pseudohistory
Pseudohistory is a pejorative term applied to texts which purport to be historical in nature but which depart from standard historiographical conventions in a way which undermines their conclusions. Works which draw controversial conclusions from new, speculative or disputed historical evidence, particularly in the fields of national, political, military and religious affairs, are often rejected as pseudohistory.
Description
As "pseudohistory" is a label rather than a self-defined intellectual movement, a clear definition is not possible. Some criteria which have been suggested are:
- That the work has a political, religious or other ideological agenda.
- That a work is not published in an academic journal or is otherwise not adequately
peer reviewed . - That the evidence for key facts supporting the work's thesis is:
- speculative; or
- controversial; or
- not correctly or adequately sourced; or
- interpreted in an unjustifiable way; or
- given undue weight; or
- taken out of context; or
- distorted, either innocently, accidentally, or fraudulently.
- That competing (and simpler) explanations or interpretations for the same set of facts, which have been peer reviewed and have been adequately sourced, have not been addressed.
- That the work relies on one or more conspiracy theories or hidden hand explanations, when the principle of Occam's razor would recommend a simpler, more prosaic and more plausible explanation of the same fact pattern.
Goodrick-Clarke's description of cryptohistory
One narrow description of cryptohistory, a term probably less pejorative than pseudohistory, can be found in The Occult Roots of Nazism (1985) by the historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. This book examines the field of Ariosophy, a esoteric movement in Germany and Austria 1890-1930, that Goodrick-Clarke himself describes as occult. The doctrines of Ariosphy strongly resemble Nazism in important points (e.g. racism), however, the only cases of direct influences that Goodrick-Clarke could find were the ones of Rudolf von Sebottendorf (and the Thule society) and Karl Maria Wiligut. While this cases did exist, they are often portrayed strongly exaggerated in the modern mythology of Nazi occultism. Faced with this in his research, Goodrick-Clarke debunkes several modern mythological books of this kind in Appendix E of the Occult Roots of Nazism. These books "were typically sensational and under-researched. A complete ignorance of the primary sources was common to most authors and inaccuracies and wild claims were repeated by each newcomer to the genre until an abundant literature existed, based on wholly spurious 'facts' concerning the powerful Thule Society, the Nazi links with the East, and Hitler's occult initiation."[1] Here Goodrick-Clarke brings down the description of cryptohistory to two elements: "A complete ignorance of the primary sources" and the repitition of "inaccuries and wild claims".
Criticism
Some critics argue that pseudohistory is a pejorative label which, of itself, has no content in the absence of specific criticisms of the underlying historiographical method employed in a historical work and, ipso facto, will itself be a controversial claim: A work which has no popular or intellectual support is not likely to attract sufficient attention to be labelled pseudohistorical — it will be ignored completely. An argument, therefore, that a given work is pseudohistorical (without more particular specific criticisms of its conclusions or methods) may be ad hominem in nature.
Calling something "pseudohistory" assumes that there is a correct historiographical method, and ultimately a single objectively true account of a given set of facts. This analysis is not consistent with certain metaphysical theories, particularly relativist views of historical affairs, which would reject the notion of any truth outside language. (See, for example, Richard Rorty's Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity).
Examples of pseudohistory
The following are some commonly-cited examples of pseudohistory:
- Washington Irving's biographies of Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo
- Immanuel Velikovsky's book Worlds in Collision
- Anatoly Timofeevich Fomenko's book New Chronology
- Heribert Illig's book Phantom time hypothesis
- Priory of Sion: works such as Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which conjecture that Jesus Christ may have married Mary Magdalene, who later moved to France and gave birth to the line of Merovingian Kings
- Holocaust denial: claims of writers such as David Irving that the Holocaust did not occur or was exaggerated.
- Apollo moon landing hoax accusations: claims that the United States Apollo moon landings were faked by NASA with the help of the CIA.
- Gavin Menzies's book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, which argues for the idea that Chinese sailors discovered America
- Pre-Columbian Islamic contact theories The claim that Muslim travelers arrived in the Americas prior to initial European contact in the 15th century.
- Many of the historical theories put forth by Afrocentrism.
- The theory of Lemuria and Kumari Kandam.
- Lost civilization of Atlantis.
- Various conspiracy theories suggesting that the September 11 terrorist attacks were perpetrated by the U.S. government.
- The various writings of David Barton postulating the religious "Christian" foundation of the
United States of America . - Ward Churchill's claim that the U.S. Army deliberately infected the Mandan Indians by means of smallpox blankets in 1837.
The definition of pseudohistory can be extended to varying contexts. Historian Douglas Allchin[2] contends that history in science education can not only be false or anecdotal, but ideologically misleading, and that this constitutes pseudohistory.
References
- ^ Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 224,225
- ^ Allchin, D. 2004. Pseudohistory and pseudoscience. Science & Education 13:179-195. [1]
See also
External links
- Pseudohistory entry at Skeptic's Dictionary
- "Pseudohistory and Pseudoscience" Program in the History of Science and Technology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis MN, USA.
- "The Restoration of History" from Skeptic Magazine.
- The Hall of Ma'at
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