In the chaotic aftermath, as a nation grappled with an incomprehensible act of violence, the image of the “Umbrella Man” became a fetish, as novelist John Updike would later write, dangling around history’s neck. The man was an anomaly, a detail that didn’t fit. In a world desperate for causal links, his presence seemed anything but benign. Was the umbrella a secret signaling device? A disguised flechette gun that fired the first, mysterious throat wound? For years, investigators and conspiracy theorists alike saw him as a key to a sinister underpinning, a puzzle piece in a grand, nefarious design.
The story of the Umbrella Man reveals our deep-seated human desire to make sense of a complex universe through tidy, airtight explanations. We crave certainty, especially in the face of tragedy, and are quick to weave disparate facts into a coherent, and often sinister, narrative. We see a man with an umbrella on a sunny day and assume conspiracy, because the alternative — that the world is a stage for random, idiosyncratic and often meaningless acts — is far more unsettling. (...)
Making consequential choices about an unknowable future is a profoundly challenging task. The world is not a laboratory. It is a vortex of ambiguity, contingency and competing perspectives, where motives are unclear, evidence is contradictory and the significance of events changes with the passage of time. No economic model or regression analysis can fully explain the Umbrella Man, nor can it provide the clarity we need to navigate the intricate challenges of our time.
What we have lost, and what we desperately need to reclaim, is a different mode of cognition, a historical sensibility. This is not about memorizing dates and facts. It is, as the historian Gordon S. Wood describes it, a “different consciousness,” a way of understanding that profoundly influences how we see the world. It is a temperament that is comfortable with uncertainty, sensitive to context and aware of the powerful, often unpredictable rhythms of the past. To cultivate this sensibility is to acquire the intellectual virtues of modesty, curiosity and empathy — an antidote to the hubris of rigid, monocausal thinking.
The Historian’s Audacious Act
The stereotypical image of a historian is a collector of dusty facts, obsessed with the archives, who then weaves them into a story. But this portrait misses the audacious intellectual act at the heart of the discipline. (...)
This is an ambitious, almost brazen attempt to impose a shared order on the infinite, confusing array of facts and causes that mark our existence. It offers an argument about causality and agency — about who and what matters, and how the world works and why. Does change come from great leaders, collective institutions or vast, impersonal structural forces? A historian’s narrative is never just a story; it is a theory of change.
This process is fundamentally different from that of many other disciplines. Where social sciences often seek to create generalizable, predictive and parsimonious theories — the simplest explanation for the largest number of things — history revels in complexity. A historical sensibility is skeptical of master ideas or unitary historical motors. It recognizes that different things happen for different reasons, that direct causal connections can be elusive, and that the world is rife with unintended consequences. It makes no claim to predict the future; rather, it seeks to deepen our understanding of how the past unfolded into our present, reminding us, as British historian Sir Llewellyn Woodward said, that “our ignorance is very deep.”
This sensibility compels us to reconsider concepts we take for granted. We use terms such as “capitalism” and “human rights” as if they are timeless and universal, when in fact they are concepts that emerged and evolved at particular historical moments, often identified and defined by historians. A historical consciousness demands that we seek the origins of things we thought we understood and empathize with the past in its own context. This is to imagine ourselves in the shoes of those who came before, wrestling with their dilemmas in their world. It doesn’t mean suspending moral judgment, but rather being less confident that we — here today — have a monopoly on timeless insight.
This process is fundamentally different from that of many other disciplines. Where social sciences often seek to create generalizable, predictive and parsimonious theories — the simplest explanation for the largest number of things — history revels in complexity. A historical sensibility is skeptical of master ideas or unitary historical motors. It recognizes that different things happen for different reasons, that direct causal connections can be elusive, and that the world is rife with unintended consequences. It makes no claim to predict the future; rather, it seeks to deepen our understanding of how the past unfolded into our present, reminding us, as British historian Sir Llewellyn Woodward said, that “our ignorance is very deep.”
This sensibility compels us to reconsider concepts we take for granted. We use terms such as “capitalism” and “human rights” as if they are timeless and universal, when in fact they are concepts that emerged and evolved at particular historical moments, often identified and defined by historians. A historical consciousness demands that we seek the origins of things we thought we understood and empathize with the past in its own context. This is to imagine ourselves in the shoes of those who came before, wrestling with their dilemmas in their world. It doesn’t mean suspending moral judgment, but rather being less confident that we — here today — have a monopoly on timeless insight.
