Knowledge Issues in History

1.  What is historical pluralism?
I don't know what it is and I can't find any information on it.


Historical pluralism refers to the idea that multiple (even contrasting) histories may be written (attributable to differences in historial evidence used, personal perspective (bias) of the historian etc). ~Dr. Gilligan 

2. What factors influence the process by which the historian picks and chooses his/her "facts"?  Please provide a specific example for each factor.
The reliability of the sources (ex. Nazis and Jews may say different things about concentration camps), the date of the sources (ex. whether they were written at the time of the event they describe, written before it, or after it) , the number of times the fact is mentioned in the same way (ex. the more people say the same thing the more likely the historian is to believe the fact) , whether or not the fact makes sense to the historian (ex. if they were told that Americans flew cows to India during a famine for them the Indians to eat in the 1700s, a historian would be unlikely to believe it) .

3.  According to Reuben Abel: "The patterns to be found in past events are selected by the historian; like the hypothesis of the scientist, they may be suggested, but are neither imposed nor dictated, by the facts" (Man is the Measure (MIM), p. 166-7)."  Based on your experience with the Cheques Lab, how far do you agree with this explanation of history?


I agree with the statement for the most part. I guess that facts can't really dictate patterns. The conclusions we made about the Whitneys from the checks were all our own hypothesis. We don't know why things were then way were. The checks don't tell us that the Whitneys had a son, but it is strongly implied by the data in the checks.

4.  Abel also writes: "Macaulay regards history as a branch of literature (MIM, p. 174)."  How would Jill Lepore of "Just the Facts, Ma'am" respond?  Please provide to specific quote from the article to justify your claim.

Lepore would probably understand what Abel is saying. She quotes Jane Austen (a writer of fiction) and the Author of Tom Jones (a work of fiction) and they both make statements to the effect that their fictional novels are just as true as history books. Lepore says, "Fielding insisted that what flowed from his pen was “true history”; fiction was what historians wrote."

5.   What does Reuben Abel mean when he says: "No crucial experiment can test the validity of a theory of history, any more than than it can the truth of a metaphysical theory (MIM, p. 174)."?

He means that there is no way to go back in the past and prove a historical theory just like there is no  way to prove a metaphysical theory. Metaphysical theories are philosophic explanations of what things are like and why they are there. Both metaphysical theories and historical theories need some overarching authority to ultimately prove or disprove them.