@Nozzle Velocity makes some excellent points. I'll reply in detail.
>It should be the job of the historian, much like the scientist, to explore, reveal, and make linear, causal sense of the chaotic patterns in human history.
Historians have had a long, running argument on this one. Each of those verbs are significant. The historian should explore ... that's research. The historian should reveal ... that's the writing of history (an art form rarely discussed). The historian should make sense ... ah, there's the rub. Everything from positivists who really do see a line running clearly from past to present, to deconstructionism who argue the line doesn't exist or perhaps that all lines exist. The longer I've been in the field, the more convinced I am that the arguments reflect not so much the merit of one position or another as the temperament of the person holding it.
>I don't suppose there's anything wrong with the joy of simply collecting data points. I've heard many historians say this is the only kind of history they enjoy reading. Fair enough.
I've not heard this. No historian merely collects data points. Collecting is just research. It becomes history once that research is communicated to others. Perhaps what's meant here is what is sometimes called micro-history--the study of a single event or small group to see what it can tell us.
And now I know I'm going beyond what Nozzle said, but here goes anyway. I'm the sort of historian who studies the past in order to understand the past. Those people back then, in whatever place and time I look at, fascinate me. I want to understand them in their own terms. There's another kind of historian--one who studies the past in order to understand the present. I distrust this sort because too often I find they distort those people I love to study in order to construct their argument. They fit the past into a modern mould and proudly declare (to quote one of my old professsor's jokes) "these are the conclusions on which my data are based." I'm reasonably sure those modernist historians (my name for them [TM]) have their own jokes to make about me.
>But I'm utterly unconvinced that the study and teaching of history has no "utility". The endeavor doesn't have to serve as propaganda. I believe the search for a narrative synthesis is vital.
Absolutely. It's so vital, in fact, that human societies have always done this, despite having no historians in the village. We humans love to see patterns. We demand the world make sense; more, we demand that it make *our* kind of sense. We are constantly re-making and even inventing the past as a way to justify or understand or explain ourselves to ourselves. It has almost nothing to do with scholarly history. We will have our narrative synetheses (because just one is never enough), and historians be damned.
This is how I explain to myself why it is that generation after generation of historians have carefully pointed out that the RCC was not all-powerful in the MA, or that just because there are merchants doesn't mean that's capitalism, or that the Roman Empire didn't fall in the 5th century, and so on and on. Generation after generation, and yet still every new generation of bright young students drag these misunderstandings with them into the classroom. It is emphatically not the influence of movies or TV.
It's that narrative synthesis thing. All the odd stereotypes about the MA are there because they're part of a story we tell ourselves, and we believe it's important to tell ourselves. Getting everyone to realize that plate armor was not the standard in the 12thc is beside the point when considered in the context of the cultural narrative. Academic history isn't going to "fix" that. And socieities don't need historians to create those narratives. In fact, we're rather a nuisance to them, and that's fine by me.
And finally, value. I have to make a pitch here. Value is valuable! Utility is merely useful. Both are needed, of course, but I hate to see value dismissed out of hand. Literature has value. Art has value. It raises the useful to the important. So when I say history has value more than utility, I'm really arguing for its importance. But the importance--as with any art--is going to vary from one person to the next, and will vary even over the course of one individual's lifetime.
More like arguing with Rowling over the character of Gandalf.