Why We Get History Wrong
Thinking historically is valuable but rare. Most of us encounter “history” in up to three ways, none of which cultivates this deeper consciousness. First, in school, where it is often presented as a dry chronology of dates and facts to be memorized with little connection to our lives. Second, through public history — museums, memorials, historical sites — which can inspire curiosity, but are themselves historical products, often reflecting the biases and blind spots of the era in which they were created. (A tour of Colonial Williamsburg may reveal more about the Rockefeller-funded restoration ethos of the 1930s than about the 18th-century reality it purports to represent.) Third, through bestselling books and documentaries, which may tell vivid, engaging stories, but can be hagiographic and anecdotal, oriented toward simple lessons and celebrating national myths rather than challenging our assumptions.
None of these is the same as developing a historical sensibility. They are more like comfort food, satisfying a deep urge to connect with the past but providing little real nourishment. At worst, they reinforce the very cognitive habits — the desire for certainty, simple narratives and clear heroes and villains — that a true historical sensibility seeks to question.
The academic discipline of history has, in recent decades, largely failed in its public duty. It has retreated from the consequential subjects of statecraft and strategy, seeing them as unworthy of scholarly pursuit. The rosters of tenured historians at major universities show a steep decline in scholars engaged with questions of war, peace and diplomacy. When they do address such topics, they often do so in a jargon-laden style that is inaccessible and unhelpful to decision-makers or the wider public.
This decline is a tragedy, especially at a time when leaders confronting complex global challenges are desperate for guidance. The field of history has become estranged from the very world of power and decision-making it is uniquely equipped to analyze. Historians and policymakers, who should be natural interlocutors, rarely engage one another. This has left a vacuum that is eagerly filled by other disciplines more confident in their ability to provide actionable advice — which is often dangerously simplistic. (...)
Thinking historically is valuable but rare. Most of us encounter “history” in up to three ways, none of which cultivates this deeper consciousness. First, in school, where it is often presented as a dry chronology of dates and facts to be memorized with little connection to our lives. Second, through public history — museums, memorials, historical sites — which can inspire curiosity, but are themselves historical products, often reflecting the biases and blind spots of the era in which they were created. (A tour of Colonial Williamsburg may reveal more about the Rockefeller-funded restoration ethos of the 1930s than about the 18th-century reality it purports to represent.) Third, through bestselling books and documentaries, which may tell vivid, engaging stories, but can be hagiographic and anecdotal, oriented toward simple lessons and celebrating national myths rather than challenging our assumptions.
None of these is the same as developing a historical sensibility. They are more like comfort food, satisfying a deep urge to connect with the past but providing little real nourishment. At worst, they reinforce the very cognitive habits — the desire for certainty, simple narratives and clear heroes and villains — that a true historical sensibility seeks to question.
The academic discipline of history has, in recent decades, largely failed in its public duty. It has retreated from the consequential subjects of statecraft and strategy, seeing them as unworthy of scholarly pursuit. The rosters of tenured historians at major universities show a steep decline in scholars engaged with questions of war, peace and diplomacy. When they do address such topics, they often do so in a jargon-laden style that is inaccessible and unhelpful to decision-makers or the wider public.
This decline is a tragedy, especially at a time when leaders confronting complex global challenges are desperate for guidance. The field of history has become estranged from the very world of power and decision-making it is uniquely equipped to analyze. Historians and policymakers, who should be natural interlocutors, rarely engage one another. This has left a vacuum that is eagerly filled by other disciplines more confident in their ability to provide actionable advice — which is often dangerously simplistic. (...)
The Practice Of Thinking Historically
If a historical sensibility is the temperament, then thinking historically is the practice. It is the active deployment of that sensibility as a set of tools to assess the world and make more informed choices. It is a distinct epistemology, one that offers a powerful method for evaluating causality and agency, weighing competing narratives and navigating the dilemmas of decision-making without succumbing to what can be called “paralysis by analysis.” It offers not a crystal ball, but a more sophisticated lens — a historian’s microscope — through which to see the present.
