Historical Science

In my spare day off yesterday I watched a much anticipated debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye over the feasibility of the so called “Creation” explanation for the origins of our universe. I have no desire to try and argue my side of the argument one way or another, and as poor a debater as I think Ken Ham is, he did bring up a point that I found at least mildly entertaining to ponder. The main backbone of his argument, and the idea that he claims keeps the creationist view point a valid one, is that there are two different kinds of science that we practice: observational science and historical science. Observational science consists of conducting current experiments and developing technologies that rely on the laws of science as we know them today. Historical Science on the other hand makes the assumption that the laws of the science have always been what they have today, and as a result we can run experiments and analyze data to interpret what the history of origins is. Mr. Ham claims that due to our lack of personal experience from those times we can’t actually prove anything. That logic isn’t really philosophically sound, and there are many reasons why it’s reasonable to assume there are underlying laws to our natural world, but if anything this did get me thinking about to what extent our understanding of science is belief based.

Now I’d like to just point out that I in fact have a deep love for the sciences, and it’s pursuit, and hope one day to pursue a deep career in them, but honestly I’d be kidding myself if I believed the scientific method was a perfect approach to answering all our questions and solving all our problems. I mean, I suppose were it done perfectly maybe it would be, but the point I’d like to make here is that there’s a lot more subjectivity and wiggle room in science than I believe the scientific society wants to admit. I don’t mean per se that scientific facts can be interpreted differently by different people (Although when you get into things like quantum physics an astute philosopher might be able to make a case), I mean that there is a certain amount of subjectivity inherent to our interpretations and assumptions of the raw scientific data. Everyone knows of all the various assumptions about the nature of our universe: The Earth is flat, the universe rotates around us, our thoughts come from our heart and heads are full of pus, etc.. The list goes on and on. Now many of those ideas were simply the result of a naive belief that we had enough information to make a judgement when we in fact did not. In our modern context we like to look back at those prior judgements an scoff, and I think it would be genuinely fair to say that we’ve much honed the practice and gotten better at accurately interpreting scientific data. That being said, I think that maybe we kid ourselves about the extent to which we can really say emphatically what we know for sure and don’t.

I don’t write this piece with the intention of trying to revolutionize the way we think about science, it would be trite to assume I could argue such a thing, but even if you think about the very way in which science classes are held. In a traditional science course we progress through a number of different chapters learning various different ideas and mechanisms. All of it is presented to us as pure fact. I absolutely don’t doubt that most everything we learn in introductory courses is probably the way it really works. By this long I think it’s safe to think that much of the basis for science would have been disproven if we interpreted it incorrectly. But the idea that maybe we don’t have the full picture yet, I would argue is the case across the board. Consider the case of evolution. Most any High School Freshman who’s taken a biology course could tell you that it’s the way life changes on our planet, and what the basic ideas behind Natural Selection are. Darwin and the whole nine yards. Now to most people (creationist excluded I suppose) this would suffice as an adequate explanation. But what if I told you that in all honesty evolutionary biologists still don’t have a complete picture of what natural selection is? To prove my point I’ll cite the example of Edward Wilson and his Multilevel Selection Theory. To summarize there had been a long held belief that selection of animals who practice social tendencies happened at the gene level. I.e. there were genes coding for certain social behaviors, and the best genes would win out. This was known as Kin Selection. Multilevel Selection theory argues that instead of at the gene level the selection happens at a combination of groups competing and the individuals within the group. It’s a subtle idea, I know, and I’m sure it seems like I just wanted to show you how awesomely knowledgeable I am, but there’s a better point here, hidden in the history behind this discover. In 2010 Wilson (One of the most famous biologists ever) presented a paper to Nature Magazine that he claimed presented a compelling argument for Multilevel based off of mathematical models he and other Harvard researchers had composed. In other words Wilson and associates claimed they could refute an old theory based on pure math. In science that’s a pretty gutsy claim, math is pretty highly regarded as far as proving stuff goes. But after it’s publication there was a tremendous uproar in the evolutionary biology field. Many hundreds of biologists from across the country responded by co-authoring a new article articulating all the various ways in which Wilson and his team made mistakes. Really it’s quite an impressive thing to see. Yet there are still many who support Wilson and his evidence. In other words based on how different people interpret the same scientific data and glean opposite results from it. In reality this is how all science works, and our “facts” are those things we’ve mostly agreed upon more than disagreed upon. In my eyes the biggest difference here between what we call science and what we call history is that most scientific pursuit exists as a possibility apart from time, whereas history by nature is stringent upon how well we can record certain instances in time. The interpretation of data is mostly the same, and the subjective aspect is still there even in science.

A Postmodernist History?

As I'm sure everyone knows the prompt we attempted to answer last night was along the lines of "If there were a postmodern history, what it look like?" I've heard some really good thoughts on different postmodernist characteristics and how they would apply to writing a history, and thought I would offer my own thoughts. Specifically the aspect of Postmodernism that I find most interesting and compelling in the way that I interpret my own life is the way in which it attempts to accept truth and validity from all areas regardless of art form. I figure though, that in order to accept a number of takes on "reality" as all being true you have to also expect to find "false" representation spread wisely, as the word would have been used in the modernist sense to refer to something not pertaining to our one true reality. Arguably this is seen nowhere more clearly than in the ways in which a rigid view of history doesn't work when you try to interpret it from all possible points of view. In that way you could make a case that almost any aspect of a historical narrative could be viewed as false when interpreted by the right person. So with these concepts touched upon in class I think it's fair to say that we can all agree that any history that tries to accord itself as a narrative is going to have "flaws" meaning different people might agree or disagree on the extent to which the events in a book really happened.

With that in mind I think it's still entirely possible for history to maintain a valuable area of study, even if we have to admit that there's no such thing as a perfectly accurate history. In fact as Doctorow himself says about historical fiction if you accept the idea that someone of the material isn't real it even lends strength to it as a valuable contribution to society. He supports the idea that while no one novel or piece of fiction could entirely compass all aspects of an idea, the more people write about and present their own take the closer and closer we get to a full picture and general understanding of that idea. He says “If there are enough of us, somehow a common wisdom will come through the community and pick and choose what it needs in order to survive and go on.” It's an abstract idea and one that has risks, as he admits, but I'm inclined to agree with him that as we create works they will be either disregarded or praised and thus we gain wisdom through their study. I think the same thought could very easily be applied to history. While no piece of historic writing is entirely truth, there are almost always elements within that many people can agree are legitimate. In addition to this no piece of history functions on its own, they all make reference to one another to compose our view of history. My opinion then is that the important part of historical writing is not necessarily to what degree all of the facts contained within are true, but more to what extent can that piece of work contribute to advancing overarching themes throughout our lives.

Since both classes discussed specifically the idea of writing a history of Uni I think this might be an interesting example of what I'm trying to convey. My hour specifically fixated in part on the history of the dismissal of two directors of student life in about as many years. Especially controversial was the dismissal of April Warren-Grice. I think this is a particularly good example because there's no one person who could create a complete picture of exactly what happened and why, but by talking to more and more people you can develop a better sense of what the main themes in the conflict were. Even more interestingly I think that perhaps even those events that were rumor might be more important to the issue than more factually based information would be. I personally heard a number of different explanations ranging from the official reason, which was that she needed time to work on her doctorate, to explanations concerning her friction with much of the student body. Those latter explanations are what I think might give the better picture because they reflect what problems people perceived to be present. Many of of the rumors to me suggested themes of both race and sex conflict. While I don’t wish to start an argument over whether or not such claims are true or not, I think that they represent the much broader theme of the persistence of racial and sexually based friction in America. In this way I think that were you to write a history of what caused this abrupt changing of staff it would be potentially much more interesting and useful to record these unsubstantiated rumors as opposed to the official reasons cited. While some of those tales might be undeniably inaccurate they still provide us with the much better account of what we perceived to be the problems present.

