{"id":1299,"date":"2008-12-08T22:00:52","date_gmt":"2008-12-08T22:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/etherwave.wordpress.com\/?p=1299"},"modified":"2008-12-08T22:00:52","modified_gmt":"2008-12-08T22:00:52","slug":"the-consolidation-of-gains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/2008\/12\/08\/the-consolidation-of-gains\/","title":{"rendered":"The Consolidation of Gains"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post looks at the possibility and benefits of historiographical balance<\/a>, and how that balance can best be achieved.\u00a0 I suggest that the “consolidation of historiographical gains” is central to this idea.<\/p>\n

When Christopher discussed the “hierarchy of needs”<\/a> he suggested that scholarly works deploy rather than describe previous literature, and that the resultant failure to describe represents an act of intellectual “atavism” (a topic I hope he’ll find time to address here further once his master’s thesis work allows).\u00a0 However, in our behind-the-scenes conversations, we’ve come to agree that the progression of historiography is not necessarily a story of degradation.\u00a0 Rather, historical works have a responsibility to the historiography<\/a> to consolidate its gains and to add to those gains.<\/p>\n

By consolidation, I mean the retention of pertinent facts and arguments, the leaving behind of details, and the use of references to indicate the existence of those details.\u00a0 The consolidation of gains is necessary, simply because the weight of primary material and the proliferation of secondary material has changed the nature of scholarship.\u00a0 The “omnivorous scholar”—the master of “the literature” and certified practitioner of its exegesis—has mostly disappeared.\u00a0 However, it should remain impermissible to leave behind the collected gains of the Era of the Omnivores as well those produced by more recent scholarship, even though earlier concerns for the progression of arguments may seem orthogonal and largely irrelevant to more recent concern with describing practices.<\/p>\n

The consolidation of gains is necessary for the production of “coherent” history.\u00a0 In my post on chronological versus epistemological (or sociological) problematics<\/a>, I pointed out that chronologies have a richer potential for problematics, that rather than simply seeking more epistemological “stuff” to describe, contextualize, and collect, chronologies offer more opportunities for the reconciliation of perspectives.\u00a0 In chronologies the retention of details matters<\/em> for the maintenance of the coherence of narratives.\u00a0 The transcendence of description—moving beyond what Simon Schaffer, channeling Joseph Priestley, called “fiction”<\/a>—into chronological explanation, and the resolution of problematics into coherence allows for what Schaffer referred to as “experimental” (or what Priestley called “true”) histories, where discovering the unexpected—what Harry Collins refers to as “counter-commonsensical” results<\/a>—becomes possible.\u00a0 This suggests the possibility of a progressive historiography.<\/p>\n

Consolidating gains can act as a sort of “traffic signal”: it allows historiography to progress continually and\u00a0 evenly by suggesting problematic areas.\u00a0 Consolidation recognizes what should already be established, and by establishing a vanguard it helps disqualify historiographical evangelism<\/a> (the quixotic quest to reform popular history<\/a>, for instance) as a worthwhile scholarly pursuit.\u00a0 For similar reasons, it helps prevent ornamental “pile on”: the perpetual need to demonstrate a point over and over again (as in the overproduction of case studies geared toward demonstrating the link between 19th-century field science and Imperialism).<\/p>\n

Conversely, consolidation can also help point out areas where very little work has been done.\u00a0 By producing coherent narratives, it becomes easier to identify things that have not been seen in the scholarship of one historical period, but that do exist in another.\u00a0 This allows historians either to identify that thing in the lacking scholarship, or, failing to find it, to ask “where did this come from (or go)?”\u00a0 It signals where empirical research is necessary.\u00a0 On a more mundane level, this sort of practice would also help link the concerns of scholars of different eras, and to do so in the most productive ways.<\/p>\n

The failure to consolidate gains can result in a number of possible historiographical maladies.\u00a0 The imbalancing of historiography does not, in and of itself, constitute a malady.\u00a0 A malady is, rather, the production and historiographical retention<\/em> of claims that would be problematized by unaddressed existing facts or claims—a permanent unbalancing between old and new historiography.\u00a0 For example, the relative lack of attention to 18th-century natural philosophy is simply a lamentable present historiographical imbalance.\u00a0 However, the claim by a historian of the 19th or 20th\u00a0 century that Enlightenment science can be characterized by reference to a belief in knowable a priori <\/em>truths and the cult of rationality is a historiographical malady: a detailed (or, really, cursory) knowledge of the historiography will permit no such blanket claim.\u00a0 Similarly, David Edgerton’s piece on the historiographical creation of (and attack on) the “linear model” of R&D is a must-read assault on another persistent historiographical malady (it is #41 here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The rise of historiographical maladies suggests that if historiography is not recognized explicitly through consolidation, implicit historiography <\/em>rises to take its place.\u00a0 An implicit historiography often takes the form of a straw man—it constitutes an assumed body of general knowledge, “what is believed” for which it is easy to provide a “corrective”, to “fill in the much needed gap” (as Peter Galison likes to say), or to otherwise make a positive contribution.\u00a0 As new works begin to situate themselves around the implicit historiography, older insights may be lost to the archives, and their significance for recent accounts forgotten.\u00a0 This, I believe, is an operative definition of historiographical atavism.<\/p>\n

The consolidation of gains can be achieved by writing works that actively seek out explanatory problematics rather than cleverly dodge them (“this case study is not necessarily representative”, “this is a work of archaeology of a discourse rather than a genealogy of ideas”, etc.—note these things are not to be avoided altogether, but should be used more sparingly than they perhaps are).\u00a0 We might also make better use of historiographical technologies.\u00a0 Canons could be proposed and argued over.\u00a0 Edited volumes might more frequently try to resemble collaborations.\u00a0 The general history of science and textbook market might be made more competitive.\u00a0 We might start seeing more review articles.<\/p>\n

All of this might depend on the consolidation of gains being better recognized not only as a non-extraneous pursuit, but as an essential scholarly imperative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post looks at the possibility and benefits of historiographical balance, and how that balance can best be achieved.\u00a0 I suggest that the “consolidation of historiographical gains” is central to this idea. When Christopher discussed the “hierarchy of needs” he suggested that scholarly works deploy rather than describe previous literature, and that the resultant failure<\/p>\n

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