Everyone knows the story, right? You can probably
picture it in your head right now. A six -year
-old George Washington, a shiny new hatchet,
and his father's prized cherry tree just lying
there in ruins in the garden. Yeah, the classic
American origin story. The secular saint. Exactly.
The furious father demands answers, and the boy
looks up and delivers that famous line that has
been printed in school books for two centuries.
I cannot tell a lie. I did it. Which is... Ironically,
a complete lie. Right. It's a great story. It
sets the moral tone for a whole nation. But here's
the problem. Most of us know by now that that
event almost certainly never happened. It was
invented. A biographer named Mason Locke Weems
just, well, he made it up shortly after Washington
died. Parson Weems, yeah. Right, Parson Weems.
He wanted to humanize the legend, you know, so
he basically fabricated a childhood for him.
But here is why we are starting with this today.
We aren't here to debunk the cherry tree story.
We are doing a deep dive into a much harder question.
See, we know Washington was a real flesh and
blood human being, but we also know the cherry
tree story is a fabrication. And in that space
between those two things, the real man and the
fake story, lies a massive complex concept that
really defines how we understand reality. We
are talking about historicity. which I'll admit
is a term that sounds incredibly dry. Oh, totally.
It sounds like something you read on a dusty
university syllabus and just immediately fall
asleep. I thought the exact same thing when we
were prepping for this. I thought, isn't historicity
just, well, history? But it's not, is it? No,
it's not. And that distinction is crucial. History
is the narrative. It's the books we write, the
museums we build, the stories we tell each other.
Historicity is the quality of historical actuality.
Historical actuality. It is the status of being
real. The hard, unmovable fact of existence that
stands completely apart from myth or legend or
fiction. So if history is the map that we draw,
historicity is the actual physical terrain. That
is a really helpful way to view it. But it goes
deeper than just a map. Historicity isn't just
a binary switch where something is either true
or false. It is also about the human condition
of existing in time. The human condition. Yeah,
it's a philosophical stance as much as a historical
one. Okay, that's where the water gets deep.
The human condition of existing in time. Because
we aren't just floating in a void, we are pinned
to a very specific moment. Exactly. And to really
get our heads around this, we have to look at
the two distinct layers of historicity that are
outlined in the source material. Because when
a historian sits down and asks, does this have
historicity? They're actually asking two very
different questions at the exact same time. Okay,
let's break this down. What is the first layer?
The first layer is the ontological question.
It basically asks what really happened. Like
the CSI aspect. Exactly like CSI. Did the event
physically occur? Did a person named George Washington
literally exist on this planet? This focus is
strictly on the factual status of the past. That
seems like the straightforward part. I mean,
either the tree fell or it didn't fall. You would
think so. But that leads immediately into the
second layer, which is the epistemological question.
And epistemology is about how we know things.
Right. So the second question asks, how can a
modern observer possibly know what really happened?
Because we don't have a time machine, we can't
just go back and watch Washington standing in
the garden with an axe. We are stuck here centuries
later. We are stuck with traces. Traces. Yeah,
traces. Letters, pottery shards, ruins, old texts.
And the fundamental problem is that those traces
are not the event itself. They're just the leftovers.
Exactly. They're the debris left behind by the
event. So the real work of historicity involves
bridging that gap, taking the debris and trying
to reconstruct the reality. It reminds me of
that idea that we are always looking at the past
through a tiny keyhole. We can see a sliver of
the room, but we have to infer what the rest
of the room looks like. And that inference is
where the heavy philosophy comes in. The Blackwell
Dictionary of Western Philosophy actually defines
historicity as the feature of our human situation,
where we are located in specific concrete temporal
circumstances. Meaning we are not outside of
time. We are trapped in it. Precisely. Which
brings up Wilhelm Dilthe. He's a pretty heavy
hitter in this field. Right. The sources mentioned
him. He argued that historicity is actually the
thing that makes us human, didn't he? He did.
Dilthe wanted to move the conversation away from
just memorizing dates and battles. He argued
that we are unique and concrete historical beings.
How so? Well, think about the difference between
a human and, say, a wolf in the forest. A wolf
basically lives in the continuous present. Its
whole life is dictated by biology and instinct.
