MDDM "Truth" and history

[Bandwraith at aol.com]

For a little "historical" perspective on the debate over 
truth and history, one might find these comments by 
Edward Hallett Carr, delivered at Cambridge in 1961, and
compiled as _What Is History_ Vintage Books,1961, 
of some interest:

    My principal objection to the refusal to
    call history a science is that it justifies
    and perpetuates the rift between the
    so-called "two cultures." ...and I am
    myself not convinced that the chasm
    which separates the historian from
    the geologist is any deeper or more
    unbridgeable than the chasm which
    separates the geologist from the
    physicist.

(...)

    One remedy I would suggest is to
    improve the standard of our history,
    to make it- if I may dare to say so-
    more scientific, to make our demands
    on those who pursue it more rigorous.
    ...One impression which I hope to convey
    ...is that history is a far more difficult
    subject than classics, and quite as serious
    as any science... Sir Charles Snow, in a 
    recent lecture on this theme, had a point
    when he contrasted the "brash" optimism 
    of the scientist with the "subdued voice" and
    "anti-social feeling" of what he called the
    "literary intellctual." Some historians- and
    more of those who write about history
    without being historians- belong to this
    category of "literary intellectuals." They 
    are so busy telling us that history is not
    a science, and explaining what it cannot
    and should not be or do, that they have no
    time for its achievements... 

    The other way to heal the rift is to 
    promote a profounder understanding
    of the identity of aim between the
    scientists and historians, and this is
    the main value of the new and growing
    interest in the history and philosophy
    of science. Scientists, social scientists
    and historians are all engaged in different
    branches of the same study: the study
    of man and his environment, of the effects
    of man on his environment and of his
    environment on man. The object of the 
    study is the same: to increase man's
    understanding of, "and mastery over"
    [my emphasis], his environment. (pp110-111)

and-

    History begins with the handing down of
    tradition; and tradition means carrying
    of the habits and lessons of the past into
    the future. Records of the past begin to be
    kept for the benefit of future generations.
    ...Sir Charles Snow recently wrote of Rutherford
    that "like all scientists... he had, almost without
    thinking what it meant, the future in his bones."
    Good historians, I suspect, whether they think
    think about it or not, have the future in bones.
    (pp142-143).