Posted by Pat on October 23, 1999 at 18:25:30:
In Reply to: Oh, by the way, posted by Boje on October 23, 1999 at 02:09:24:
: Pat,
Your demands that I reinforce my assertions when discussing interpretations of history are patently ridiculous from the start.
Pat:
I made no demands. I merely noted that you'd be more believable if you backed up your opinions with evidence. Up to you.
BJ:
Historical analysis is not science.
Pat:
It certainly depends on evidence. And historical ideas rise or fall depending on that evidence. Why do you think we spend so much time on records, artifacts, etc.?
BJ:
If you claim that it is, you are a bigger fool than I previously claimed. History is all conjecture. Period! I’ll back that claim with proof any time.
Pat: Interestingly, there is a tie to the origional discussion. In the Renaissance, the science of history began. Scholars, working in the Vatican, analyzed documents, and using methods they devised, discovered that the Donation of Constantine was a fraud. Opinion and conjecture would never have sufficed. But the Pope, seeing his own scholars' work, set the doctrine aside as false. You don't know much about history, either.
OK. I'll give you an easy one. Let's take the Adoption of the US Constitution. Show me that all we know of it is conjecture. History depends primarily on analysis of existing records.