[Lazare]

Yes, but...

...the analysis of one historian is just that. But the analysis of many historians is more likely to be true, and the consensus of the entire field, held for decades, is even more likely. Certainly more likely to be true than a popular conception primarily driven by comic books, Hollywood films, and popularizations written by non-historians.

It's also worth looking at the historian's analysis, and questioning what sources they have, what they're claiming to know, and how plausible it is for them to make those claims. If your analysis, let's say, starts and ends with "Plutarch said it, and we should trust Plutarch", well, when Plutarch wrote about Sparta and its peak, he was writing about time as distant to him as Elizabethan England is to us, and with no more first hand knowledge.

[Spooky23]

Great point. Imagine the perspective for future historians to write about North Korea. 3,000 years from now.

Every nation would have been long gone, but sheer strangeness of that regime will make it immortal in a way, not unlike Sparta.

[lmm]

Academic history has its own fashions and political movements, even over decades; if we look at academic history from 50 years ago we see plenty of cases where the popular conception was closer to the truth than the academic consensus, much less any given review article from a single academic. Devereaux make some insightful points but he also has some very clear biases of his own; you only have to compare how he writes about a lack of written culture in Native American tribes to see that he's holding Sparta to a very different standard.

[dylan604]

>and the consensus of the entire field, held for decades, is even more likely.

Yes, but at one point, the widely held belief was that the earth was the center of the universe, the earth itself was flat, and the sun was a god being pulled through the heavens in a chariot of fire.

So, sometimes consensus isn't right either. Just a bunch of people agreeeing because it is the path of least resistance.

[Lazare]

I mean, you're quite right.

It's true that historians have been talking about the myth of spartan excellence for over a century, with one of the key works being Le Mirage Spartiate, published 1933.

It's true that there is extensive scholarship analysing what is (and is not) known about Sparta and the Spartiates, and it's not positive for the Spartans.

It's true than Sparta has very few defenders among professional historians, in large part because the historical record to support such a defence is so limited.

And it's certainly true that despite all that, the consensus could be wrong! As you note, other consensus views have been shown to be wrong and have been overturned. But what is also true is that doing so took evidence.

Such evidence was readily available for showing that, eg, the earth is not the center of the universe, the sun does not revolve around the earth, and the earth is not flat. Such evidence is not going to be readily available about Sparta. We're talking about things that occurred ~2500 years ago; and in truth we likely have the bulk of all the evidence we'll ever have about Sparta. All that's left is to interpret it, and such interpretations seem fairly clear cut.

I wouldn't hold my breath for a major re-assessment.

[derstander]

> Yes, but at one point, the widely held belief was that the earth was the center of the universe, the earth itself was flat

I think it’s important to distinguish between the widely held beliefs of a populace as a whole and the widely held beliefs of experts in a field. I’ll leave aside the point that fields have often gotten narrower as they have gotten deeper. But I will point out that Aristarchus of Samos posited a heliocentric model since some time between 300 and 200 BC and Eratosthenes of Cyrene calculated the circumference of the earth to within the order of 1% error at roughly similar times.

A tangent: is it important what the widely held beliefs of members of Aristarchus and Eratosthenes society believed? I’m not sure. Many members of their society didn’t have access to information or skills that would let them come to these more accurate conclusions. And if they did, there’s nothing particularly actionable for them; imagine a farmer: is knowing the earth isn’t the center of the solar system something that could help them more efficiently grow crops? In this sense, the truth doesn’t have any direct value for them whereas there are potential negative social implications for minority beliefs.

But bottom line: it’s not about consensus itself; it’s about consensus evolving as the most likely scenario given the data available. People in a field will generally have access to more information and the tools to integrate that information into hypotheses than the population as a whole. But certainly experts can still get things wrong. I would just tend to expect better from them than the populace as a whole.

[dylan604]

It seems that the fact that Capernicus, the expert of his field(s), and his facts were held in such low regard that he was imprisoned for going against the current group think of what was true.

It doesn't matter how expert one is when the "truth" directly contradicts the established "truth" of populace belief. If populace beliefs are greater than the "truth" (or those who speak them) being proposed, "truth" gets subjugated to the basement level prisons.

To an extent, we are seeing this play out today

[wwtrv]

Was Copernicus ever imprisoned? I think you might be thinking about Galileo.

[hef19898]

That doesn't make anti consensus opinion right by definition. In case I am not part of the experts in any given field, I have not ground to stand on to challenge that consensus. And looking back at history, the scientific consensus is changing all the time. Quite often with the obsolete one staying on as a pop cultural trope.

[dylan604]

>I have not ground to stand on to challenge that consensus.

Good thing Copernicus didn't follow this line of thinking. Anytime someone comes up against group think, there is always the resistance against it. It's only natural. Being willing to listen to the unpopular opinion to at least evaluate it before dismissing it out of hand is what separates science. It is the responsibility of the "dissident" to persuade and show evidence. People should not switch beliefs willy-nilly.

[afthonos]

Copernicus was an expert. Those who have spent years laboring to understand a subject do occasionally ignore the bright upstart who has mastered the field and then proves them wrong. But that doesn’t oblige them to credit ignorance as serious argument in the name of “being willing to listen to unpopular opinion”.

And this isn’t about credentialism either. You can tell the lion by his claw; a knowledgeable non-credentialed expert will not be dismissed as easily.

[p_l]

Except Copernicus was an expert in the field and thus his repudiation of established model had a basis to stand on including thorough work to support his claim.

[kelnos]

I think I'll consider consensus among historians as having more credibility than mythology developed for movies and comic books.

And even if the consensus opinion is wrong, that doesn't make the non-consensus opinion correct, it just makes it another unverified, poorly-sourced possibility.

[dylan604]

>more credibility than mythology developed for movies

Mythology was around way before movies and comics. It was the standard/accepted set of beliefs.

[sdenton4]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos