From Lynn White, Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change:
In 1895 A. Meitzen realized that the form of plough chiefly used in Germany might explain many peculiarities in the arrangement of fields and in the co-operative agriculture often found in medieval villages. A generation of scholarly activity … produced in 1931 a synthesis from the pen of Marc Bloch which was the more persuasive because his convictions were so gracefully garnished with his doubts ….
Thanks to my brother Sasha for pointing this out to me.
LTEC says:
This reminds me of something Feynman said about how “great men” communicate.
December 20, 2009, 4:39 pmtamerlane says:
LTEC:
But Feynman leaves out the part about whether these “great men” got it right or not. History suggests that no matter how “great” they usually don’t.
December 20, 2009, 5:58 pmPersuasive Scholarship | Liberal Whoppers says:
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December 20, 2009, 7:35 pmChris Travers says:
Tamerlane:
Doesn’t it depend to some extent on what they are trying to get right? Also don’t different fields define getting it right differently?
If you not are trying to say that great physicists don’t matter because we want a conservative approach to social change, then I am not entirely sure I am getting your point.
December 20, 2009, 7:44 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Honesty (here, intellectual honesty) is always more (permanently)persuasive than a lie (conscious or unconscious, intentional or unintentional). Once one sees the light of the truth, one can never ever ignore it again. Let your scholarship, argument, or statements stand up to that, and they will rise or fall on their merits. Otherwise another may take their allegiance from you with a similar lie, intentional or unintentional, since your “truths” will not compel them to remain.
December 20, 2009, 7:51 pmDavid Sucher says:
“…persuasive because his convictions were so gracefully garnished with his doubts…”
It’s also a standard technique of rhetoric, politics and, in fact, all inter-personal relations at every level of intimacy:
Disclose the “bad news” yourself so you can
1. frame it so as to be able to influence the subsequent discussion
and
2. gain credibility as a fair-handed observer able to see the flaws in one’s own argument and sensitive to others’ perspectives
and
3. dull the edge which others might gain in using it against you i.e. inoculate yourself by pre-emptive disclosure.
Of course I am not really sure if it is always effective as some might retort that such disclosure opens you up to the accusation of simply engaging in self-serving and cynical “crisis management.”
December 20, 2009, 8:24 pmChris Travers says:
David Sucher:
One of the major reasons you left out in academia and research is that discussing doubts and limitations of knowledge is often very helpful in properly communicating one’s findings in a proper manner. I.e. if you disclose where the limitations are of your knowledge, it helps keep people from drawing the wrong inferences.
December 20, 2009, 9:31 pmjcm says:
The bomb worked , so they were right
December 20, 2009, 10:22 pmmike wells says:
Marc Bloch was one of the finest French historians. In World War II, when he was in his fifties, he joined the Resistance. He was captured by the Germans and executed.
December 20, 2009, 10:39 pmBama 1L says:
Indeed. Besides being a brilliant and influential scholar (founder of the Annales school), Bloch was a hero in both world wars. He wrote a trenchant account of France’s defeat in 1940 before resuming the fight. Anyone who thinks leftist intellectuals are all wimps has to contend with Bloch’s strong counterexample.
December 20, 2009, 11:08 pmHarryEagar says:
The leftism, if there, doesn’t come across in Bloch’s books. The scholarship does.
It’s a pity that Lynn White’s books are (last time I looked) mostly out of print or only available in very expensive editions.
December 21, 2009, 12:19 amBama 1L says:
Annales history, which Bloch and Lucien Febvre founded, is a “left” school, as it privileges economic, social, and cultural structures as conditioned by, above all, geography. If you like, it’s social studies applied to the past, a formulation the Annalistes would certainly endorse.It eschews political and diplomatic history and the “great men,” which had dominated historical writing before, and which conservative historians (both intellectually and politically) continued to produce. Annales, on the other hand, attracted scholars who were predominantly Radical or Socialist voters and did not identify as Catholics.
So the leftism of the Annales school and of Bloch is, fittingly, in its deep structures. On the other hand, Annales history is not Marxist history–in fact communists officially condemned it–and lacks an overt political goal. You do not read Annales history and conclude that the world is headed for revolution, but you also don’t generally come away from it thinking religion, individual effort, or the types of things they makes shows on the History Channel about are particularly important.
I write this, by the way, as a deep admirer of the Annales school and Bloch himself.
White’s work is interesting but I think all the specific conclusions he reached have been discredited. For example, Bernard Bachrach showed that the great weight of the evidence contradicts White’s thesis about the stirrup. White had some good ideas but the sources, some of which were not available when he wrote, simply don’t bear him out. I don’t think White is read much these days by historians; when I was in grad school circa 2000 he was not assigned, though he was mentioned. I think there’s simply no demand for reprints. But if you have access to a university library, you should have no trouble finding him.
White, it is interesting to recall, was an early ecological alarmist. He argued that Christianity had caused Westerners to see themselves as lords of creation and thus invited them to exploit it, causing the great ecological crisis he perceived in the 1960s. You would probably not guess that from reading his books.
December 21, 2009, 3:05 amWill Cox says:
@HarryEager, $12.95 from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195002660/thevolocons0d-20/
December 21, 2009, 8:13 amarch1 says:
The point EV has raised seems so important to me that I’m going to risk an even longer (and I think even more on point) Feynman quote.
As critical consumers of information, this kind of thing is what we all want. As producers, how often do we produce it?
December 21, 2009, 11:34 amMikee says:
That Feynman quote above is a doozy, one I have liked since first exposed to it.
It explains the scientific method as well as anything else I have read.
It also destroys my ability to converse amiably with persons whose judgments are based on political or ideological perspectives, as they will not, oh will not, not now, not ever, they will not ever allow facts to change their opinions.
December 21, 2009, 11:44 amHarry Eagar says:
Bama, I don’t see Annalisteism as specifically ‘left.’ I understand how it avoids great-man history, although I would not say it avoids religion. Not in the hands of Le Ray Ladurie, for sure.
But then, I am a newspaperman, and I don’t buy the trope that American newspapermen are incurably left, just because we like to consider the effects of things on ordinary people.
I would prefer to think of the Annalistes as anti-elitist.
Tbanks, Will, but I have that one. It’s White’s longer works I would like to read. I am over 2,000 miles from the nearest good library.
December 21, 2009, 2:51 pmBama 1L says:
Harry, fair enough.
My wife once had coffee with Le Roy Ladurie without learning who he was till the end of the conversation.
December 21, 2009, 10:01 pmDesiderius says:
Was Bloch’s aim to persuade at all?
“Great Wits sometimes may gloriously offend,
And rise to Faults true Criticks dare not mend;
From vulgar Bounds with brave Disorder part,
And snatch a Grace beyond the Reach of Art,
Which, without passing thro’ the Judgment, gains
The Heart, and all its End at once attains.”
Pope, Essay on Criticism
December 21, 2009, 10:48 pm