It doesn't care about what its grandfather did.
Exactly. But a human, we are entirely shaped
by the accumulated weight of the past. You listening
to this right now, you aren't just a biological
organism. You are a product of the 21st century,
which was shaped by the 20th century. You understand
yourself through a timeline. So my identity isn't
just my DNA. My identity is literally my place
in the story. That's a great way to put it. And
this is where another philosopher, Herbert Marquis,
steps in. He makes a distinction between history
and nature, which is a vital concept if you want
to understand historicity. I've always kind of
thought of history and nature as similar things,
just stuff that happens in the world. But Marquis
says they are fundamentally different. Completely
different. Think about the natural world. It
is inherently cyclical. Like the seasons? Right.
The seasons turn. The tides go in and out. The
sun rises and sets. It is a realm of endless
repetition. Nature doesn't really go anywhere.
It just is. But history? History is linear. It
is irreversible. The French Revolution happened
exactly once. It will never ever happen again
in that exact same way. Wow. That's a really
powerful distinction. Nature repeats, but history
moves. Marquis argued that historicity signifies
the specific meaning we intend when we say something
is historical. It implies that human events have
an intentionality and a uniqueness to them that
a thunderstorm or a blooming flower just does
not have. Okay, so when we look for the historicity
of an event, we are looking for that unique,
unrepeatable human imprint. Which, I guess, brings
us back to the practical side of this deep dive.
The methodology. Yeah. If historicity is this
quality of being real and unique, how do we actually
measure it? Because some things feel historically
true, but we know they aren't. Right. We're dealing
with a spectrum of truth. As humans, we often
want history to be a very simple yes or no, but
historicity is almost never that clean. Let's
go back to George Washington for a second. The
man versus the myth. Exactly. There is zero doubt.
regarding the historicity of George Washington,
the person, the volume of evidence, the primary
sources, physical artifacts, corroborating accounts
from allies and enemies. It's overwhelming. His
historicity as a person is incredibly high. But
the reported event of the cherry tree has been
completely found lacking. Correct. So we have
a highly historical person participating in a
completely non -historical event. Which happens
constantly. All the time. But let's look at a
much harder example from the sources. the Iliad.
Oh, now we are going way back. Homer's epic poem
about the Trojan War, Achilles, Hector, the giant
wooden horse. For a long time, this was just
considered literature, wasn't it? Just a really
cool ancient story. Yeah, for centuries it was
treated purely as mythology. But then in the
19th century, archaeologists like Heinrich Schleiman
started digging in modern day Turkey. And they
found something. They found a city. They found
massive stone walls that showed clear evidence
of having been burned. They found evidence of
a massive conflict that aligns almost perfectly
with the timeline of the Trojan War. That's wild.
So does the Iliad have historicity? It has what
historians call a kernel of historicity, the
broad backdrop, the city of Troy, a massive war
between Greeks and Trojans that appears to be
historical actuality. But the specific conversations
between Achilles and his mother. or the Greek
gods physically intervening in the fight. That
is pure poetic license. It really is a spectrum.
It's not just a box you check for fact or fiction.
It's this complex mix where you basically have
to pan for gold. You have to sift the historicity
out of the mythology. And that sifting process
is incredibly difficult because we, the sifters,
are inherently biased. We come to the table with
our own modern ideas about how the world is supposed
to work. Which brings us to this fascinating
concept by the historiographer, Cronsois Hartog.
He talks about regimes of historicity. Yes. I
love this term. Regimes of historicity. It sounds
almost authoritarian, but he means something
much more structural, doesn't he? He does. A
regime in this context is simply the way a specific
society relates to time. It's the overarching
framework through which a culture understands
its past, its present and its future. Okay, so
an ancient Roman citizen would have a completely
different regime of historicity than a Silicon
Valley tech CEO today. Fundamentally different.
In a lot of ancient societies, the regime was
heavily retrospective. Being looking backward.
Right. The past was viewed as the Golden Age.
The ancestors always knew best. So to validate
something, to prove it was good or true, you
had to show it was old. History was seen as a
teacher, and the ultimate goal was to emulate
the great models of the past. Versus today, where
if you tell a tech CEO, we should do this because
we did it 100 years ago, they'd laugh you right
out of the boardroom. Exactly. Our modern regime,
generally speaking, since the Enlightenment is
highly prospective, we look forward. We view
time as synonymous with progress. The past is
often seen as something broken that we need to
overcome or improve upon. That is fascinating.
