Fiction vs History?

[jbor]

>> All empirical data points to the hypothesis that when you go the
>> world will continue on without you.

on 28/10/04 2:13 AM, Keith McMullen wrote:
 
> All empirical data requires an empiricist to test it. When all the
> empiricists are gone, empiricism goes right along with them.

Empirical data is simply what we observe or experience -- that which we can
see, hear, feel, touch, smell etc. It's pretty much how all living creatures
operate on a day-to-day basis. And the experimental method which derives
from empiricism works fine in the controlled environment of the lab. The
trouble is, human society doesn't happen in a petrie dish -- or perhaps it
does, but no-one can put themselves in the position of the man in the white
coat with the clipboard who writes it all down.

I think it has become pretty clear by now -- or should have -- that
empiricism is not a particularly approach to human history -- there are and
have been too many puppet-masters within the oligarchy who try their
darnedest to ensure that we don't and can never detect what strings have
been pulled. It's not particularly useful for astrophysics either. Or
psychology. Linguistics. Anthropology. Philosophy. Any of the human sciences
in fact.

The existence of a world external to ourselves has never been in question --
it's the conceptualisation, or interpretation, of it, which is being
addressed. Historians and writers of fiction are both in the business of
representing an interpretation, or interpretations, of "the world".

best