Historian’s Fallacy
Heather Rivera
All the evidence shows that you should have seen this coming.
Jane Doe
The historian’s fallacy (HF) is a logical informal fallacy in which the writing of a historical event has been skewed by way of biased hindsight on the author’s part.
The historian has written the details of the event down in such a way that the facts of the event, only seen after the event has occurred, cause the initial event to become distorted. At the time of the initial event, the hindsight was not present, obviously, so the evidence or signs could not have pointed to the event’s taking place. It is only after the event has occurred and all the historical data can be viewed as hindsight bias that a conclusion of “How was this not seen in advance?” can be made. Only in retrospect do the warning signs seem obvious; signs that pointed in other directions tend to be forgotten. Hindsight is 20/20, so to speak, in the case of HF. Examples include:How did the United States not see the attack on Pearl Harbor coming? All the signs were there! (Note: only in retrospect were the warnings obvious.)
The German people should have seen what electing to power a man like Adolf Hitler would do. (Note: at the time of his rise to power, Hitler was a well-liked leader who brought stability and hope to the oppressed German people. It is only hindsight that shows us all what a tyrannical monster he would become; at first Hitler was seen as a way to help uplift the German way of life.)
HF should not be confused with a method historians use in the present day when documenting the past. This is called presentism, a mode of historical analysis in which present-day ideas (such as moral standards) are projected into the past. For example: “The horrific civilian casualties far outweighed the military victory for the United States over Japan when we dropped the atomic bombs during World War II.” In this example, the writer is using a moral judgment of an action that helped bring a long bloody war to its end. The facts remain, the war ended after the second bomb was dropped and Japan surrendered.
There is no emotion in that statement, just fact. Presentism is looking back at history and placing moral standards of the present day on the events that took place. This is not an HF.Another issue to address is that HF should not be confused with historical fallacy. The historical fallacy, also called the psychological fallacy, is a logical fallacy originally described by philosopher John Dewey in The Psychological Review in 1896. One commits the historical fallacy when one reads into a process the results that occur because of that process. For example, a person not knowing how to make a cake may inspect a baked cake to try to ascertain the method by looking at the known ingredients. When seeing the holes in the cake texture, this person might think that gases of some sort were an actual ingredient rather than baking powder.
John Dewey writes:
The fallacy that arises when this is done is virtually the psychological or historical fallacy. A set of considerations which hold good only because of a completed process, is read into the content of the process which conditions this completed result. A state of things characterizing an outcome is regarded as a true description of the events which led up to this outcome; when, as a matter of fact, if this outcome had already been in existence, there would have been no necessity for the process. (367)
It is easy to see why these fallacies can become blurred or mistaken for one another in the mind. It is, however, crucial not to make the mistake of using an HF when documenting historical incidents. Remember that the events leading up to a historical episode are only obvious to us in retrospect. These “clues” were not so visible at the time the event took place.
Reference
Dewey, John. 1896. “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology.” Psychological Review
(3): 357-370.