Because it means that historicity isn't just
about the raw facts we dig up, it's about the
lens we use to look for those facts in the first
place. Our regime literally determines what we
value as true. It dictates what we choose to
preserve, what we bother to record, and how we
interpret the evidence we find. Hartog describes
this as a method of self -awareness in a human
community. We literally define who we are by
how we treat our own timeline. But wait, if our
regime totally colors our view, how do we ever
get to the objective truth? If I'm looking at
ancient history through 21st century glasses,
aren't I just projecting my own modern values
backward? That is exactly the trap of historicism.
There is a very deep concern in the field that
our methodologies are subject to what they call
submerged value commitments. Submerged value
commitment. That sounds like a very polite academic
way of saying hidden agendas. It's actually more
subtle than an agenda. An agenda implies you
are actively trying to trick someone. A submerged
value is something you believe so deeply, so
fundamentally, that you don't even realize it's
biasing your work. It's the water you swim in.
Right. And nowhere is this water hotter than
in religious studies. The source material specifically
highlights this as the arena where historicity
is most fiercely debated. Absolutely. When you
are dealing with major figures or texts, and
the sources mentioned several here. Right, the
debates around the Bible, the historical Jesus,
the canonical Gospels, Muhammad, Rama, the Book
of Mormon. And I want to pause here and be incredibly
clear to you listening. We are absolutely not
taking a side on the existence or the accuracy
of any of these figures or texts. No, not at
all. That's not our role here. We are strictly
looking at the mechanics of the debate. Exactly.
We are just reporting that these are the high
-stakes arenas where historicity is most intensely
scrutinized. Because asking, did this actually
happen about a religious text isn't just an academic
exercise. It's existential for millions of people.
Precisely. And in these specific fields, a researcher's
value commitments can heavily, heavily influence
which methodology they choose to use. How so?
Well, if you are a devoted believer in a tradition,
you might naturally privilege the internal consistency
of the sacred text. But if you are a strict skeptic,
you might demand external archaeological proof
for every detail proof that might not have even
survived the centuries. So if bias is completely
inevitable and the traces of the past are mostly
fragmentary, do historians have any actual tools
to figure this out? Or is it all just educated
guessing? No, we aren't helpless. Over the last
couple of centuries, historians have developed
a really rigorous toolkit of criteria to test
for historicity. Like stress tests for a story.
Exactly like stress tests. Okay, let's run through
this toolkit. What is the first tool historians
pull out? The first one is contextual credibility.
This basically asks, does the story actually
fit the furniture of the time period? Give me
an example of how that works in practice. Okay,
let's say you find a thrilling ancient document
that claims to be from the first century describing
a great Roman battle. But halfway through the
text, it mentions the commanding general using
a stirrup on his horse. A stirrup, okay. Well,
historians know the stirrup wasn't widely used
in that specific region until centuries later.
So that one tiny detail destroys the contextual
credibility of the whole document. It's an anachronism.
It proves the story was written much later by
someone who didn't know the proper details of
the era. Right. It's like watching a movie set
in the 1980s and seeing a character casually
checking an iPhone. Yeah. It immediately breaks
the reality. OK. That makes sense. What's the
next tool? The next tool is the criterion of
dissimilarity. Now, this one is a bit more intellectually
tricky. It asks, is the story different enough
from the author's known agenda to be likely true?
Walk me through that one. Imagine an early religious
writer. Their obvious agenda is to promote their
new movement and separate it from older traditions.
If that writer includes a story or a teaching
from their founder, that sounds very traditional
and aligns closely with the older traditions
they are trying to break away from. It is likely
authentic. Yes, because why on earth would they
invent a detail that actively hurts their new
marketing pitch? Right. If it goes against the
grain of their own bias, it's probably a stubborn
historical fact that they just couldn't ignore
or erase. Exactly. But I can see a flaw there.
Couldn't a really clever writer include dissimilar
things on purpose just to sound more authentic?
