Australian Archaeology 33: 5 9-61
REFUTATION AND TRADITION: AN UNEASY RELATIONSHIP
Roland Fletcher
When a statement is made we are entitled to appraise
it in whatever way is appropriate for the kind of
statement it is. We appraise statements of different
kinds in different ways. Applying the pragmatic
criterion of refutability is one way of making an
appraisal. We simply ask whether the statement is
couched in a form which would allow us to check
whether it does or does not describe the aspect of
reality which it purports to describe. The procedure is
necessary when we must ask whether we ought to
accept a proposition which, on other grounds of
appraisal, we might prefer to accept. In essence we
should use a refutation procedure if we consider that it
may be unwise to believe what we would prefer to
believe. This should not lead us to suppose that
because the procedure is necessary it is either
straightforward or simple. The debate about refutation
has shown that it is neither. While refutation is plainly
possible it requires adjuncts such as standardised
calibration of instruments. Nor can refutation be
reduced to a unitary practise which might either be
comprehensively condemned or else must be
universally supported. Like other human enterprises it
can be improperly and dogmatically applied. For
instance, what has become apparent over the past fifty
years is that naive falsification, which specifies that a
refuted (falsified) explanation must be abandoned, is
both inherently conservative and counter-productive.
The central problem in the relationship between
refutation and tradition is that the dominance of a
particular intellectual tradition in a discipline is liable to
predefine an acceptable form of plausibility (Murray
1990; Tangri 1989) and in consequence lead to a
restricted suite of explanations and forms of
description. Traditions therefore put us at some risk of
not seeing what we might need to see. This liability is
Depamnent of Anthropology, University of Sydney, NSW 2006
compounded when preference is reinforced by
confirmationism and the advocates of a tradition
repress conceptual change by imposing on it the
restrictive terms of naive falsification. Traditions can
be shielded from criticism by introducing ambiguities
which blur the critical distinctions between different
classes of statement and by obscurantist, inordinately
complex theories which cannot be segregated into
potentially refutable parts. We should not assume that
such theories, even if plausible, are inherentlyvirtuous
because the real world is complex. They may merely
be fallacious theories which conflate processes
operating over different rnagnitudes of space and time
(Fletcher 1989, in press). If we daim to be describing
what the past was or was not like, and contend that we
need not make statements which can be refutably
appraised; or we contend that the past cannot be so
described and we are free to say whatever we prefer;
then the likelihood of misapplying what we say is
increased. We gain more latitude to deceive
ourselves.
This does not mean that every statement we make
must be couched in terms that would necessarily
enable us to specify the evidence by which we could
refute it, only that we should be unambiguously able to
tell the difference between those which are and those
which are not and appreciate that they have different
purposes and different social significance. Much of the
dense flavour and fascination of human social life is not
sensibly appraised by refutation. Expressive images
and perspicacious insights of the kinds prwided by
mqral philosophy, novels or popular music are judged
quite differently. We do not waste our time arguing that
people should not read Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave
Bear (Fagan 1987) because it is an inaccurate
portrayal of the Upper Palaedithic in Eurasia. Who
cares? If an exotic travelogue and the graphic titillation
of a bit of unreal athletic sex will wile away the tedious
flight from Sydney to London - who cares about the
60 Refutationand Tradition
Upper Palaedithic? Since the nwel does not purport
to be a checkable statement about a particular region
and period, unlike Gamble's 'The Palaedithic
Settlement of Europe' (1986), we do not bother with
refuting it. There are various ways in which Auel's book
might be appraised - profitability is one of them.
Literary quality is another, requiring a suite of highly
spedalised skills in literary criticism which are quite
beyond most archaedogists. For the sake of the
human spirit there is a Id hanging on the contention
that Auel's book is pulptrashwhich does little or nothing
to advise us on the human condition. In stunning
contrast, Gdding's The Inheritors', with its evocation
of a world in which modem humans are replacing the
Neandertals, offers a profound sense of a different past
and different ways of being - quite enough to delight
Clifford Geertz (1988). No archaeologist to my
knowledge has ever sensually conveyed the feel of
cooking in a rockshelter. Faunal lists and pollen
analyses are scarcely literature. Gdding's perspicacious, terse image of a Neandertal's incomprehension when an arrow slams into a tree - 'The dead
tree by LoKs ear acquired a voice. 'Clop" '. (Gdding
1961:106) - is unlikelyto be matchedby semiotics and
the textual analysis of verbal meaning in the archaeological record (Hodder 1986). That bows and arrows
dM n d exist in Europe in the early Upper Palaedithic
does not remotely matter. The story need not even be
about the Neandertals. It is enjoyable and evocative.
