It is impossible to logically know the past

It is impossible because there is one past, but a multitude of evidence. Since we are the result of the past we can say some part of what happened just by being here. If logically means with certainty, it is impossible to know. If we have to know then we can know only by makeing some very broad assumptions such as, that people have always been people. This is impossible to prove though there is evidence.

At some point people ceased being animals and became the social being we are. At some points, the rank lack of sofistication with communication reveals a thought process in infancy, even among the most intelligent leaders of society. But what has changed? There are still many practical primitives in the curches of our country, and they do not end there.

If our forms of relationship have changed, and I suggest government and language as examples; then we have changed as well. Perhaps we change our forms as we change ourselves. Perhaps we change our forms to avoid change, and are yet changed. It is like heating and cooling a house with central heating and air. There is a great deal of technology invested in such stuff, and all of that technology is invested with science and formal understanding. Why? Is it all so we can stay naked in the winter and clothed in the summer? We invent for convenience, but keep out of dependence. Has humanity not always sought the steady state where nature was comfortably controled, and relationships never varied? What has changed about us? Can we know this with logic or certainty? Does that mean we cannot know something for knowing not everything?

Hi All!

What might be the constent/s of human history? It seems to me that would be human psychology understood in its context. The human mind has not evolved at all in the past twenty thousand years, that's relatively constent I would say. You cannot understand human history until human psychology if full known.

How is that relevant to whether the past is knowable?

kennethamy,

With what do you know it with? One can only understand out of what they themselves are.Presently psychology is still in its infancy,we are far from understanding our own natures and human history is the expression of that nature.

So, and what is your conclusion from all of that. That I do not know that Julius Caesar made himself emperor of Rome? Or, that I do not know that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated?

If "psychology is in its infancy" and if that implies the past is unknowable, then doesn't that imply that both the present and the future are also unknowable, if to understand anything about people we have to understand "our own natures". So how is our knowledge of the present or the future any different from our knowledge of the past? So, I suppose your conclusion has to be that we know nothing.

kennethamy,

If you agree with the statement that one can only know out of what one is,--------------draw your own bloody conclusions! If you are stating that you know the present, indicate in what kind of comprehensive manner this is known to you. It just is not enough kennethamy to be consistently negative, that is not really a contribution, it is just a pain in the ass.:p

I was merely pointing out that for the reasons you give that we cannot know the past, we could not know the present or the future. So, if you think we know the present or the future, then the reasons you give that we cannot know the past are no good.

But, it is clear that we do know about the past. As I pointed out, we know that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, and that Julius Caesar was a Roman emperor. And, in fact, you know that you were born. And that is knowledge of the past. Isn't it?

kennethamy,:cool:

We have some history behind us we two,we do not mix well.As I stated in another thread it is perhaps best that we in future avoid one another.

The existence of history is acknowledged,good night sweet prince!:cool:

So we do know the past? Or not. Please tell me.

Why not just admit that you can know it, but not KNOW it. If you are standing on a broad plane, and under your feet grass is growing, and there are trees nearby, and more grass, and further off there are more trees, and more grass, and at the limits of your sight there are barely descernable, grass and trees. What if beyond your exact perception is more green and grays breaking the even rim of the sky? Are you to assume they are not trees and grass because you do not know that they are? It is not like there is no evidence, but the distance of time is like the distance measure, as the distance grows, so grows uncertainty.

What is hanging on it, first of all. Are we drivng our lives by the rear view mirror? Is not the recent past more essential to know than the distant past? Certainly, recent history is more clouded by the machinations of the powerful, and the hand of the propagandists; but they leave their mark. If the past is unknowable, then the near past inscrutable. Nothing makes sense today, and nothing will make sense that happens today, tomorrow, without some grasp of the past. Does it have to be perfect?

I think all one has to do, is know enough of the history of failed states to recognize which way our house of cards is tumbling. Then, what does it matter if people are revisiting history while it happens, and writing it like Caesar, or Napoleon to fit themselves? So long as people know the history of states, and nothing more, they can guess the truth. We are controled because so long as we do not feel we know the truth we do not feel justified to act out of frustration and anger. For that reason, intelligence, as the day to day knowledge of our affairs is called, is kept strictly under government control. That the governemnt feels the need to keep secrets, and not few, but many, does not ever mean we do not know the facts.

What does the fact of government secrets tell us about us? That we are feared? That ignorence for us is victory for them? The fact is, we have more trouble knowing what is going on today than in guessing what happened in the past. It is because we cannot grasp the present that the past seems so out of focus. Our president is wrong to believe history happens after we die. We are living history, and if we are struggling we cannot expect the next person is better off. It does not matter what the government says, but what it does. It matters what your neighbor says, because your neighbor never lies. Ask him how he is doing, really? It is a dangerous question. Listen to the answer.

I'll tell you. We have a more or less accurate sense of the past. We have more or less useful information about the past. We have a more or less exacting interest in the past. As a thing, it will always be myth. People are still writing books about Lincoln, and not so much because they have a book's price of worth to add; but because they are captured by the myth, and they are trapped in it with other caught by the myth as in a giant's labyrinth. I've been there. Lincoln is a good study. I have read several big feet of Lincoln, and several feet of civil war. What do I know? I guess, enough.

Our knowledge of history is the map,not the terrain.Nuerology might be said to hold the secrets to understanding human history.

If "KNOW" means, "know with certainty" then since whether a past event occurred or not is an empirical matter, and no empirical matter can be known with certainty, then it follows that no past event can be known to have occurred with certainty. But, of course, the same is true of all events, past, present, and future. So the past is not unique in this regard. I do not think that "to know" is "to know with certainty" since, for one thing, that would mean that science does not provide us with knowledge, and that seems to me to be obviously false. But that is, really, another issue. What I am pointing out is that if "to know" does mean, "to know with certainty", the knowledge of the past is ruled out, but, knowledge of the present, and future, are equally ruled out, so there is nothing special in this regard with knowledge of the past.

The thing that makes anything true, objectively true, is how many people agree that it is true. .