{"ops":[{"insert":"The discipline of history since the early 19th century has focused on \"the cult of the fact\" and learning how to find facts, ad infinitum, and to ascertain their accuracy (which is the single criterion that sets them apart as facts). The stated purpose is to develop a true narrative of the past. A historical method whose foundations date to the Renaissance exists in order to carry out this purpose. We're very good at finding information and evaluating it from a critical standpoint, as far as that goes. \n\nBut if we evaluate our information from the point of view of an audience that wants simply to be entertained, and from a subjective viewpoint of what will sell the most books, then what depth and breadth mean as standards is very different from something that might actually engender new ideas that lead to enlightenment. On the other hand, historical scholarship that \"teaches\" can fall into the trap of validating assumptions based on some ideological framework by ignoring or downplaying information that seems contradictory. This encourages further research and the publication of alternative interpretations, true, but these tend to be ignored except by the scholars themselves. \n\nA century ago the profession made the effort to overcome some of the pitfalls by trying to turn history into a \"science,\" where some approach to an empirical enterprise could be used to validate facts, and as a result to develop theories and \"laws\" of history just as the natural sciences were supposed to do for their domains. While quantification and statistics are of course valid and valuable for the \"social sciences,\" I think that critical thinking in this discipline must rely mostly on the type of conceptualization that the podcast referred to. \n\n\n"}]}