You have hit on the main problem. These tools
are heuristic. They are rules of thumb, not laws
of physics. They deal in probability, not absolute
certainty. And that applies heavily to the next
tool as well, which is perhaps the most famous
one. the criterion of embarrassment. I've heard
of this one. The basic idea is that people don't
usually make up stories that make themselves
look terrible. Correct. The classic example often
cited in historiography is the crucifixion of
Jesus. In the first century Roman context, a
claimed messiah being executed like a common
criminal was a massive stumbling block. It was
incredibly embarrassing for the early movement.
Highly embarrassing. It required a tremendous
amount of theological explanation. So the historian's
logic here is if they were just inventing a messiah
completely from scratch, they would have had
him heroically defeat the Romans, not get humiliatingly
executed by them. Exactly. Since the event was
profoundly embarrassing to the cause, it is highly
likely to have historical actuality. Nobody invents
a story that makes their job that much harder.
You see this with military history too, right?
Oh, all the time. If a famous Roman general's
memoir admits to a massive tactical blunder that
cost him thousands of troops, you can bet your
life that blunder actually happened. But again,
just to play devil's advocate, sometimes admitting
a small fault makes you seem more honest, which
helps you sell a much bigger lie later on. And
that is the limitation of the tool. We can never
be 100 % inside the head of an ancient author.
But generally speaking, the criterion of embarrassment
helps historians cut through purely propagandistic
praise. OK, what about checking different sources
against each other? Is there a tool for that?
Yes, that is multiple attestation. If you have
three completely independent sources, let's say
a Roman tax record, a private Greek letter and
a local Jewish history. and they all casually
mention the exact same event, the probability
of its historicity skyrockets. The key word there
being independent, right? If they all just copied
from the exact same older book, it doesn't count.
Exactly. That's just the echo chamber effect.
Ten people retweeting the same lie doesn't make
it true. But three people witnessing an accident
from three completely different street corners,
that creates a verified historical event. So
we have contextual credibility, dissimilarity,
embarrassment, and multiple attestation. It's
a pretty rigorous toolkit, even if it's not completely
bulletproof. It's the best we have. It allows
us to move away from once upon a time and get
to it is highly probable that. Which brings us
all the way back to where we started today. Why
does any of this matter to you listening right
now? I mean, we aren't all historians. Most of
us are just trying to get through the work week.
It matters deeply because we are currently living
through a massive shift in our regime of historicity.
Just think about the information environment
we live in today. It's incredibly fast, it's
totally digital, and it's wildly fragmented.
As it is ephemeral. We are generating more data
right now than any civilization in human history.
But you have to ask, how much of it actually
has historicity? Wow. How much of our digital
footprint is verified actuality? And how much
is just the cherry tree myth operating on a massive
global scale? That is a genuinely haunting thought.
We are absolutely drowning in content, but we
might be starving for actual historicity. And
if Francois Hartog is right that our regime of
historicity defines our cultural self -awareness,
What does it say about us as a society if we
just stop caring about the distinction between
the viral story and the actual event? It says
we might be losing our grip on reality. Or at
the very least, we are happily trading truth
for an entertaining narrative. So the big takeaway
here is really a call to action. It's about being
your own historian, being your own sifter. When
you see that viral headline or hear that story
that perfectly confirms everything you hate about
your political opponents or everything you love
about your heroes, pause. Apply the toolkit we
just talked about. Right. Ask yourself, is this
contextually credible? Is this just confirming
my own bias? Where is the embarrassment in this
story? Where is the resistance? Because if it
feels too perfect, too neat and tidy, it's probably
a cherry tree. And real history is rarely perfect.
It's messy, it's deeply contradictory, and it's
real. Which is what makes it so fascinating.
A really powerful reminder to keep our critical
faculties sharp. We have covered the philosophy,
the spectrum of truth, the cultural regimes,
and the actual toolkit historians use. Hopefully
the next time you hear a historical fact, you
will listen to it with a slightly different ear.
And here's a final thought to mull over. If historicity
is how a community becomes self -aware, are we
currently building a history that future generations
can actually verify? Or are we just creating
a future full of digital myths? Something to
definitely think about. Stay curious and keep
digging. Thanks for joining us on the Deep Dive.
We'll see you next time.