If historians think their field is only about recording past events, there's no reason to listen to their opinions about current events. They're effectively saying they have no more expertise on the matter than my hair stylist.
This was an incredibly thought provoking, and at times uncomfortably piercing, piece about what historians can usefully add to the public discourse. As a historian, I definitely felt smug in my assumptions that in the battle between the social sciences and history, the context driven process of studying history was far superior. This was an important corrective so thank you!
Whether history is a ‘relevant’ topic is a very vexing one for historians, particularly given lower uptake of the subject at universities. It can lead historians down a dangerous path where we overextend it’s ability to reveal things about the world around us.
One distinction that I might venture is that the commentary that you cite here is one of ‘historical analogy’ - a deeply assumption driven and (in my opinion) dangerous exercise - with contextualisation. The latter is perhaps a more useful contribution for the likes of me to make!
In my experience, a strong grasp of the context within which a situation is unfolding (which includes deep historic trends and traditions), can be used effectively to inform when a predictive model is likely to have blind spots (as all must do, no matter how well evidenced and thought through). This is certainly not the sole prerogative of historians - lots of academic fields can add value there in a variety of aspects.
Sadly for historians looking to get into the political commentary game, that both requires knowledge of the models themselves (so we’ll have to rely on you darstardly economists), and specific knowledge of the context at hand. So built in to a historian’s expertise is their specific knowledge, an unhelpful factor for poor TV producers and editors looking for a reliable source of opinion that they can use for multiple events!
I think the right point to start at is Popper. What claims can be falsified? Many prefer history as a qualitative wrapper for explanation/rationalization of their priors. Others who prefer quantitative wrapping choose economics. But the qualitative-quantitative divide (which is really just about the handling of uncertainty) is not solved by breadth of knowledge or statistics. Both fields can form bad habits of rewarding those who put up the tallest pile of junk to intimidate those from investigating.
Popper’s positivistist approach offers a way to sort the good from the bad. Is it testable? If the answer is yes test it. If the answer is no don’t invest too much authority in the explanations you encounter. Taken to its extreme it can lead us to focus on testable questions (eg looking for your lost keys only in places where there is light) but we’re pretty far from that pole. Our current problem is unnecessarily complex explanations for where keys might be from strangers with no stake in the outcome.
The skill set we should focus on is answering the question “is it testable”? If they answer is yes, the proponent is as vulnerable to a grad student with too much time on their hands as they are to a giant of the field or an influencer. If it is not testable, assume it’s wrong, but be open to useful pieces. Not everything in the junkyard is trash.
Dear Noah Smith, excellent blog post with very high academic quality. First on Devereaux would be tyrants, the experience of Pakistan is that even democratic leaders have tried to cling to power. For example, the exiled leader Nawaz Sharif contested elections for the position of the prime minister 5 times since 1988 and won the majority seats 3 times. In 2017, though he was disqualified by the highest court on some say flimsy charges, he is yet looking for another 5 year term for himself. Same is true with Imran Khan. Most of the Pakistani think that Turky's Erodogan that is viewed by Western commentators to be less democratic, is the ideal case whereby one can cling to power for decades under democracies. Similarly the benevolent dictator Musharraf stayed in power from 1999 to 2008 and he wanted to continue his rule as is told by his acolytes based on some good economic growth years under his rule in Pakistan that he is indispensable for Pakistan. How would you translate his leaving of the office of president in 2008 not voluntarily but after years of struggle and protests by democratic forces within the country. Secondly the free media that he helped in creating by allowing private news channels was one of the most significant factor that informed people of Pakistan adequately for the country to have a democratic movements against his dictatorial rule.
Secondly you have again brought a very important empirical argument of causation and correlation in case of slave trade and earlier industrialization in the US. You are absolutely right that industrialization happened due to enterprising nature of American society that is raising the voice against slavery as early as 18nth century. So there is more of a correlation between slave trade and industrialization. And if anything industrialization has helped the American society to work on strengthening democracy in US whereas democracy has come with greater rights for African Americans and women and thus one may suggest that industrialization has actually lead to the abolishment of slave trade in America.
I have my BA in history, which I thankfully got prior to various forms of Theory completely capturing the discipline. I agree with the post generally, in that those in the business of making predictions ought to be subject to empirical evaluation. However I would say the assertion is less about history and more about punditry, which is actually what these people are doing. What's really going on here isn't an investigation of the past, but a statement about the present, and therefore not really history at all.
