The Social System of History

Among the most famous breaks in social composure in American history is the 1938 broadcast of The War of the Worlds, a radio program based on the H.G. Wells novel of the same name. Despite at least four announcements made during the program that the performance was a work of fiction, the public panicked as they listened to what they firmly believed to be a factual broadcast of an actual Martian invasion. Almost since the moment the panic occurred, historians have put forward theories incorporating this event into our social history. It is frequently cited as proof of general American anxiety about the pending Second World War. Tension was high, and, according to historian Joanna Bourke, many people listening to The War of the Worlds broadcast thought that the Germans or Japanese had been mistaken for aliens (Bourke, 2006, p.184).

However, one of the challenges with using theoretical models to connect past events in an effort to make sense out of them, i.e. history, is that we can only look at them from our current shared reality, not from the shared reality of the people who experienced the events. Ludwick Fleck wrote,

Truth… is always, or almost always, completely determined within a thought style. One can never say that the same thought is true for A and false for B. If A and B belong to the same thought collective, the thought will be either true or false for both. But if they belong to different thought collectives, it will just not be the same thought! It must either be unclear to, or be understood differently by, one of them. (Erickson, 2005, p. 69)

What all of this means, is that our history serves us and only us. History is not absolutely and finally true; it can and often does lose meaning over time. A generation f...

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...t nebulous combination of events and theories is the stock and the historical cannon is the output. This historical cannon can cycle back around and be combined with new theories to make new history, or it can be forgotten. The peer review Carr describes serves as a feedback loop, keeping combinations of theories and events in line with, to use Fleck’s term, contemporary thought collectives. History, like any well functioning system, perpetuates itself. It changes over time, but history, the story we tell ourselves about who we are and how we got here, is as old as humanity itself.

Works Cited

Bourke, J. (2006). Fear: A Cultural History. United States of America: Shoemaker &

Hoard.

Carr, E. H. (1961) What is History?. New York: Vintage Books.

Erickson, M. (2005) Science, Culture and Society: Understanding Science in the 21st

Century. Malden, MA: Polity.