Truthiness or Consequences

And after they won, they flew the zeppelins to Jerusalem and stole the Holy Grail from King Arthur and the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog.

The Battle of Agincourt, a famous English victory over the French, was fought on October 25th, 1415. On that rainy, muddy day, King Henry’s archers and infantrymen defeated French cavalry, though they were outnumbered 4 to 1.

Or were they? In her recent book, Agincourt, A New History, historian Anne Curry uses original army enrollment records to prove conclusively that in fact the odds were about 3 to 2.

Or were they? Historian Juliet Barker, in her even more recent book, Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle, uses French heraldic sources to prove conclusively that the French outnumbered the English by 6 to 1.

the French won decisively, using armored zeppelins

Other aspects of the battle are also disputed. Some reconstructions suggest that the English longbow was not as effective as commonly thought, that Henry was a lousy general, and that English archers did more damage as infantry than they did as archers. I will not be surprised if some new history proves conclusively that in fact the French won decisively, using armored zeppelins.

Nor is Agincourt the only battle with disputed history: the history of all battles is endlessly debated as is every historical event. The plain cold truth is, humans have no way of knowing definitely what happened yesterday, let alone 600 years ago. Our only access to the past is second hand, via eyewitness accounts or physical records such as photographs. But we know from modern studies that eyewitnesses are hopelessly subjective and physical evidence is subject to endless interpretation—consider the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination; what it proves seems to depend on who you are.

Underlying human efforts to write history is the assumption that there is a truth to be discovered—that is, we act as if there is one true story that can be reassembled by painstaking research. But is there? Since the past is non-existent in the most profound way possible, isn’t it really the case that all we can do in the present is argue about interpretations of the past?

And of course this applies to more than history—religions also fiercely debate the past and the most successful religions are the ones that most successfully push their interpretation of what really happened hundreds or thousands of years ago. For example, at least in our culture, it is usually taken for granted that the man Jesus at least existed but in fact, historically speaking, there is not a shred of admissible evidence that proves it—no physical evidence, no direct eyewitness accounts, no documentary evidence, no mention by contemporary historians such as Josephus or Tacitus… no evidence at all, really, just the hearsay evidence of biased authors writing 70 years or more after the supposed man’s supposed death. Am I saying that Jesus never existed? Not at all! I’m just pointing out that humans today have no way of really knowing whether or not he existed and that everyone who says otherwise is sort of, um, lying. And the same can be said for quite a few ‘historical’ figures.

So the past turns out to be as fluid and subject to human influence as the future and only the present really exists—which is something the Buddha said thousands of years ago… or did he?

Did you like this essay? You’ll love my books!

Tagged as: belief systems, history, philosophy