And anyway most of the kinds of claims in question tend to collapse, or at least become complicated, based on the historical record itself. A good historian that wants to engage in punditry will understand and at least attempt to account for the kinds of confounding facts and factors that crop up, frankly, everywhere. But where would the fun be in that?
This is a very thought provoking piece. I think it fails to appreciate the wide variety of historical genres that academics practice, but since it's basically aimed at a certain type of academic-turned-pundit, that's understandable.
"Theory" is a very broad term. Many theoretical works in "history" borrow theory from outside the discipline (Hegel, Marx, Weber, structuralists, post-structuralists, feminist theorists--are all examples of sources of historical theory that originate outside the field). To call any observation about recurrent historical regularities a "theory" isn't wrong, but it conflates very different types of historiography. What we usually call "theories" are about social and political regularities. The pundit-historian may be speaking about precedents, and like legal precedent, looking for historical precedents is a search for guides that apply to circumstances similar to, but rarely close to identical with past outcomes.
I wonder whether anyone who has studied the rise of the Third Reich did not have an uneasy sense of pattern resonance as the Proud Boys and Antifa battled in the streets, with the President at the time clearly speaking benignly of one and aggressively of the other. Nothing exact, but it seemed a good time to review the details we know about the past to look for insights about the present. That's something I did, but I'm not an historian of the Third Reich, and I would have welcomed having someone who was appear on some screen and convey where they may have seen common patterns, especially if they could also specify where the limits of that commonality lay. (All analogies have limited applicability, but there are useful analogies.) That might have made me realize how simplistic my own thinking was.
"History" isn't a discipline like economics or physics. Look at a textbook for a college 101 course in each and you can see the structural differences. "Would-be tyrants keep trying until they succeed" is not disproved by some would-be tyrants giving up or others never succeeding--and has nothing to do with "dictators" who do succeed sometimes giving up power. It has the force of saying that we know of enough historical instances of individuals aspiring to relatively absolute political power persisting beyond where ordinarily ambitious political figures tend to, that when someone who appears to fit that profile is defeated, it would be ignorant to assume they will not reassemble their power base and try again. Ignorant because it shows no awareness of precedent.
Like courts, it's possible and often useful to argue whether a precedent really applies, or whether there isn't one that applies more usefully; arguments are always selective, and partisans shape interpretation to serve their predisposition. But it can still be a productive enterprise.
In general, I agree with your questioning about using history to explain or predict the future.
I have one caveat: those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. I feel the problem comes from applying historical lessons in a one-to-one relationship to today's issues. This is as foolish as generals fighting today's wars with yesterday's tactics.
Applying Chamberlain's policy of appeasement with Hitler to today's situation in Ukraine is foolish and downright incorrect. However, as a principle, in the long run, appeasement of dictators never works.
I'm not sure how to test theories created by historians, even though they claim their ideas are not predictive. There is no way to set up an experiment and vary one input at a time to see how it will change the output. Even the great Hari Sheldon (Yes, I am a fan) wasn't correct all the time.
You have done a great job of explaining the problem; now, who will "Bell-the-Cat" to solve the problem?
Also, it feels bad. Economics still has foundations and funding and well paid positions in companies.
Historians, as you pointed out earlier, are disappearing. Are you going to spend the 5 years to learn classical Latin, Turkish, Greek, Manchu etc. necessary to do the history?
When Erik Loomis has this essay bought to his attention it would be wise for Noah to be prepared for a stream of invective, this concept (Historians bad, economist’s good and especially Historians could learn from economists is a concept almost designed in a lab to piss Erik off)
Fairly heavy reading, thanks for going through all that. My reaction to the Sweet fiasco was to think about how both sides are trying to use the past now, ie history, to promote present political arguments. MAGA is essentially saying America was better in some imagined past era and we have to go back there, 1619 is saying America was far worse than we admit in some imagined past era, or narrative as NHJ puts it, and that justifies...something different now than what we are doing.
Personally I think they are both wrong and are simply using the past to justify their agenda's. The "past" has become a weapon in the culture wars and we are slowly losing any objective grip on what it actually was due to all this politicizing.
During his life, Frederick Douglas, noted how in a free state, a man with an ox, supplied the energy needed to produce a product, while in a slave state, the same amount of energy took ten slaves.
He found it a poor use of labor and capital. That may not be an exact correlation to the idea that the Industrial Revolution could not have happened without slavery, so much as it slowed it down where slavery was practiced. This can also be seen by how quickly the North was able to rise to the occasion, with both troops, and manufactured supplies, something the South could not match.
