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(The Abbeville Institute) It is the task of historians to create what might be dubbed useful “fictions”—the “isms” of history, like colonialism, imperialism, liberalism, stadialism, and medialism.
What is an ism?
Philosopher and psychologist William James is noted for stating that an infant’s first experiences with the world are essentially “a blooming buzzing confusion.” As the infant matures and interacts with adults, he slowly begins to differentiate objects through grouping them into kinds by noting distinctions between “things.” A puffin, for instance, much looks like a penguin, but it is not, for the latter is much larger and cannot fly. It is through interaction with things deemed independent of him and with those others of larger experience with those things that the infant as a youth and then an experienced adult comes to know the world around him.
Yet the isms of historians are much unlike puffins and penguins. They are unwieldy, slippery, and they often answer more to the psychological eccentricities of historians than they do to reality.
Why is that the case?
That is so because historians’ subject is the past and no historians have direct access to the past. They garner what relevant data that are available—and revisionist historian often have a very pliant view of…
