David Meskill argues here that the historical profession needs more lumpers than splitters, a call for a revival of grand narrative. Or, at least, he calls for a return of historical research that is generalizable. Meskill also argues that, in good scientific fashion, historical writing should search for the simplest explanation for historical phenomena. He believes that splitters (ie, social and cultural historians) don’t do this, and rather unnecessarily complicate historical narrative by driving wedges in broad explanations. Finally, Meskill suggests that if historical knowledge is just a set of unending redactions and redefinitions (ie, that the truth of history is that there is no truth), then historians should simply stop writing. It is a simple restatement of one of the major arguments in historiography that we will be analyzing this semester.
What is your reaction, now, at the beginning? Are you a splitter or a lumper? Are those characterizations useful? If not, why?
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