I remember your piece about how military coup attempts in Japan in the decades preceding WWII went largely unpunished and eventually succeeded in changing the course of the government there and took it as a nomothetic cautionary tale about treating too lightly events like Jan. 6. So perhaps nomothetics can be qualified as cautionary tales.
Also, the statement about tyrants can be improved by saying that they keep trying until they succeed (otherwise we'll never know them as other than tyrant wannabes) and, as in the case of Nixon, until they become former tyrants by whatever contingent events (including death) force them from power.
Finally, wasn't James Madison a nomothetic thinker who applied the cautionary lessons of history to the drafting of a constitution.
Noah, while I find many parts of the piece thoughtful and useful to consider I must object to the characterization of Devereaux's piece. I believe that the quotation selected is misrepresentative to the level of intellectual dishonesty and the failure to properly analyze the piece serves to greatly undermine your argument. While you correctly quote from his introduction to a discussion on Peisistratos, you have omitted the conclusion in which he adds a qualifier to the prior "explicit law of human society," namely that Devereaux identifies that "Unless would-be tyrants *are made to face the consequences of their attempts to seize power*, they will keep trying until they succeed so thoroughly that justice is beyond recovery" (emphasis added). This not only fundamentally changes the law he is discussing, it makes the proposed counter-example of Richard Nixon no longer a counter-example: Nixon faced the most serious consequences of any president before or since and would almost certainly have faced criminal charges if not for Ford's pardon. If we are to critique bad theories by historians, we owe it to them to at least correctly identify these theories.
I also critique the link provided for the "historical list of dictators who stepped down." On said list are a mix of figures like Daniel Ortega and Indira Gandhi, who after losing an election sought to regain power through a more central regime (and in the case of Ortega, succeeded in doing so) and thus would be proof that would-be tyrants will keep trying. But also are figures like George Washington and Cincinnatus, who it would be quite a strain to argue qualify under the banner of "would-be tyrants". Again, we ought to critique bad theories by historians but not with shoddy scholarship that isn't really addressing the core claims.
If historians think their field is only about recording past events, there's no reason to listen to their opinions about current events. They're effectively saying they have no more expertise on the matter than my hair stylist.
This is such a good article, I really appreciate how you took the time to explain the steps in your thought processes clearly.
More like this Noah
This was an incredibly thought provoking, and at times uncomfortably piercing, piece about what historians can usefully add to the public discourse. As a historian, I definitely felt smug in my assumptions that in the battle between the social sciences and history, the context driven process of studying history was far superior. This was an important corrective so thank you!
Whether history is a ‘relevant’ topic is a very vexing one for historians, particularly given lower uptake of the subject at universities. It can lead historians down a dangerous path where we overextend it’s ability to reveal things about the world around us.
One distinction that I might venture is that the commentary that you cite here is one of ‘historical analogy’ - a deeply assumption driven and (in my opinion) dangerous exercise - with contextualisation. The latter is perhaps a more useful contribution for the likes of me to make!
In my experience, a strong grasp of the context within which a situation is unfolding (which includes deep historic trends and traditions), can be used effectively to inform when a predictive model is likely to have blind spots (as all must do, no matter how well evidenced and thought through). This is certainly not the sole prerogative of historians - lots of academic fields can add value there in a variety of aspects.
Sadly for historians looking to get into the political commentary game, that both requires knowledge of the models themselves (so we’ll have to rely on you darstardly economists), and specific knowledge of the context at hand. So built in to a historian’s expertise is their specific knowledge, an unhelpful factor for poor TV producers and editors looking for a reliable source of opinion that they can use for multiple events!
I think the right point to start at is Popper. What claims can be falsified? Many prefer history as a qualitative wrapper for explanation/rationalization of their priors. Others who prefer quantitative wrapping choose economics. But the qualitative-quantitative divide (which is really just about the handling of uncertainty) is not solved by breadth of knowledge or statistics. Both fields can form bad habits of rewarding those who put up the tallest pile of junk to intimidate those from investigating.
Popper’s positivistist approach offers a way to sort the good from the bad. Is it testable? If the answer is yes test it. If the answer is no don’t invest too much authority in the explanations you encounter. Taken to its extreme it can lead us to focus on testable questions (eg looking for your lost keys only in places where there is light) but we’re pretty far from that pole. Our current problem is unnecessarily complex explanations for where keys might be from strangers with no stake in the outcome.