But there is a fundamental dtfference between daiming
that you are writing a nwel and purporting to offer an
explanation d what the past was like. Kurten (1982)
dearly articulates the distinction. He wrote 'Dance of
the Tiger', with its fascinating and as yet uncheckable
notion that sterile male offspring were the result of
interbreeding between modem humans and
Neandertals, because he had a wonderful idea which
he recognised could not be couched in the terms
required d a statement about what actually went on in
the past. Such a daim does not have to be coned to
be stated. However it might be incorrect and therefore,
if placed in a context which specifies that it is not part
of a nwel, should be stated in such a way that we can
check it against other evMence or against the kinds of
observational statements which it predicts we should
be able to obtain. Why should it matter that the
statement might be i n m e d ? Because if it is placed in
a publishing milieu which specifies that the past may
actually have taken that proposed form, the writer is
obliged to make an empirically accountable statement.
The milieu d the statement spedfies that one might
place upon it the further weight of assessingwhether it
has serious though unanticipated implications for how
we deal with both our natural and our soda1 environment. There is therefore a dass of archaeological
statement about the past which is the equivalent d
stating that a murder was committed twenty years ago
and we know who dM it In that case to say that the
past is invented in the present to serve the purposes of
the present, for instance to allow the imprisonment on
spurious grounds of an accused person who would
otherwise be a nuisance to the State, is simply an
abomination. The daim about a guilty party is a
potentially refutable statement about a past which we
consider to have actually happened, not an invention
in a novel which we can accept or ignore as it suits us.
Our obligation is to find out whether or not the daim is
demonstrable since the conclusions have potentially
serious implications.
Similarly, if we make a daim about haw humans
behaved in the past we cannot be so casual as to
suppose that we may invent them to serve any purpose
or opinion which we happen to advocate. Explanations
or even descriptions of how people behaved in
previous periods of planetary warming are not merely
amusing stories to entertain us. Insteadwe are making
statements which we or others may choose to apply to
opinions about the social impact of the Greenhouse
effect. Opinions on the condition of human existence
in the past also matter. Cohen's (1989) argument that
overall nutrition, infant mortality and longevity have not
improved and may even have become worse w e r the
past 15,000 years, depends upon numerous studies
of health and demography in ethnographic and
archaeological contexts. For instance, the study
indudes Webb's (1982) analyses of bidogical stress
among Pleistocene and Hdocene populations in
Australia. As Cohen emphasises in his condusion the
absence of an aggregate improvement in nutrition and
survival obliges the contemporary beneficiaries of
industrialised urban grawth to seek remedies for the
stress which increased mobility, extended economic
p e r and the growth of community size may have
caused. It also suggests that there is a profoundfallacy
involved in the 'deep-rooted' concept d progress, with
serious implications both for haw we explain the past
and for the way we view the future. Even the general
concept of progress, which is still deeply embedded in
archaeological theorising (eg in some models of
intensification and the rise of complexity), might be
demolished by refutations from the past, or subject to
such revisions as to necessitate the remwal d its
dense cultural significance. Empawering tradition to
override such a refutation or daiming that we need only
change our views when our sodai milieu changes,
places us at risk and may neglect the urgent needs d
other people. That tradition may be disregarding d
inconvenient data is to be expected - after all the
implications of both radiocarbon dating and its
recalibration were resisted by some quite influential
archaedogists. But we should not reinforce soda1
conformity and m e n t i o n s d plausibility. We ougM to
promote logical and pragmatic strategieswhich give an
advantage to the continual reappraisal d established
tradition. We should encourage refutatim both as a
means to keep the guardians d tradition suitably
modest and to assist the rapid adjustment d our
premises and prior assumptions.
Why should all this matter? Because our perspective
on the past is linked to our premises about the future,
descriptions ofaspects of the past, however esoteric
they may seem when we make them, can become the
basis for executive actions. Since we never know
beforehand what piece of esoteric knowledge might
have such an effectwe should err on the side of caution
and assume that they all might. An executive decision
basedon e m can adversely affect other peoples' lives
and we therefore have an obligation to be accountable
for particular kinds of statements which we make. We
cannat assuredly produce true statements, therefore
we must seek to make statements which do not have
to be taken on faith and can be assessed according to
the evidencetowhichthey daim to refer and not merely
be appraised by referenceto the canons of a dominant
explanatory tradition. That is why a pragmatic policy
of refutability is necessary if the statements we make
refer to a past which we consider to have actually
happened and which might have serious implications
for present executive policy.
