In the cases of the weather examples presented as predictive models, the model fitting could be entrusted to well-known and proven mathematical methods.¹ If the data of history were numbers, then perhaps we could proceed in a similar way. However, we have a lot of other sources from the past besides numbers, hence the fitting process becomes much less clear. It is not only that the model of organic history cannot be numerical, but the errors of the fitting and the prediction cannot be either. Uncertainty remains in everything that is not numerical, there is still room for different interpretations and different opinions. We have to deal with this uncertainty somehow.

Narrative sources of historical knowledge

Where do these “other” sources come from? Simple. People have always told their own stories in the past. The traces of this storytelling – whether in writing, in artistic works, or in oral tradition – represent sources of knowledge that are not really found in the study of the non-human world.²

At first glance, the existence of these sources may seem like a welcome development, as they add enormously to our knowledge of the past. We can get an idea of ​​the power of written and spoken memories by comparing, for example, the depth and detail of our knowledge of the Roman Empire with our knowledge of the Inca Empire in South America. Although the Incas are about a thousand years closer to us on the timeline than the Romans, we know much less about their culture, their thinking, and their history in general. The main reason for this is that, as far as we know today, the Incas did not write at all. For organizational and record-keeping purposes, they developed a system of signs similar to writing, based on the knotting of strings hung side by side, but nobody knows for sure today whether these strings could have represented anything other than numbers. In contrast, we still use the Roman Latin script today, and we can read all of their texts preserved in this encoding, including law, philosophy, poetry, and the political speeches of Cicero.

However, since there is no rose without thorns, these written and spoken sources also have a flaw: they cannot be simply and blindly believed. On the one hand, this is because they were created by people and, accordingly, they may contain errors, slips, and lies, intentionally or unintentionally. Their content is questionable also because the context is necessary for the interpretation of every text. For example, if we hear the call to “shoot” on the football field or the statement that someone has “fallen”, these expressions have a completely different meaning than if they were uttered on a battlefield. The decoding of human messages strongly depends on the context in which the communication takes place. We need to know who is saying that particular message, where, when, and why.

Accordingly, the written and spoken sources of history must be viewed critically, compared with other sources, with material artefacts, and with the available measurement results, in order to understand their true meaning. This source criticism is one of the most important factors that distinguishes the “human” sciences from the “real” sciences, or perhaps I could put it this way: the social sciences from the natural sciences. Very few people welcome crossing this boundary, because on both sides we find scientists, teachers, and students with very different habits, who are in many ways averse to each other and to each other’s fields of expertise.

Nevertheless, model-making is a common phenomenon in both the social and the natural fields of science. When studying history – which arguably belongs to the former – it is inevitable that we will have to conduct a thorough source critique, and for this reason we will never get such exact measurements as in the examples of the meteorological models presented. The result of model fitting is significantly influenced by who is doing the task and what sources they are working on. What is a plausible and important connection to me may be meaningless and easily refuted gibberish to others, and vice versa. The inaccuracy of the models thus seems like a minor side note compared to the fact that we can barely share them with each other, and because of this, the whole activity ultimately ends up in continuous and futile explanations.³

Postmodern source criticism

This depressing description is more significant than it might seem at first glance. Today’s civilized people live in a social environment in which this point of view is conventional. This is also one of the reasons why history is usually interpreted in the linear and recipe book form previously formulated: we can completely eliminate explanations and avoid understanding each other’s thoughts. This is not only a characteristic of history but of all areas of our lives. Alienation and lack of understanding are symptoms that we all perceive sometimes, and they have left their mark on the arts since the twentieth century at the latest. “The world lies on top of itself like a pile of split wood,” says Attila József in the poem “Consciousness,” and indeed, the piling up of meaningless facts and events on top of each other is a basic experience from school through the workplace to retirement. It’s no wonder that neighbors don’t greet each other in the stairwell, traditional local communities wither away, and masses flee into various addictions, from compulsive shopping to drugs and gambling to self-forgetful sexual acts with strangers.

Within the all-pervading meaninglessness, however, source criticism can still be considered fortunate, because the philosophical theory that can most clearly express alienation – the postmodern worldview – can be directly applied to it. The basic tenet of postmodern thought is that every text – including every historical source – stands on its own. It refers to nothing, hence ultimately means nothing. What we call meaning in the ordinary sense is merely an artificial thing created in the mind of the reader, a construction that is overwhelmingly determined by the social relations and conceptual framework of the reader’s environment. And since it is a construction created by humans, it can also be broken down and deconstructed by humans.

I accept this argument. Consequently, I acknowledge that my source criticism and ultimately my message can be torn apart or “analyzed apart”. They can be dissected until nothing of their meaning remains. Anyone who wants to do this can do it, it is very possible. I only have the objection that I think it is not worth doing. The destruction of texts inevitably leads to a state in which not only the spoken word, but also the committed deed and the arising thought itself has no meaning. But if there is no meaning, if there is no purpose, why does it exist then? The postmodern conviction leads to the worship of nothingness, to nihilism, and prepares for its own extinction.

Meaning is assumed

With this work, I want to give history a practical function, but I also want to save it from being erased.⁴ I want to save a piece of the tradition that we inherited, and I want to contribute to our survival beyond the postmodern period relatively intact. The revival of the meaning of history is therefore not an end in itself, but it strives for something that we also need in a broader context. We need to learn again that the things of the world are symbols, that they mean something. Beyond themselves, they carry something else, something valuable. This point of view is a matter of conscious choice today. One can also call this symbolism a social construction, a discourse, a religion, a fiction from thin air, but the labels do not matter. The only thing that matters is that it is possible to live in a world full of meaning, and impossible in a world without meaning.

In a previous post, I wrote that we find the meaning of history when we make decisions about the future based on the events of the past. This statement is almost self-evident, but only if we assume that history has any meaning at all. If I were to assume that this meaning does not exist, then all further study could be thrown aside. The whole thing would become a jumble. Anyone who wants to can do that, there is no need to convince them otherwise. There is no need to explain. They will bear the consequences, just as I will bear the consequences of rejecting postmodern source criticism.

1. In both cases, the curve fitting was performed following the principle of least squares. ↩︎
2. Not necessarily because they don’t exist. For example, as far as we know, the intelligence, memory, and communication of dolphins could be used to preserve a rich and colorful oral tradition. However, to harness this, we would first need to understand the signals of dolphins, which has yet proven to be too difficult a task. ↩︎
3. Before followers of the natural sciences sit back with a broad smile after reading this embarrassing and unpleasant reasoning, I must unfortunately share with them an irrefutable fact: behind their own knowledge, there are assumptions that stem from exactly such models. Concepts that are taken for granted, such as temperature, measurement, or even the month, all rest on inherently social foundations. It cannot be otherwise, since our discoverers, inventors, and teachers were and are all human. We can only temporarily let go of source criticism, as from time to time we are overwhelmed by denied and forgotten contradictions and shortcomings. This is what the revolutions of the natural sciences are about. ↩︎
4. Many readers may be familiar with the concept of “cancel culture” and its close connection with the destruction of monuments that evoke the past and the retroactive censorship of old books, novels, and studies. It is a postmodern phenomenon to its core. ↩︎