The skill set we should focus on is answering the question “is it testable”? If they answer is yes, the proponent is as vulnerable to a grad student with too much time on their hands as they are to a giant of the field or an influencer. If it is not testable, assume it’s wrong, but be open to useful pieces. Not everything in the junkyard is trash.
Dear Noah Smith, excellent blog post with very high academic quality. First on Devereaux would be tyrants, the experience of Pakistan is that even democratic leaders have tried to cling to power. For example, the exiled leader Nawaz Sharif contested elections for the position of the prime minister 5 times since 1988 and won the majority seats 3 times. In 2017, though he was disqualified by the highest court on some say flimsy charges, he is yet looking for another 5 year term for himself. Same is true with Imran Khan. Most of the Pakistani think that Turky's Erodogan that is viewed by Western commentators to be less democratic, is the ideal case whereby one can cling to power for decades under democracies. Similarly the benevolent dictator Musharraf stayed in power from 1999 to 2008 and he wanted to continue his rule as is told by his acolytes based on some good economic growth years under his rule in Pakistan that he is indispensable for Pakistan. How would you translate his leaving of the office of president in 2008 not voluntarily but after years of struggle and protests by democratic forces within the country. Secondly the free media that he helped in creating by allowing private news channels was one of the most significant factor that informed people of Pakistan adequately for the country to have a democratic movements against his dictatorial rule.
Secondly you have again brought a very important empirical argument of causation and correlation in case of slave trade and earlier industrialization in the US. You are absolutely right that industrialization happened due to enterprising nature of American society that is raising the voice against slavery as early as 18nth century. So there is more of a correlation between slave trade and industrialization. And if anything industrialization has helped the American society to work on strengthening democracy in US whereas democracy has come with greater rights for African Americans and women and thus one may suggest that industrialization has actually lead to the abolishment of slave trade in America.
I have my BA in history, which I thankfully got prior to various forms of Theory completely capturing the discipline. I agree with the post generally, in that those in the business of making predictions ought to be subject to empirical evaluation. However I would say the assertion is less about history and more about punditry, which is actually what these people are doing. What's really going on here isn't an investigation of the past, but a statement about the present, and therefore not really history at all.
And anyway most of the kinds of claims in question tend to collapse, or at least become complicated, based on the historical record itself. A good historian that wants to engage in punditry will understand and at least attempt to account for the kinds of confounding facts and factors that crop up, frankly, everywhere. But where would the fun be in that?
This is a very thought provoking piece. I think it fails to appreciate the wide variety of historical genres that academics practice, but since it's basically aimed at a certain type of academic-turned-pundit, that's understandable.
"Theory" is a very broad term. Many theoretical works in "history" borrow theory from outside the discipline (Hegel, Marx, Weber, structuralists, post-structuralists, feminist theorists--are all examples of sources of historical theory that originate outside the field). To call any observation about recurrent historical regularities a "theory" isn't wrong, but it conflates very different types of historiography. What we usually call "theories" are about social and political regularities. The pundit-historian may be speaking about precedents, and like legal precedent, looking for historical precedents is a search for guides that apply to circumstances similar to, but rarely close to identical with past outcomes.
I wonder whether anyone who has studied the rise of the Third Reich did not have an uneasy sense of pattern resonance as the Proud Boys and Antifa battled in the streets, with the President at the time clearly speaking benignly of one and aggressively of the other. Nothing exact, but it seemed a good time to review the details we know about the past to look for insights about the present. That's something I did, but I'm not an historian of the Third Reich, and I would have welcomed having someone who was appear on some screen and convey where they may have seen common patterns, especially if they could also specify where the limits of that commonality lay. (All analogies have limited applicability, but there are useful analogies.) That might have made me realize how simplistic my own thinking was.
"History" isn't a discipline like economics or physics. Look at a textbook for a college 101 course in each and you can see the structural differences. "Would-be tyrants keep trying until they succeed" is not disproved by some would-be tyrants giving up or others never succeeding--and has nothing to do with "dictators" who do succeed sometimes giving up power. It has the force of saying that we know of enough historical instances of individuals aspiring to relatively absolute political power persisting beyond where ordinarily ambitious political figures tend to, that when someone who appears to fit that profile is defeated, it would be ignorant to assume they will not reassemble their power base and try again. Ignorant because it shows no awareness of precedent.
Like courts, it's possible and often useful to argue whether a precedent really applies, or whether there isn't one that applies more usefully; arguments are always selective, and partisans shape interpretation to serve their predisposition. But it can still be a productive enterprise.
