Sure but I assume you wouldn't make a statement that a living person had committed a crime if you weren't a witness. But you're happy to trust written records of conversations from a hundred years ago as enough evidence to shit on the memory of a dead man?
You really have no time for historians do you ? We are now delving into the dicipline and reliability of history as proposed by historians. Philosophically, are these conclusions and narratives purported by historians accurate without living testators ?
With respect to the reliability of the article, my guess is that you would first look at the Chicago Tribune from circa 1895 and seek to ascertain if there was any evidence of that publication fabricating copy. My experience is that news was very much a matter of fact back then and essentially a verbatim account of events. Let’s face it, the article was not reporting what Caligula said to his mother, Agrippina the Elder. It is indeed a detailed account by a yank who would, I assume, be mostly unaware of context.
I mean, if fabricated, old mate juorno from Chicago was a pretty mad researcher to find out that Wills even had a zingari jacket. Considering that most yanks wouldn’t even know that cricket or even Australia existed.
Nothing should be above being questioned and indeed it is healthy to put most things through the filter of enquiry and verification. Socrates was very much a champion of this notion. Well, that is if his writings are real….are they ?
Historians are encouraged to apply the acronym DAAMIT (not hard to remember from school, if you did history) to their research. I think that if you apply the below rule to test the article, it becomes increasingly difficult to question the authenticity and reliability of the account. Thoughts ?
D – Date
When was it produced? How long after the event was it produced?
A – Author –
Who produced it? What was their background?
A – Audience –
Who was the intended audience? What do you know about this audience?
M – Motive –
- What was the author’s purpose/motive?
- Was it to entertain/inform/persuade/mislead?
- How might these motives have influenced the interpretation/perspective offered by the source?
- What might the author want to happen as a result of this work?
I – Information –
- What form does the source take? ( poem/song written)?
- What information it provide?
- Where is the information drawn from? For example:Is the observation first hand?
- what other sources of information were used to produce it?
- Is it produced in a way that we would expect a source of its kind to be produced?
- How reliable is it likely to be?
T – Tone –
- What is the perspective and tone offered by the source?
- What insight does this give into the views and standpoints of the author?
- How reliable is it likely to be in light of previous considerations?
www.abc.net.au
theconversation.com
