DOES HISTORY HAVE a FUTURE? an Inquiry Into History As Research
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DOES HISTORY HAVE A FUTURE? An Inquiry into History as Research Ronald Alan Sulman Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2008 School of Historical Studies THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE Produced on acid-free paper ABSTRACT This thesis explores the question of history’s future as a research discipline in the academy and the question of the discipline’s function in ‘pure’ inquiry. Central to the notion of research is the notion of discovery of new knowledge, but what constitutes new historical knowledge rather than simply more historical information is not clear. As the idea of research (which is understood to mean the discovery and creation of new knowledge) is central to the idea of the modern university, the future of history as a research discipline in the research university would seem to depend on the discipline being clear on its research function. Further complicating resolution of this question is the fact that the funding of research is informed by science and technology paradigms where research is defined as ‘pure basic research’, ‘strategic basic research’, ‘applied research’, and ‘experimental development’. Curiously, what these classifications mean for the humanities generally and history in particular, remains unexamined—despite the fact that professional survival depends on the academic convincing sceptical funders of the relevance of humanist research. Do historians do basic research? If basic research is inquiry at the edge of understanding, how, and by whom, is the edge defined? In the first decades of the University of Berlin—the institution that formed the model for the modern research-university—the edge was defined through philosophy and history. Hegelian systematic philosophy, Fichtean philosophy of the subject, and the philosophical historicism of such thinkers as Ranke, Niebuhr, Ast and Boeckh was concerned with the subject’s knowledge of knowledge: there lay the edge. By the end of the nineteenth century no discipline was foundational. Epistemological ‘advance’ had resulted in not only the split of knowledge into that derived from humanities or ‘spirit’ studies (Geisteswissenschaften) and that from science studies (Naturwissenschaften), but also the proliferation of disciplinary specialization that further entrenched the dichotomy. In the twenty-first century, inquiry’s edge has moved on. Climate change, environmental degradation and biological and genetic engineering have posed wholly new existential questions. The Archimedean point from where the edge is viewed is no longer iii anthropocentric. Society and nature are inextricably connected. The physical and the spiritual can no longer be considered separately. When ‘we’ can either be manufactured or artificially enhanced the notion of autonomy and self-fashioning takes on a different hue in postmodernity than in modernity. There is now an increasing but unsatisfied need for more interdisciplinary and holistic knowledge. Unfortunately, no effective models or processes exist to enable this need to be met. This thesis explores ways in which the deficiencies might be overcome and explores academic history’s possible location within a future integrated- knowledge schema. iv DECLARATION This is to certify that i. the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD, ii. due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, iii. the thesis is less than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices. v vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to acknowledge the encouragement, support and guidance given to me in the production of this thesis by my supervisors, Laureate Professor Stuart Macintyre and Dr David Goodman, and also by Professor Peter McPhee, who regardless of other duties has always found time to discuss and advise. Without Peter’s encouragement and enthusiasm the project might have remained thoughts only. Without Stuart’s wise counsel and instinctive sense of proportion during the candidature, the line where angels fear to tread would have been crossed often; the nudging away from peril was always timely. Without David’s diplomatic but firm insistence that arguments needed to be both central and convincing, there might have been a very grand drive to a rather modest house. I am grateful also to Dr Louis Sass and Dr Robyn Ferrell for the discussions we had and their generosity in giving me copies of unpublished papers presented by them at separate research seminars. Dr Sass’s seminar discussing ‘madness’, Oscar Weininger, and the intersection of clinical psychology and the creative imagination coincided with my interest in the relationship between intelligence and survival. Dr Ferrell’s seminar on the technology of ‘genre’ coincided with my interest in questions raised by Hans Jonas, Jürgen Habermas and others regarding post-human futures and the boundaries between the ‘natural’ and the manufactured. I hope the house stands up to more than a gentle breeze. If it does not, it will be the fault of the architect alone. vii viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract..........................................................................................................................iii Declaration.....................................................................................................................v Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................vii Introduction..................................................................................................................1 PART I: PAST 1. History and the Knowledge Business.........................................................17 1.1 The Barbarian’s Gaze 17 1.2 University Business 28 1.3 The Business of the University 38 2. Research and Scholarship...........................................................................61 2.1 The Pursuit of Knowledge 61 2.2 History and Discovery 75 2.3 Discovery under Different Skies 97 3. Knowledge and Understanding ................................................................113 3.1 History and Function 113 3.2 Knowledge and Reason 128 3.3 Research and Purpose 147 PART II: FUTURE 4. Integrated Pure Inquiry............................................................................163 4.1 Inquiry’s Moving Edge 163 4.2 Subjectivity, Embodiment, and Systems 177 4.3 Unified Inquiry and the Unity of Knowledge 195 ix 5. History and Research Management.........................................................211 5.1 A Constellation of Disciplines 211 5.2 Integrating Specialist Knowledge 234 5.3 Universities, Research, and History 252 Conclusion ................................................................................................................267 Bibliography..............................................................................................................279 Tables 1. Knowledge Map 205 Figures 1. Knowledge Model 206 2. Inquiry Constellation 207 x DOES HISTORY HAVE A FUTURE? An Inquiry into History as Research PART I: PAST Introduction INTRODUCTION If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science fiction writers are its court jesters. We are the wise fools who can leap, caper, utter prophecies, and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with Big Ideas because the garish motley of our pulp origins makes us seem harmless … yet our ideas permeate the culture, bubbling along invisibly, like background radiation. —Bruce Sterling: Burning Chrome1 Historians have lately been poor synthesizers and may soon find that others are doing their synthesizing and paradigm-establishing for them. Whether they like evolution or not, an informed reaction would probably be timely. —David Gary Shaw: History and Theory2 In his book, The Practice of History, Geoffrey Elton declared that when he read discussions by others of how historians think, ‘how they claim to describe that which no longer exists, or whether historical fact has an existence independent of the thinker about facts, I marvel at the ingenuity of the writers, for usually they are men who have never apparently themselves tried to do the work’.3 Elton, with his usual pugnacity, was entering into the debate on the question ‘What is history?’, and Hugh Trevor-Roper observed at the time (1967) that ‘[Elton’s] challengers seldom emerge ungored … even an innocent bystander may be nicked by the flashing horn’.4 Indeed they may—particularly the bystander embarking on a research degree in history; and particularly if that embarkation was stimulated by interest in the question of history’s future in the academy. Increasing the risk further is the requirement, for successful completion of that degree, that the apprentice demonstrate ‘the ability to analyse critically within and across a changing disciplinary environment’.5 The issue, however, is not so much the danger of the accidental nick as the fact that 1 Bruce Sterling, preface, in William Gibson, Burning Chrome (New York: Arbor House, 1986), 1. 2 David Gary Shaw, “The Return of Science”, History and Theory, 38, no. 4 (Dec., 1999): 8. 3 G. R. Elton, The Practice of History (London: Fontana Press, 1987), vii. 4 Cover, Elton, The Practice of History. 5 Dean of the School of Graduate Studies, The University of Melbourne: The PhD Handbook (Parkville: School of Graduate Studies, 2004), 1. 1 Introduction there is an obvious truth in Elton’s remark. In practical life—that life which, as Ortega y Gassett says, is fired at us point-blank6—experience counts for more