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A review by marc129
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past by John Lewis Gaddis
4.0
John Lewis Gaddis builds on the work of Marc Bloch and E. H. Carr, two renowned historians that have eloquently put into words where the writing of history actually stands for, what its own epistemological criteria and methodological rules are. Fortunately, Gaddis has integrated - 50 years later - the profound changes that have happened in the meantime in historiography and in the sciences in general.
This is, in the first place, postmodernism and especially the "cultural turn" of Hayden White and others. Gaddis rightly points out that historiography only gives a representation of the past, in the form of a story (a narrative), and not the past itself. At the same time he fiercely defends the value of that representation, provided that it fits as close as possible to reality (supported by sources) and leaves room for questioning so that a final consensus can grow between professional and non-professional observers of the past. Gaddis has a very pragmatic view, he constantly compares the writing of history to the making of a map (in which the past obviously is a kind of landscape); he firmly rejects relativism, because according to him there is indeed a reality of the past that continually allows querying by us (every time from a different present).
Gaddis also devotes many pages to the question whether history actually is a science, a question that has intrigued and divided historians and non-historians since the beginning of the 20th century. Surprisingly, Gaddis argues that history leans much more to some of the hard sciences than the social sciences do. He zooms in on elements of the chaos- and complexity theory that have pushed the hard sciences to take into account the uncertainty principle in complex systems. History did so much earlier, he states, because ultimately the past is an extremely complex system. That is a worthy argument, with which historians finally can get rid of their frustration and minority complex. But Gaddis drives his thesis too far, especially in his provocative stance on the social sciences. According to him social scientists are stuck in earlier (positivist) thinking patterns, and in their obsessive quest for independent variables they only end up with models that barely touch reality. Interesting and to some extent correct, for sure, but to my feeling not quite fair for the social sciences in general.
In short, this is definitely an interesting book, which apart from a number of provocative statements, finally puts historiography back on the "scientific" map.
This is, in the first place, postmodernism and especially the "cultural turn" of Hayden White and others. Gaddis rightly points out that historiography only gives a representation of the past, in the form of a story (a narrative), and not the past itself. At the same time he fiercely defends the value of that representation, provided that it fits as close as possible to reality (supported by sources) and leaves room for questioning so that a final consensus can grow between professional and non-professional observers of the past. Gaddis has a very pragmatic view, he constantly compares the writing of history to the making of a map (in which the past obviously is a kind of landscape); he firmly rejects relativism, because according to him there is indeed a reality of the past that continually allows querying by us (every time from a different present).
Gaddis also devotes many pages to the question whether history actually is a science, a question that has intrigued and divided historians and non-historians since the beginning of the 20th century. Surprisingly, Gaddis argues that history leans much more to some of the hard sciences than the social sciences do. He zooms in on elements of the chaos- and complexity theory that have pushed the hard sciences to take into account the uncertainty principle in complex systems. History did so much earlier, he states, because ultimately the past is an extremely complex system. That is a worthy argument, with which historians finally can get rid of their frustration and minority complex. But Gaddis drives his thesis too far, especially in his provocative stance on the social sciences. According to him social scientists are stuck in earlier (positivist) thinking patterns, and in their obsessive quest for independent variables they only end up with models that barely touch reality. Interesting and to some extent correct, for sure, but to my feeling not quite fair for the social sciences in general.
In short, this is definitely an interesting book, which apart from a number of provocative statements, finally puts historiography back on the "scientific" map.