People testify in Austrian courts every day; the media reports on what is happening around the world within a matter of seconds. As a society consuming all this media, we cannot help but ask: What should I believe, what can I actually believe?
In the meantime, fake news has come to be a symbol of the media industry. Information which turns out to be false is announced too quickly – in some cases this communication is intentional, in others it isn’t. As Simone De Angelis, a historian at the Centre for the History of Science at the University of Graz of Graz notes, ‘In ancient times there were also people who attempted to portray their perception of the world and current events as fact – for legal, historical or political reasons’. With the invention of the printing press, however, testimonies took on a particular significance. Suddenly it was much easier for authors to disseminate their work and their opinions.
The text as a virtual witness
Especially in the early modern era, i.e. between the 16th and 18th centuries, the question arose as to how credible texts written by authors who were long gone could be. ‘Owing to the drawn-out reception history of the texts, throughout the course of the Late Middle Ages, humanist scholars began to question the credibility of the testimonies’, the researcher says. In ancient times, the rhetoric of the courts distinguished between technical proof and non-technical proof; to produce the former entailed a certain amount of effort on the speaker’s part. The latter referred to testimonies, certificates and documents. These models used for rhetoric in the courtroom were then applied to texts: to determine how they refer to other texts and how plausible they appear to be. De Angelis concludes, ‘A testimony is what others have said about others in the past’.
These texts make us ask: Who bears the burden of proof, and is this person trustworthy? The historian then poses this question: ‘Is this person honest because they are an expert or because they are honest’? Honesty and ability were already manifested in mediaeval logic. In the early modern era, experiments became an additional testing method. For example, the explanations and documentation pertaining to the human body by ancient scholars were compared to autopsy results so as to verify their veracity. The principle works in a similar way in terms of substantiating the credibility of reporting by 21st century media. Journalists look for experts to confirm statements in the texts they wish to produce. And readers look for the connections between the two so they can critically examine them, determining whether they can be said to be true.
What was the approach to testimonies in the early modern era? And what does it have to do with modern times? The Graz Conference, which takes place at the University of Graz on 22 and 23 May 2019, brings international experts together to examine the topic from three perspectives: legal history, scientific history and philosophy.