Narratives of History

"Perseus Confronting Phineus with the Head of Medusa" by Sebastiano Ricci

It is said that the ancient Greeks were in the habit of remembering historical developments that unfolded over long periods of time in the terms of a single melodramatic event, and a great man to whom it can be attributed. With this in mind, it should not come to one as a surprise to learn that the Iliad and Odyssey took shape over two millenniums, and that there is very little historical evidence to substantiate that Homer had existed at all.

To us moderns this might sound rather quaint, despite the fact that we are deep to our waists in a very similar notion. But whereas the ancient Greeks were aware of the distortion involved in their tradition of commemorating history, we are simply not. This can be easily demonstrated by asking a sample of random people about who invented, say, the telephone, and one can be assured that she will be met with "Graham Bell" as the most recurring answer.

In reality though, there is very little in common between the monstrosity that came out of Bell's lab, and the device our societies can't function without today. Furthermore, our good inventor here had a most modest vision in mind for the telephone, where it was to be used only by post offices, for the purpose of informing one another of the letters and parcels inbound. Had he had his way... but luckily we don't have to bother with imagining the consequences, as no one ever is allowed their way with history.

I would venture to claim that this applies to all human endeavors equally, and not even science, an enterprise the mentioning of which evokes the images of individuals changing the course of humanity single-highhandedly, is exempt from this statement. Newton's proverbial quote about his standing on the shoulders of giants is but a droplet in a profusion of gratitudes expressed throughout history by indebted scientists towards their predecessors and collaborators. 

Moreover with a close perusal of any colossal development within science, one will always find more than a single individual standing behind it. For instance, we have Newton and Leibniz developing Calculus, Darwin and Wallace elucidating one mechanism of evolution, and Einstein and Lorentz formulating a theory of special relativity, each in every story working simultaneously and independently. However, it is always the case that one sinks into oblivion, while the other reaps eternal glory.

Put alternatively, in the mind of the majority, history is perceived as a mere register of a few great men's deeds, despite this being a most atrocious crime of distortion. And, contrary to the impression that might have been imparted here so far, it is not even the register of collaborative deeds. If anything, history is the unintentional product of many tiny actors each tugging in a different direction. Predictably, our anthropocentric tendencies will reveal themselves here in the act of assuming that an actor is by definition a human being.

As unflattering of our human pride as this may sound, historical actors can be, and are often, inanimate. Actually inanimate actors are what delimit the space of possibilities within which we humans can fumble around to realize one historical trajectory over another. They are innumerable, but to the end of helping one to develop an appreciation for what they might be like, it can be mentioned that institutions, dominant modes of thought, technologies, natural disasters and plagues have been quasi-constant fixtures on the stage of history - one can argue with some force that the first three of these are nothing but extensions of human will. However, sociologists have been, for a while now, utilizing the exceptionally fecund explanatory powers of theories that treat them as actors independent of human agency. Whether or not this goes beyond being a mere theoretical trick that corresponds to nothing real in life is left to the reader's discretion.

Why is it then that the public still have such a naive conception of history? You'd often hear explanations to the effect that by adopting this approach to the subject, an individual is trying to communicate something about herself. If, for example, she constantly expresses an affinity for Ghandi, then she is probably trying to signal a peaceful but resolute personality, whether or not she really has any of these traits. As true as this may sound, it does not explain the origins of such narratives, for after all when it comes to their production, the public are mere consumers that exert no sophisticated demand that might change the quality of the product.

There is another line of explanation implicit in the popular quote that history is written by the victors. But this claim is not exactly accurate. It is only that some documents of history are written by victors, as historical narratives are written and rewritten all the time. This malleability is endemic to the work of the historian, since she is often faced with a large number of accounts on any past event that she might wish to reconstruct. Naturally, some of these accounts will not jibe, and it is here that the historian exercises her agency in formulating history. Does that mean, as some advocate, that all historical narratives pertaining to a certain episode should be treated on equal footing? Of course not. If a historian bases her version of the story on the account of a hagiographer, instead of a less subjective source of information - such as some well preserved logs of economic activities - then all the worse for her. But why is it that she often chooses the former type of sources over the latter?

Generally speaking, writers are natural-born introverts whose elegance of mind attract them away from the dross of daily life. There they build themselves domains of unique experience to reign supreme over. Most historians are of course writers, who are constantly attempting to break away from the present - one can tell without going through the previous chain of reasoning that a person who dedicates her life to the study of the past is at least a bit tad disgruntled with the present. In their attempt to escape, they romanticize the past in ways that make it a reflection of their own egos and a justification for their unattained aspirations.

So if you ponder upon it, how can this be achieved if they acknowledge the role of droughts in central Asia and certain martial technologies, among other actors, in the vacillation of power around the Mediterranean throughout history, instead of attributing all of that to an unceasing clash between the wills of some nobilities? Granted, starting from the latter half of the past century we start seeing inanimate actors appearing in the credits roll of history. However, for the most part, these are only accorded minor roles, or are antagonized in a dramatic storyline where humanity always emerges triumphant. But perhaps to do otherwise is to forsake one's own present only to live in somebody else's. Probably not worth the trouble.