In general, I agree with your questioning about using history to explain or predict the future.
I have one caveat: those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. I feel the problem comes from applying historical lessons in a one-to-one relationship to today's issues. This is as foolish as generals fighting today's wars with yesterday's tactics.
Applying Chamberlain's policy of appeasement with Hitler to today's situation in Ukraine is foolish and downright incorrect. However, as a principle, in the long run, appeasement of dictators never works.
I'm not sure how to test theories created by historians, even though they claim their ideas are not predictive. There is no way to set up an experiment and vary one input at a time to see how it will change the output. Even the great Hari Sheldon (Yes, I am a fan) wasn't correct all the time.
You have done a great job of explaining the problem; now, who will "Bell-the-Cat" to solve the problem?
Watching you tight with devereaux hurts my heart.
Also, it feels bad. Economics still has foundations and funding and well paid positions in companies.
Historians, as you pointed out earlier, are disappearing. Are you going to spend the 5 years to learn classical Latin, Turkish, Greek, Manchu etc. necessary to do the history?
When Erik Loomis has this essay bought to his attention it would be wise for Noah to be prepared for a stream of invective, this concept (Historians bad, economist’s good and especially Historians could learn from economists is a concept almost designed in a lab to piss Erik off)
Fairly heavy reading, thanks for going through all that. My reaction to the Sweet fiasco was to think about how both sides are trying to use the past now, ie history, to promote present political arguments. MAGA is essentially saying America was better in some imagined past era and we have to go back there, 1619 is saying America was far worse than we admit in some imagined past era, or narrative as NHJ puts it, and that justifies...something different now than what we are doing.
Personally I think they are both wrong and are simply using the past to justify their agenda's. The "past" has become a weapon in the culture wars and we are slowly losing any objective grip on what it actually was due to all this politicizing.
During his life, Frederick Douglas, noted how in a free state, a man with an ox, supplied the energy needed to produce a product, while in a slave state, the same amount of energy took ten slaves.
He found it a poor use of labor and capital. That may not be an exact correlation to the idea that the Industrial Revolution could not have happened without slavery, so much as it slowed it down where slavery was practiced. This can also be seen by how quickly the North was able to rise to the occasion, with both troops, and manufactured supplies, something the South could not match.
I remember your piece about how military coup attempts in Japan in the decades preceding WWII went largely unpunished and eventually succeeded in changing the course of the government there and took it as a nomothetic cautionary tale about treating too lightly events like Jan. 6. So perhaps nomothetics can be qualified as cautionary tales.
Also, the statement about tyrants can be improved by saying that they keep trying until they succeed (otherwise we'll never know them as other than tyrant wannabes) and, as in the case of Nixon, until they become former tyrants by whatever contingent events (including death) force them from power.
Finally, wasn't James Madison a nomothetic thinker who applied the cautionary lessons of history to the drafting of a constitution.
Noah, while I find many parts of the piece thoughtful and useful to consider I must object to the characterization of Devereaux's piece. I believe that the quotation selected is misrepresentative to the level of intellectual dishonesty and the failure to properly analyze the piece serves to greatly undermine your argument. While you correctly quote from his introduction to a discussion on Peisistratos, you have omitted the conclusion in which he adds a qualifier to the prior "explicit law of human society," namely that Devereaux identifies that "Unless would-be tyrants *are made to face the consequences of their attempts to seize power*, they will keep trying until they succeed so thoroughly that justice is beyond recovery" (emphasis added). This not only fundamentally changes the law he is discussing, it makes the proposed counter-example of Richard Nixon no longer a counter-example: Nixon faced the most serious consequences of any president before or since and would almost certainly have faced criminal charges if not for Ford's pardon. If we are to critique bad theories by historians, we owe it to them to at least correctly identify these theories.
I also critique the link provided for the "historical list of dictators who stepped down." On said list are a mix of figures like Daniel Ortega and Indira Gandhi, who after losing an election sought to regain power through a more central regime (and in the case of Ortega, succeeded in doing so) and thus would be proof that would-be tyrants will keep trying. But also are figures like George Washington and Cincinnatus, who it would be quite a strain to argue qualify under the banner of "would-be tyrants". Again, we ought to critique bad theories by historians but not with shoddy scholarship that isn't really addressing the core claims.
Why do (some) historians seem to have such a visceral knee jerk reaction to this?
Seems like they could have just said, "Yup, guess it is a kind of theory". Why didn't they just do that?