad would have come to power in Iran if we had not invaded Iraq.  The people elected him in reaction to our impingement in the region.  I believe the horrible situation in Iran is thus one of many unforeseen consequences of the Iraq war.

2003
We invaded Iraq.  I remember thinking as Powell presented evidence of WMD to the UN Council that I sure hoped they had more evidence than he was sharing.  Funny not to present your best stuff, though.

I truly believe that Bush had very good intentions in invading Iraq.  Remember that there was a strong avoidance of the word "invasion."  People fought over a word that everyone now uses without thinking.

Almost everyone recognizes now that there was no connection between Al-Qaeda and Hussein.  Yes, Hussein was a very bad man.  Yes, most people were sure he had WMD at the time.  But the war in Iraq is a textbook case against pre-emptive war in virtually every situation.

I believe that what was behind our attack on Hussein was a well-intentioned uber-strategy for the Middle East.  With the Arab spring, it is possible that it is actually working, although ironically not at all like the think tanks of the time thought it would.  It doesn't justify invading a country out of the blue morally, but it is possible that our mistake will, in the end, lead roughly to its uber-objective: a region that is more friendly to us and somewhat democratized.

At the same time, I truly believe that Bush would not have invaded Iraq if he had known that mission was not going to be accomplished as quickly as he thought it was on that air craft carrier.  I pictured him making that decision with a heavy heart and only because he thought that it would not cause many American (or Iraqi) lives.  Unfortunately, he was massively, massively wrong.

My hunch is that he was culturally naive on a grand scale.  He thought that everyone wants democracy.  Only someone who doesn't know much about other cultures would think that.

2004-2007
I was in Germany the Spring of 2004.  I remember a concerned German at church saying something to me about us going into Iraq and I responded that I didn't think Bush had known what he was doing. I do believe that Bush was a lot wiser in his second term and that Cheney had less influence.  It must be nice to be a second term president who doesn't have to worry about re-election.

It seemed impossible that Bush would not be re-elected in 2004.  People like me were taking a lot of flack at that time for saying things everyone was saying by the 2008 election.  9-11 put us in a massive defensive and protectionist mode.  In my opinion, we still cannot quite think straight.  The anger and fear of that event have gone down, but have yet to return to normal levels.  And the economic crisis has in its own way refueled that same mode of thinking.

The rest of the story, as I see it, tomorrow...

Debates over History

Woke up to an article on the history textbooks in Texas in Inside Higher Ed. Here are some excerpts from the article:

"About 800 college history professors from across the country have so far signed on to a letter circulated this week by seven academics from the University of Texas campuses in Austin and El Paso.

"The letter says that some board revisions undermine 'the study of the social sciences in our public schools by misrepresenting and even distorting the historical record and the functioning of American society.'

"The signatories mostly teach at Texas schools — including Baylor University, Texas A&M University and Abilene Christian University — but also come from out-of-state colleges such as Stanford University, Brigham Young University and the Virginia Military Institute.

"'You can quibble for and against this person or that event," said Emilio Zamora , a UT history professor. "But what is most important and glaring is that this revision does not come close to reflecting the state of historical research on the state of Texas.'"

Certainly "liberals" can be guilty of exactly the same thing. My hunch on what's happening here? Another example of American anti-intellectualism, what Mark Noll called the "scandal of the evangelical mind." It is a distrust of those most qualified to draw conclusions on a particular issue. Again, in the words of Jack Handy, "Sometimes I wonder if the experts might actually be experts."

What happened in the 90s?

I'm trying to expose my 8 and 9 year old to history and decided to move backward each week, since I doubt seriously they are really in any position to understand something like a century, let alone 2000 years ago. Do I even understand 2000 years?

Last week I talked to them about the 00s. I showed them video of 9-11 and the tsunami. Didn't really manage to convey the Great Recession but oh well.

So today's the 90's, trying to get them to understand their lifespan doubled. My first brainstorm came up with:

Clinton, Rwanda, U.S.S. Cole, the first trade center bombing, and the internet.

Then I cheated a little and added Oklahoma City, the first Gulf War, Columbine, Waco, Somalia, and Kosovo.

What to share of these?! I think the internet, Rwanda, and Oklahoma City.

Me, I taught Greek at Asbury, lived in England for three years, Germany one semester, got a doctorate, taught in Sierra Leone for two months, got married, and got a job teaching philosophy at Indiana Wesleyan University, then slipped into the New Testament.

What were you doing in the 90s?

Crucial history of the 00's...

What are the key events for Americans this decade (not meaning to be exclusive, only to prioritize)?

1. 9-11 and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
2. the world economic crisis, sparked by the American housing crisis

Those are the two biggies that come to mind. A lot of other things follow or associate with these. Am I missing anything major?