I haven't read Gottschalk but doesn't the section quoted actually point to the similarity of methods between a trial situation and historical research? I read his analogy as saying that the historian has to be as aware of the problematic nature of working with sources as lawyers and judges and juries need to be.Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Fri Sep 15, 2017 10:13 am..... I have found historians to be very conscious of the fact that they are not doing what is done in court. On pages 149-150 of Understanding History, Louis Gottschalk (a former historian of the French Revolution) writes, for example:
In a law court it is frequently assumed that all testimony of a witness, though under oath, is suspect if the opposing lawyers can impugn his general character or by examination and cross-examination create doubt of his veracity in some regard. Even in modern law courts the old maxim falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus tends to be overemphasized. In addition, hearsay evidence is as a general rule excluded; certain kinds of witnesses are "privileged" or "unqualified" and therefore are not obliged to testify or are kept from testifying.... The historian, however, is prosecutor, attorney for the defense, judge, and jury all in one. But as judge he rules out no evidence whatever if it is relevant.
Of course there are obvious differences, but the fundamental principles of weighting different kinds of sources/evidence is common to both. Historians also consider the character or bias of authors of various sources and the problematic nature of hearsay testimony.
(And contemporary eyewitness accounts are the most weighty of all -- both in trials and for historians.)
Historians don't as a rule get away with treating all their sources as being of equal weight or validity.
My reading of Howell and Prevenier here indicates to me that they are very aware of the tentative and uncertain nature of simply "thinking up hypotheses" and how it is much harder, yet necessary, to hone down hypotheses so that they cohere with all the source material. The procedures are obviously different in a courtroom, but the professional historian does acknowledge the same problems with certain kinds of hypotheses as we find in the legal profession. That's how I interpret the passage above.Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Fri Sep 15, 2017 10:13 amHistorians are also free to indulge in hypotheses which would be ruled out of court before they even got off the ground. Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier write on page 77 of From Reliable Sources, for instance:
Although it is a simple process to think up hypotheses, it is no simple task to formulate hypotheses that actually link the observed pieces of evidence—that can explain the facts available, not those that the scholar might wish to have. Often, it takes many tries before the scholar can formulate a hypothesis that really works—one that satisfactorily accounts for the known evidence. There is no formula for success in this difficult venture. .... The difficulties of applying the so-called scientific method to historical research means that historians must often satisfy themselves with rules of logic that appear less watertight, making statements that seem probable, not "proved" in any "scientific" sense. .... But historians never have just what they want or need. At one extreme is the historian limited to one source. Einhard's Life of Charlemagne is, for example, the only source scholars have about the private life of Europe's first emperor. Like many of the political biographies written today, this one is more hagiography than critical biography, and in the best of worlds historians might well refuse to use it as evidence about Charlemagne's life and his character. But historians, although conscious that they are prisoners of the unique source and bear all the risks that this involves, use it because it is all they have. At the other extreme are historians studying the recent past. They have a great many sources, and in many ways their problems are thus fewer. But even here there is no certainty.
From what I understand, this kind of dive-in reasoning, meant simply to take parsimonious account of all the available evidence, has no place in a criminal trial, but is much more at home in a "free inquiry" situation in which a person's life does not hang in the balance.
Similarly with the sole witness of Charlemagne. I can't imagine any historian (serious professional as opposed to a mass market children's or popular story teller) simply rewrites a medieval hagiography.