Comments by "Nicholas Conder" (@nicholasconder4703) on ""But how do you know you're right?" - Objective Theory of History" video.

  1. I think I said this once before, but history is about reconstructing what actually happened based on imperfect observation of the events and often fragmentary evidence. We can more or less figure out what occurred, but it takes careful reading of human observations and using those to interpret the physical evidence that exists. Unfortunately, human beings each have a limited view of events that is skewed by prejudice/bias/ego and often misremembered/reinterpreted over time. With the exception of individuals with eidetic memories, we usually forget details of the event(s) or conversations, and mentally try to fill in those gaps, further distorting the record (I saw a very good TV show that covered this phenomenon). As you point out, you need multiple sources and many different types of evidence to help clarify the course of events. Then comes the hardest part for any historian - leaving preconceived notions and biases at the door to try and reconstruct, to the best of their ability, what actually happened based on flawed human recollection. One need only look at recent history with the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Several survivors claimed the ship broke up as it sank, yet the inquiry never included this information in their report. That is because the break-up of the ship would have called into question the quality of British ship building at the time. Nor did they include a very important fact that Captain Smith actually started up the ship's engines and steamed away from the site of the collision at around 10-12 knots for about 15 minutes (which explains why none of the passengers recall ever saw the iceberg from the lifeboats)! This last bit of important information was only recently discovered in the notes made by one of the members of the review board at the inquiry. This was pretty much buried by the review board because this would impugned Captain Smith reputation even further. And yet both these facts are important in the narrative of how and why RMS Titanic sank.
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