Thinking historically begins by questioning vertical and horizontal time. The vertical axis asks: How did we get here? It is the rigorous construction of a chronology, not as a mere list of dates, but as a map of cause and effect. Where this timeline begins — with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the end of World War II in 1945 or the rise of China in 1979 — fundamentally changes the story and its meaning. It reveals our own unspoken assumptions about what truly drives events.
The horizontal axis asks: What else is happening? It recognizes that history is not a single storyline but a thick tapestry of interwoven threads. The decision to escalate the war in Vietnam, for example, cannot be fully understood without examining the parallel, and seemingly contradictory, efforts by the same administration to cooperate with the Soviet Union on nuclear nonproliferation. Thinking historically is the act of integrating these divergent streams.
Crucially, this practice leads us to confront our own biases, particularly outcome bias. Because we know how the story ended — how the Cold War concluded or how the 2008 financial crisis resolved — we are tempted to construct a neat narrative of inevitability. Thinking historically resists this temptation. It demands that we try to see the world as the actors of the past saw it: through a foggy windshield, not a rearview mirror, facing a future of radical uncertainty. It restores a sense of contingency to the past, reminding us that choices mattered and that the world could have turned out differently.
Ultimately, thinking historically is about asking better, more probing questions. It is a disciplined curiosity that fosters an appreciation for the complex interplay of individual agency, structural forces and pure chance. Instead of offering easy answers, it provides the intellectual equipment to engage with hard questions, a skill indispensable for navigating a future that will surely be as unpredictable as the past.
If a historical sensibility is the temperament, then thinking historically is the practice. It is the active deployment of that sensibility as a set of tools to assess the world and make more informed choices. It is a distinct epistemology, one that offers a powerful method for evaluating causality and agency, weighing competing narratives and navigating the dilemmas of decision-making without succumbing to what can be called “paralysis by analysis.” It offers not a crystal ball, but a more sophisticated lens — a historian’s microscope — through which to see the present.
Thinking historically begins by questioning vertical and horizontal time. The vertical axis asks: How did we get here? It is the rigorous construction of a chronology, not as a mere list of dates, but as a map of cause and effect. Where this timeline begins — with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the end of World War II in 1945 or the rise of China in 1979 — fundamentally changes the story and its meaning. It reveals our own unspoken assumptions about what truly drives events.
The horizontal axis asks: What else is happening? It recognizes that history is not a single storyline but a thick tapestry of interwoven threads. The decision to escalate the war in Vietnam, for example, cannot be fully understood without examining the parallel, and seemingly contradictory, efforts by the same administration to cooperate with the Soviet Union on nuclear nonproliferation. Thinking historically is the act of integrating these divergent streams.
Crucially, this practice leads us to confront our own biases, particularly outcome bias. Because we know how the story ended — how the Cold War concluded or how the 2008 financial crisis resolved — we are tempted to construct a neat narrative of inevitability. Thinking historically resists this temptation. It demands that we try to see the world as the actors of the past saw it: through a foggy windshield, not a rearview mirror, facing a future of radical uncertainty. It restores a sense of contingency to the past, reminding us that choices mattered and that the world could have turned out differently.
Ultimately, thinking historically is about asking better, more probing questions. It is a disciplined curiosity that fosters an appreciation for the complex interplay of individual agency, structural forces and pure chance. Instead of offering easy answers, it provides the intellectual equipment to engage with hard questions, a skill indispensable for navigating a future that will surely be as unpredictable as the past.
by Francis Gavin, Noema | Read more:
Image: Mr.Nelson design for Noema Magazine[ed. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing a Renaissance in critical thinking anytime soon. See also: Believing misinformation is a “win” for some people, even when proven false (Ars Technica - below); and, Rescuing Democracy From The Quiet Rule Of AI (Noema).]
"Why do some people endorse claims that can easily be disproved? It’s one thing to believe false information, but another to actively stick with something that’s obviously wrong.
Our new research, published in the Journal of Social Psychology, suggests that some people consider it a “win” to lean in to known falsehoods. (...)
Rather than consider issues in light of actual facts, we suggest people with this mindset prioritize being independent from outside influence. It means you can justify espousing pretty much anything—the easier a statement is to disprove, the more of a power move it is to say it, as it symbolizes how far you’re willing to go... for some people, literal truth is not the point."