Happy Darwin Day

It is probably a mild hyperbole saying that almost any of the several pieces of Darwin’s writings that I came across were radiating with an overwhelming intellectual presence, of the kind that intrudes into the deepest and most private corners of your mind without permission, imposing awe and eliciting recognition of his far-reaching genius, in the highest sense of both words.

This impression stays at first inexplicable. But in taking few steps back from any of these texts, considering it in a wider context, reengaging it and disengaging again, then repeating as needed, the conundrum suddenly gives way. The answer put simply, but aptly conveying the most sobering of its implications, is that a distinguished flair for writing is only second nature to profound thinkers. In a letter to his father, Darwin seems to have been well aware of this talent when he wrote "Whenever I enjoy anything, I always either look forward to writing it down, either in my log-book, or in a letter". Yet he also showed diffidence and harshly practiced self criticism when in his correspondence with others he would occasional write things like "I find it unutterably difficult to write clearly", "I am disgusted with my bad writing", or "How I could have written so badly is quite inconceivable".

Darwin's opinion notwithstanding, two of his books, in particular, stand out together as a most vivid and exhilarating incarnation of the whole spectrum of the higher order mental processes, which are: The Voyage of the Beagle, and his magnus opus, On the Origins of Species.

The Voyage of the Beagle can be thought of as a stereoscopic visualization of Charles’ trenchant faculty for perception. This can be realized by superposing a context in which the book is a travels-journal only and another where it is viewed as a herald of the theory of natural selection. In the former, this faculty expresses itself in a unique ability to efficiently winnow down a drowning range of details that could have certainly stupefied the senses of any other naturalist (Alfred Wallace, the unsung hero of NS, excluded). But with the eventual emergence of natural selection added to the backdrop, the token of a frightening capacity to intuit becomes the salient feature of this work.

In producing The Origins, Darwin established himself as one of the finest virtuosi of the thought process to have ever existed. Throughout the text you would find him busy not only weaving line after another of cogent arguments, preempting much of the debate spurred by its publication, but you would also find him confidently pointing out where his reasoning might go awry, acknowledging his own wants of knowledge, or describing what might constitute a destructive counter-observation to his theory.

The most telling feature of this book though is its striking consistency. This might sound odd, since a consistent structure is a strict prerequisite that any explanatory effort should satisfy before it can be taken seriously. It is that the coherence in Darwin’s arguments can’t be a mere happenstance, but only the product of a mental construct of the original phenomenon that undergirded his thinking in its regards. And since the conceptual scaffold for Darwin’s original formulation of the theory had passed largely unscathed into the modern evolutionary synthesis, we can easily infer the veracity of this mental model. Therefore, given the crippling lack of knowledge about heredity’s real substance and mechanisms that was characteristic of his time, one is bound to be overwhelmed while she is reading the book!

Put in another way, The Origins, just like its predecessor, can’t be fully appreciated without the advantage of hindsight. Darwin might have known close to nothing about the DNA, but with an unusually keen mind, he captured many of its features, even if in crude terms, and embedded them into the core of his theory. This is clearly the reason why out of all the different accounts of natural selection that were advanced by others in its wake, Darwinism was the only one conducive to the modern synthesis; with the rediscovery of Mendel’s genetic laws, and the successive conciliatory efforts of several bright minds, most notably those of Fisher's, the birth of neo-Darwinism was only a matter of course.

Since this is in a sense a celebration of a person, an extraordinary person, perhaps something about his idiosyncrasies is due. A strong affinity with science and nature ran like a dominating gene in Darwin's family, which spawned 10 fellows of the Royal Society, him included, and beginning with his parental grandfather, Erasmus, who himself was a theorist of evolution. The first expressions of this gene in Charles took the form of reveling in beetles collecting, and a more extreme one of his founding a club at Cambridge University for the sole purpose of consuming birds and animals "unknown to human palate" before. According to Darwin’s autobiography, this was the reason behind his father's utterly failed prediction when he once reproached him saying: "and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family".

But judging by this sample of his early life, it might be justifiable to claim that if it was not for the Beagle, this day would have passed unobserved. However, this celebrated expedition was not all bliss on Charles. Little after its return to England, he started suffering a mysterious debilitating illness that haunted him, with frequent respites, until his death. The nature of this affliction was never diagnosed during his life, a thing that later gave rise to much speculation about its origin.

To make things more complicated, there is enough evidence in literature to substantiate many different explanations for this illness. For instance, the proponents of a physical cause like to cite Darwin's descriptions of his potentially morbid encounters with disease vectors, such as the "Benchuca", or his granddaughter's memoir, Gwen Raverat, in which she notes that "it was a distinction and a mournful pleasure to be ill [at Charles']", possibly indicating an underling genetic disorder. On the other side, advocates of a psychological root have at their disposal an adequate repertoire of accounts on Darwin's antisocial and phobic behavior to draw on. But since this is not a crucial point anymore, there seems to be an emerging general consensus converging on a multifactorial origin of the ailment, a blend of physical and psychiatric etiologies.

Anyways,this celebration should be consummated by reminding ourselves of our old man's philosophy of solid reasoning and intriguing inquiry. Many happy returns!

Source: www.darwinday.org (image adapted)