Postmodernist Video Gaming

As we identified earlier in the semester one of the themes throughout postmodern literature is that the major questions it tries to answer are ontological. As I interpret that it concerns the exploration of our perceptions of reality and what we perceive to be real and what we perceive to be fake, and what the important distinctions here are. History as Fiction of course would be a great example of that blurring and the relationship between the two. As we’ve already seen extensively throughout Ragtime there are extensive gaps and inconsistencies in history, and even in the nature behind a historical pursuit. As a result there’s a lot of room to blur the lines between history and fiction we thought we saw, and Doctorow does it nicely. As he argues himself, his mixing of historically accepted events with events that he conceived of himself presents a still very realistic picture of what our history could have been like. He believes that it’s not strictly important whether or not part of his “history” is widely agreed upon or not, because he believes that by freely creating his own story it frees him to mold the work into one that is as useful as he can make it. By not being constrained to create a specific narrative he has valuable room to move around and make his own valuable lessons. It’s this aspect of Postmodernism that I find the most philosophically interesting; that it accepts all realities as potentially equally valuable, and even potentially as viable and and useful to consider as what we perceive to be our own reality. And as many people are starting to find more and more disturbing our “virtual” realities are bleeding into our “real lives”, Video Games being an excellent point of departure I think.

If you think of video games as following historical periods like literature I would argue that they started their journey during the Modernist Period. What I mean by this is that early in their history video games were the epitome of a structured narrative. There was absolutely a set point and set way you were supposed to achieve that end goal. Think Mario. You can only ever move forward or sit still (often not even that) and there were set places you jumped to in order to clear each level. Admittedly there was a little bit of variation here in exactly where you chose to jump, but for the most part there was a set beginning, end, and way to advance through the middle. If you wanted to a person could memorize the required keystrokes and timing and would be able to beat the game with their eyes closed. Think here of the similarity to the Mystery Novel, as Mr. Mitchell cited as the quintessentially modernist form of literature. The main character advances through a set of clues, supposedly interpreting them objectively, and in the end it leads them to a seemingly inevitable conclusion. Both forms follow a rigidly structured line of events.

Just as literature’s evolution from modern to postmodern was gradual and even subtle, so too was it the case for gaming. As games grew in popularity their complexity was also forced to grow in order to meet a hungry demand. While many aspects of the visual appearance of games, and even the mathematical models used to create these games have advanced dramatically these are only a vehicle for which to improve the gameplay itself. And the biggest focus on changing gameplay, in my opinion, is trying to create as much characterization in the game as possible. Things started off pretty low key; maybe you’ve got a choice of a few different weapons with which to face bad guys or maybe there were a number of different paths which you could take. But things started to get complex pretty fast (I’d just like to add in a note here that I am by no means trying to account for the whole history of gaming, I’m not even closed to qualified to do so, I’m just drawing on recollection of games which I’ve had interactions with). The first pokemon games for instance we now see as little more than childish, but the underlying mathematics and potential for specialization in their heyday was probably tremendous. Especially in the 21st Century though I think that game development has started to skyrocket as a viable industry. The result being that the complexity of game design has has taken off at a comparable rate. For those of you who are semi game savvy I remember thinking back in the early 2000’s how awesomely complex and interactive the Diablo games were. And in their defense I still think they’re fun, but in light of recent games they fall somewhat short of what our standards for complex would be. Take for example the most recent Grand Theft Auto game. Not only does it have some of the widest variety of personalization of any game I’ve ever played it also has an important defining difference from Diablo: after beating what they offer as the main set of missions there is absolutely no shortage of freeplay activity afterwards. In other words they’ve made it entirely possible to live within this constructed reality just like our own. And anyone who’s ever fallen into obsessive gaming sessions can attest, you can really inhabit these things. I don’t jest when I say I can spend upwards of 12 hours straight playing a game like GTA. Many people find this kind of activity deeply disturbing, I certainly don’t like having done it after the fact, but it becomes all to easy to blur your distinctions between your reality and the game. For many people the idea of spending your life inside of a virtual reality, as has sometimes been cited as a dystopian plot, is really not even a far off fear. It’s now entirely possible to make an entire career out of playing games. There are youtubers who do it for upwards of a million dollars a year. Most people (often of older generations) find a great deal of fault in the idea that you would spend your life in some alternate story besides what we call reality.

As much as I think there are valid concerns for people spending too much of their time inhabiting video games I also think that a lot of the value of a game is missed. This is the same value behind narrative that Doctorow so strongly advocates as to why fiction is just as valuable as history. While no video game portrays life perfectly a lot of them do a pretty good job, Grand Theft Auto being a reasonably good example. And just like any good novel it’s chalk full of moral ambiguity, questions of friendship and love, and it’s slightly hypocritical scathing social commentary. So before we’re too quick to jump to accusing of video games as not being a valid reality let’s all reflect on those same misgivings that were put forward towards Historical Fiction.