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That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession (Ideas in Context)
Books: Text Books: Journalism: Item 8
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That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession (Ideas in Context)by Peter Novick, Quentin Skinner, Lorraine Daston, and Dorothy Ross
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful: Must read for every historian, December 9, 2003 Reviewer:Jeffrey Leach (Omaha, NE USA) - When a professor assigned Peter Novick's "That Noble Dream" as one of the last readings in one of my seminars, I blanched. Who, I inwardly groaned, would force students to read a book this huge in the waning weeks of the semester, a time when the heavy weight of tests, papers, and grading exams rests on your shoulders? "Look at the size of that font! How in the heck are we supposed to get through that thing in a week?" wailed a fellow sufferer, echoing what we all thought as we blearily thumbed through the book. Initial skimming seemed to confirm that this would be one of those scholarly books that take years off your life even as you promptly forget what you read a mere five minutes ago. Now, I've done some power reading during my tenure as an undergraduate and graduate student; I once cruised through Herodotus in two days and Thucycdides in even less time. You learn to accept things like this in the unnatural world of the academy. With lengthy papers due at the same time I opened this book, I decided to power stuff this one. Even now I can hear the knowing snickers of graduate students across the nation who may be reading this review, seminar hardened souls amused to no end that I actually assumed I had to READ the book. I can hear the chorus: just skim through it over the course of a few hours, learn the main argument, take a few notes, and nod sagely in class. Well, a funny thing happened on the way to the end of Novick's treatment of the noble profession: I rapidly discovered that this book is brilliant; a veritable cathedral of razor sharp analysis, amazing use of primary source material, and all written with one eye firmly planted on the bigger picture. What human being is capable of this Gibbonesque treatment of the American historical profession? Apparently a University of Chicago professor with a whole lot of time on his hands, a man whose primary field of research has little to do with American history. Well, Gibbon's inspiration for his enormous masterwork came from a visit to the ruins of Rome, so why not an equally impressive history from someone working outside his field? A comprehensive summary of the book is an exercise in futility here, but I think I should take a stab at it since I am studying history and often must summarize scads of material into a few precious paragraphs. My review will be inferior anyway compared to the extremely insightful essay found below on this very page. Novick begins with an examination of the German methodologies of history---an appropriate starting point because Americans wishing to study the past on an advanced level in the nineteenth century needed to go to school in Europe---in an attempt to discover how the first generation of professional American historians approached their craft. To be sure, amateur historians like Parkman, Prescott, and Adams wrote narrative histories on such huge topics as North America, Mexico, and the early governments of the United States. But in an age where scientific methods came of age, men stood up and rejected the narratives, believing that the very same techniques could, and should, be applied to the study of history. An age of strict objectivity called for an equally rigorous impartiality in looking at the past, and the first trained historians here did so with relish. Worshipping the phrase "wie es eigentlich gewesen," or studying history "as it really was," our academic ancestors attempted to collect as much factual evidence from historical sources as possible, crafting "building blocks" of history so that in the near future men could unearth the universal truth by putting these blocks together. Amusingly, Novick discovers that the American historians misunderstood this magical phrase, that it should translate as "as it essentially is," a different ballgame altogether that means a historian should employ his intuition in his studies. Since this is the exact opposite of how our historians applied the phrase, the entire edifice of our profession balances upon a translation error! Study hard for those proficiency exams, my friends! Novick's scrupulous treatment of the succeeding years of the profession reveals metatectonic (a word that appears throughout the book, and frankly, I love it and use it whenever possible) themes, but the biggest one may be that big social changes lead to big changes in the academy. While many scholars like to think they create rather than react to societal transformations, Novick proves them wrong repeatedly. War, for example, served to bring about sea changes in how historians studied history. The nightmares unfolding at places like Ypres and the concomitant moral discord after that war led to a short period of "doubt casting" in every field of western human endeavor. Things that seemed indisputable before millions died in the mud suddenly assumed a worrisome etherealness, a hazy uncertainty that ushered in the beginnings of relativism. The Second World War and the subsequent Cold War, with its need for absolute convictions (Hitler and Communism bad, Us good), temporarily quashed proto-relativism in favor of consensus. We are where we are at now, in an age of unbridled relativism, "social construction," and "deconstruction" because of the Vietnam War and the rise of the New Left historians. Novick outlines it all in one page after another, pages rife with the words of the historians who were there when it happened. A short review fails to relate the impressiveness of this work. There are a few omissions here, one being the pedagogical functions of history as mentioned in a previous review. The other problem concerns the shortage of information about earning credentials in the profession. For information on how much fun that process is, you need to look at Theodore Hamerow's curmudgeonly treatment of life in graduate school, "Reflections on History and Historians."
Product Review
'A brilliant and fascinating book.' Laurence Veysey
'A judicious appraisal of men and circumstances, erudite and wide-ranging. Irreverent but not nastily irreverent, with an admirable delicacy of touch.' William H. McNeill
'An astute and provocative account of how the historical profession in America has dealt with its founding myth and central norm - the ideal of objectivity.' Dorothy Ross
Book Description
The aspiration to relate the past "as it really happened" has been the central goal of American professional historians since the late nineteenth century. In this remarkable history of the profession, Peter Novick shows how the idea and ideal of objectivity was elaborated, challenged, modified, and defended over the past century. Drawing on the unpublished correspondence as well as the published writing of hundreds of American historians, this book is a richly textured account of what American historians have thought they were doing, or ought to be doing, when they wrote history--how their principles influenced their practice and practical exigencies influenced their principles. Published with the support of the Exxon Education Foundation.
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