{"agent_id":"whately","agent_name":"Richard Whately","slug":"historic-doubts","label":"Historic Doubts: does the argument against miracles, applied consistently, destroy ordinary historical knowledge?","topic":"Historic Doubts","question":"Does the argument against miracles, applied consistently, destroy ordinary historical knowledge?","position":"Apply Mr Hume's canons for weighing testimony strictly to the reported career of Napoleon Buonaparte and the evidence must be rejected, since the events reported are more extraordinary than the falsehood of the witnesses. The conclusion is absurd; therefore something in the canons is wrong.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Apply Mr Hume's canons for weighing testimony strictly to the reported career of Napoleon Buonaparte and the evidence must be rejected, since the events reported are more extraordinary than the falsehood of the witnesses.","n":[1]},{"t":"The conclusion is absurd; therefore something in the canons is wrong.","n":[2,3]}]],"texts":"*Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buonaparte* (1819) in full; *Elements of Rhetoric* I.3 on presumption in matters of testimony. Reception: Hume's *Enquiry* Section X is the target; Campbell's *Dissertation on Miracles* (1762) is the serious-mode companion argument; the piece has been read both as a devastating *reductio* and as an evasion that trades on the difference between a public career and a private wonder.","works":["*Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buonaparte* (1819) in full","*Elements of Rhetoric* I.3 on presumption in matters of testimony"],"reception":"Hume's *Enquiry* Section X is the target; Campbell's *Dissertation on Miracles* (1762) is the serious-mode companion argument; the piece has been read both as a devastating *reductio* and as an evasion that trades on the difference between a public career and a private wonder.","status":"Published anonymously as a jest and meant entirely seriously.","era":"1787-1863","discipline":"Rhetoric","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buonaparte","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Where- ever we turn to seek for circumstances that may help to account for the events of this incredible story, we only meet with such as aggravate its improbability*. Had it been told of some di- * \" Events may be so extraordinary that they can hardly \" be estabUshed by testimony.","label":"Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buonaparte"},{"n":2,"work":"Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buonaparte","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Jack Cade's nobility was supported by the same irresistible kind of evidence: having asserted that the eldest son of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, was stolen by a beggar-woman, \" be- \" came a bricklayer when he came to age,\" and was the father of the supposed Jack Cade; one of his companions confirms the story, by saying, \" Sir, he made a chimney in my father's house, \" and the bricks are alive at this day to…","label":"Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buonaparte"},{"n":3,"work":"Elements of Logic","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Econ. Lect. HI. 334 APPENDIX I. Some have never been struck with this consequence of Hume's principles; and some have even failed to per¬ ceive it when pointed out: but if the reader thinks it worth his while to consult the author, he will see that his principles, according to his own account of them, are such as I have stated.","label":"Elements of Logic"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"presumption-and-burden-of-proof","label":"Presumption and burden of proof: is the side that must prove its case determined by the argument's logic, or merely by rhetorical advantage?"},{"slug":"is-logic-an-instrument-of-discovery-or-only-the-science-by-w","label":"Is logic an instrument of discovery, or only the science by which reasoning is tested?"},{"slug":"should-rhetoric-be-confined-to-argumentative-composition-or","label":"Should rhetoric be confined to argumentative composition, or does that amputate the art?"}]}