Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought

HELLA dense. This guy LOVES empiricism and objective truth. HATES fallacies.

It's a favorite lawyer trick to pick apart an opponent's argument and try to use small errors in reasoning to undermine the entire position, even when the mistakes of logic are small enough to leave the main line of argument unscathed. And I remember vividly how my father used to count grammatical errors in the speeches of politicians and then be unwilling to discuss the substance of what they had to say with me because he was so caught up in how the grammatical error count was proof that they were idiots so no substantive discussion was needed. These are the kind of behaviors that Mr. Fischer's approach encourages. I am certainly in favor of logically reasoned arguments that are free of fallacy where possible. But I couldn't help thinking that Mr. Fischer's obsession with rooting out the fallacies sometimes makes him miss the point.

Mr. Fischer is so caught up with the minutiae that he commits the "can't see the forest for the trees" fallacy. Perhaps we should call it the argument "ad silvam." Though he sometimes praises the overall value of a historian's work right before ripping into it for some minor error in reasoning, he is mostly quick to dismiss histories in which he finds the fallacies that he enumerates without end. Any book length work is likely to have some fallacies, but can still be hugely valuable. Unfortunately, they are all shot down by Mr. Fischer's fallacy gun long before they can safely take flight. So it becomes easy to miss some of the bigger points in quibbling over the small ones. Marx and Freud, as examples, both had many fallacies in their works. Some of their fundamental ideas were dead wrong. But they were also both influential geniuses, whose works left us much of value to ponder. We can't let nit-picking fallacy hunting bury our greatest thinkers.

I'm not exactly the intended audience for this book, as I am not a professional historian or historiographer. The book is almost a reference book, painstakingly taxonomizing the many fallacies, large and small, that historians make. As a reader of history, but not a practitioner, I found the book interesting and entertaining, but not immediately useful.

Substantively, his points are clear and well-argued, if overly nitpicky. The main area in which I would disagree with his arguments is his rather circumscribed view of the historian's role as an analyst. I don't know whether his views on this represent his own personal opinions or reflect the prevailing ideas of his time (the book was published in 1970). I'd be curious to know which, if any, of Fischer's thoughts on the discipline of historical writing have evolved over time.

The main impression the book left me with is a love for Fischer's caustic writing style. The book is written with a lot of wit and very little sugarcoating. In a way, it's just a 300+ page diss track toward historians. I found it very fun to read, but I imagine folks like E.H. Carr may have felt differently.

I have been reading history extensively for over three years. About a year and a half ago, I read Savoie Lottinville's The Rhetoric of History – an essential guide for everyone who writes or wants to write history. It was an eye-opening book, for before I read it, it had not occurred me what a painstaking, complex process the writing of history is. It is akin to an iceberg. What the reader sees on the pages of the final product, the published book, is just the tip. The bulk of the work – the research – is hidden below the water. The author's knowledge of the subject he writes about far exceeds the knowledge he shares with the reader. Only this way he can convey the information in a graspable and confident manner. Weak written histories, just like weak books in general, result from cases in which the author lacks clear understanding of the event, figure, period etc. he is writing about. 

Yet, being a historian is so much more than narrating events in history well. The process of analyzing, understanding, and interpreting the past correctly is the base of historical scholarship – in other words, the development of a specific thinking, a logic of historical thought, as David Hackett Fischer calls it in his outstanding guide for historians. In HISTORIANS' FALLACIES, he brings attention to the many and varied mistakes of logic a historian can commit.

I have lost count of the times I have heard or read someone express his frustration with history for its universal relativity. History, according to many, is infallibly subjective and open to re-intepretation, which, allegedly, makes historical analysis pointless because it never yields definitive answers. To my delight, Fischer disagrees with this point of view. While history is indeed always open to re-intepretation, that is mostly so because the many objective truths that are to be told about the past are frequently wrongly understood and interpreted by historians – whether on purpose or by accident.

Just like any other person, a historian cannot be fully objective. The desire to prove one's point of view often beclouds objectivity and compels one to wrench historical facts to suit oneself instead of adapting one's theories to the unarguable facts. I have found many instances of historians' falling into this trap in the books I read. Recently, for instance, I read Frederik Logevall's EMBERS OF WAR, in which he is so determined to prove that South Vietnam's Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem was a dictator that he attempts to conform the facts to his thesis – with unconvincing results. Facts are, fortunately or not, very stubborn things. 

That is why being a historian is difficult. I do not think that it is even possible to become so aware and so unbiased as to produce a perfect historical analysis. Nevertheless, there are important rules that can help any historian improve his reasoning and develop a sound logic of historical thinking that would help him free himself at least partially from the narrow-minded tendency to prove one's own point of view no matter what. David Fischer outlines those rules in the form of different kinds of fallacies that threaten historians on their quest for the truth.

These fallacies are organized in three main sections: fallacies of inquiry, of explanation, and of argument. The biggest category is, not surprisingly, the fallacies of explanation, for while most historians would not venture to falsify facts, they would conveniently interpret those facts wrongly. Fischer gives many on-point examples to illustrate his argument. One example that stuck with me discussed the taxes in Boston in the years before the American Revolution. A certain historian expresses his outrage at the allegedly egregious taxes Great Britain burdened Bostonians with – they had to pay thirteen pounds in taxes – and argues that it was because of such taxes that the Bostonians revolted. However, he never elaborates what exactly a tax of thirteen pounds meant at the time. How much money did the average citizen of Boston earn? How badly did a tax of thirteen pounds affect an average Bostonian's income? If the people of Boston paid a thirteen-pound tax, how much did the people of Great Britain pay? Those are important questions, and their answers can easily transform the picture of an oppressed Bostonian into a lucky colonial subject who paid tolerable taxes – especially if compared to his British counterpart.

It is impossible for me to enumerate all the different fallacies Fischer addresses, and there is no need. The main message I would like to convey is that to avoid or correct mistakes, one should first become aware of the mistakes he can make or has been making. I read this book carefully, highlighting almost every page, and tried to commit to memory as many of Fischer's warnings as possible. In the end, I understood that just like The Rhetoric of History did not do magic for my writing skills until I started persistently practicing my writing, HISTORIANS' FALLACIES would not make a brilliant historian out of me overnight. It is a useful guide, but the road to becoming a good historian is long and bumpy. To understand Fischer's point is one thing, to master analyzing history like he advises historians to is another. It would require many years of practice and a greater life experience than mine. Nevertheless, this work is an essential start, and I recommend it to every historian – and to every reader of history as well.

Very of its time, with concerns appropriate to the age. I think its unsparing nature has made it age better than it could have, and however you feel about his philosophical approach, the logical "fallacies" he outlines are good things to be cognizant of in your writing/arguing. Even if you decide "dammit, I'm gonna still do it anyway". :)

A good correction to many mistakes by historians. But pretty academic.

This is more of an arm-chair classic in the philosophy of history - especially teaching history.

Using major historical works pre-1970, Fischer points out fallacies in research, interpretation, and presentation. Ultimately, the book comes down to proposing a simple question: "why do we teach history?" It is more rhetorical than anything else. However, he does raise some valid observations in discussing the fallacies.

I read this as a reference for a paper I am writing for English class. Since I am a history major, we had to write something pertaining to it. This is not a book on history but on how to look at, and work with history. The book was a fascinating look at how one historian feels all historians should focus their work. Some of it was a bit dry, and hard to get through while other parts were extremely funny. Though an older work, I think it still has valid information for today's historians. I am looking forward to reading more of this authors books.