Quote:
Originally Posted by edwest2
Nick,
I could care less how the courts work in the UK. Let me be blunt: We either know something through artifacts or we don't … Allied intelligence had recovered and also produced millions of pages of documents from the period… THAT is how actual research is done.
|
How then do the courts work in the USA, because nothing that reaches us over here suggests that absolute and unassailable certainty is the criterion they invariably impose in reaching their judgements?
Knowledge is not confined to your reductionist model. We know things with varying degrees of certainty. We constantly form working hypotheses which we use until new information requires their rejection or modification. If you demand absolute certainty at all times and in all things, what history would we have left? The job of the historian is to present hypotheses while making clear their basis and the limitations of his/her knowledge so that others can test those claims against the cited evidence or factor in new information.
As for researching among millions of declassified intelligence documents, what do you think I've been doing with most of my spare time for the last 40 years?