The problem is that for much of the time while we
pursue the debates of archaeology we find it difficult to
envisage that what we say has any consequence other
than the satisfaction of curiosity. Ernest Rutherford
thought in similar terms about nudear energy (Rhodes
1988:27; Snow 1967:9). He did not believe that
splittingthe atom, which he pioneered, would have any
practical consequences - but it does. Just because
we cannot perceive any general significance in the
topic we are studyingdoes not obviate our relationship
to what we say and how we say it. While H.G. Wells
(1914:M) envisaged nudear warfare in a prophetic,
perspicaaoustext wer thirty years before it happened
we do not ascribe the ancestry of nudear weapons to
him. But Leo Szilard, who thought of chain reactions
in terms of scientific theory while walking across
Charing Cross Road in 1933, is unavoidably attached
to the moral responsibility for the new kind of weapon
(Rhodes 1988:13, 28). Wells and Szilard made
different dasses of statement and we need to be
unamMguously dear that they are different. Similarly
in archaeology, we are no more obliged to make
refutable statements than H.G. Wells. But we are
obliged to make dear when we are not doing so
because we are then promulgating a different kind of
knuwiedgeand daiming different kinds of responsibility
for what we have said. Archaeologistsare not required
to produce refutable statements, however, those who
do n a wish to do so must pravide a dedaration about
the kind d knawiedge which they are creating, the
crtteria for appraising it and the way in which the
obligations to other people are to be resdved. If
archaedogists daim to be writing perspicadously, few
d us would survive literary critiasm or satisfy the
demands of prditability. We might try to daim other
forms of leghimation. Hodder (1984), and Shanks and
Tilley (1987) have consumed much effort in trying to
suggest an alternativeto the ndion that our obligations
can be resdved by principles other than the use of a
strategy of refutation. The alternativestend to suggest
that particular kinds of 'right thinking' are the
appropriate way out. But they require prior belief in the
efficacy of particular systems of meaning and value.
Once we recognise the risks of believing what one
would prefer to believe the need for a pragmatic form
of refutation is also apparent. We have to produce
statements which are potentially open to refutation
precisely because we are -liableto deceive ourselves
and tend to make prior assumptions about what we are
seeing. Refutation is a quite mundane procedure,
even though difficult (Miller 1982; O'Hear 1982; Popper
1976:42,1980; Wisdom l987), and in no way commits
us to the absurdities of naive falsificationism. The task
of refutation is not left to the moral calibre d each
researcher but is spread across the community. That
social factors intervene such as the status and pcrwer
of the actors, certainly affects how refutation is done
and the degree to which it may be ignored but this does
not alter the requirement to try and make it feasible.
We have no difficulty perceiving that the exercise of
academic power can crush innovation and entrench
obsdete concepts. But we also have no difficulty
appreciating that it is undesirable and unwise to allow
such situations to persist. We would prefer that they
did not happen.
However, this needs to be
distinguished from a situation in which a proposition is
known to be refuted but is not discarded. Newtonian
mechanics was known to be in error inthe 19th century.
It could not predict the perihelion of Mercury (Bernstein
1973: 125-28). But Newtonian mechanics was still
useful both for other scientific enquiry and as a basis
for constructing machines. A theory need not be
rejected because it is refuted. All the refutationdoes is
to specify where the theory has its limits. The theory
may still be useful for many other purposes and should
not be thrown out until it m n be ether replaced or
subsumed by a new analytic construct. Advocating
pragmatic refutation merely requires that we pay
attention to those contexts in which a theory does not
work and be wary of the logical and pradical
applications which verge into those circumstances.
We should not inflate refutation itself into a moral rule.
It is merely a pragmatic procedure which can protect
us froin self-deception. While it may be dedsive in the
reinforcement of an argument against a particular
viewpoint refutation does not exist in isdation. It does
not set the research agenda because a refutationdoes
not in itself suggest what to do next. The intelledual
traditions of a discipline do that Human imaginationis
required and a contest between the advocates d
divergent topics of enquiry.
A policy d refutation depends upon phrasing a
statement so that patential refutationscan be Mentified.
We can never safely assume that our dedaratiorrs are
harmless trivia. The obligation to protect &er people
by producing refutable statements may therefore dash
62 Refutation and Tradition
with what we would like to say and how we would like
to say it. It may call into question the way a particular
intellectual tradition articulates its questions and its
answers, and the way it defines plausibility. This does
not thereby call refutability into question. Instead the
obligation opens up the issue of how the practitioners
d a tradition d enquiry reconcile what is said with the
kinds djustification used to reinforce what is said. The
validity d the relationship between the way a tradition
proceeds, the devices it uses to justify its knowledge
dairns and their connection to the public world is not
constrained by a rule of epistemology. Rather it is our
m m 1 obligation to other people which defines how we
should proceed if we are claiming to describe and
explain the nature of a past which actually happened.
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Bill Tidy
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(Supplied by JPW)