User:LBird BASc/sandbox/ATK/Seminar7/Evidence

Issue 3 - Evidence

Historical Evidence

Evidence is key to the study of history, as it helps historians draw conclusions about past events. Arguably, sources are the 'data' of historians, but they only become evidence when they are interpreted/analysed to make sense of the events they are describing. In this way, history can be considered a science, with its own form of hypotheses and data to prove them.

There are several different types of sources:

• Primary sources - which consist of information written/created at the time the studied event took place by the actual people involved (e.g. diary entry from a soldier)
• Secondary sources - these are typically a commentary/analysis by a historian of the event as understood by other primary sources. As they are often created a while after the event has occurred, they are not regarded as useful as primary sources. Often consist of book or magazine articles.
• Oral history - these are stories which are passed down from generation to generation, but are never written down. They are common when studying old tribes or ethnic groups who do not have much written documentation of their history. They are generally less accurate than written sources, as when stories are transferred through so many generations, they are likely to be altered or exaggerated.

In fact, with all historical evidence it is important to consider the context in which that evidence was created. It is likely that the creator had some bias which perhaps reduces the accuracy of the source. For example, a patriotic German, even if they are not a Nazi supporter, may be likely to write a book (secondary source) which does not fully divulge the atrocities committed under Hitler's rule and is likely to portray Germany in a more positive light than it merits. Evidence must not be taken as an objective truth.

Positivism versus Interpretivism

Positivism and interpretivism are two very different approaches sociological study and research. On the one hand, the former is often associated to a traditional 'scientific method' and the latter postulate that our knowledge of the world is 'socially constructed'.

Positivism

Firstly, positivists believe that hypotheses, conjectures and theories can be generated and tested, often using empirical evidence and/or direct observation. Overall, positivists are more likely to use quantitative research methods by analysing a study using statistical methods (overall a clear alignment to the natural sciences). They deem their approach to be generalised, representative of the population, reliable, trustworthy, and objective evidence that is free from any type of human bias or unavoidable experimental influence. The most frequent research methods include official statistics, social surveys, questionnaires, and structured interviews. This evidence is often very useful at the time of making technical comparisons or summarising large data sets.

Interpretivism

Secondly, interpretivists can acknowledge the fact that evidence is often not wholly unequivocal or absolute and there is different meanings and interpretations behind data. Evidence and data is often transmitted trough people in the form of ideas, experiences and discourses. They prefer to interpret the world instead of taking for granted that there are only simple, straightforward and monochromatic facts. The idea that 'humans shape society' is fundamental to this approach and qualitative methods are most commonly used. These methods include case studies, participant observation, ethnography, and personal documents. Similar to positivists, they can appreciate the importance of 'validity' in studies and investigations. The methods described above are ideal in order to obtain in-depth insight into the lives of the respondents. This helps them gain a greater empathetic understanding of why the behave in the way that they do (context must be taken under consideration when analysing the actions taken by different groups of people). Often described as a more humanistic and conscientious approach to research.

Main characteristics of evidence

Authenticity

Authenticity refers to whether evidence is genuine and of unquestionable origins.

Credibility

Credibility refers to whether evidence is error free and/or affected by preferences or biases that may skew the interpretation and collection of the evidence.

Evidence in Law, the Law of evidence

Evidence, from the latin evidentia which means proof, is a very important element in law. It is the “Information (in the form of personal or documented testimony or the production of material objects), tending or used to establish facts in a legal investigation”. The law of evidence or rules of evidence consideres the facts and determines what evidence can be considered in a trial. Evidence is very important in law, as it is the only way to judging a case. “Idem est non esse aut non probari” in latin, means that something that is not proof is the same as something that is not, showing the importance of proof and evidence in law.

History of evidence :

The notion of evidence has evolved during century.

• Non rational source of evidence : During the Middle Age, evidence was based on supernatural powers. God was the highest judge. In fact, many systems of torture, involving fire or water were introduced to test the accused. If he succeeded, it means that he was innocent because God saved him.

• Influence of Roman-Canonical law : During the 13th century, roman law introduced elements of common procedure. Evidence was evaluated on a hierarchical basis. Judge would be convinced by the number of witnesses in a case. It introduced the notion of confession, witnesses.

• Modern Principles. Many modern principles appeared as the inquisitorital, which means that the judge searches for the facts, listens to witnesses and experts and examines documents and orders the taking of evidence. This applied for the criminal case. The accusatorial or adveracy principles appeared in civil and criminal cases. It means that parties and attorneys are primarly responsible for finding and presenting evidence. This is linked to the burdon of proof, meaning that it is the party that cites specific facts who has to prove these facts by evidence.

Sources of evidence :

There are five general sources of evidence :

1. Real evidence (tangible things, such as a weapon)

2. Demonstrative (a model of what likely happened at a given time and place)

3. Expert evidence

4. Documentary (a letter, blog post, or other document)

5. Testimonial (witness testimony)

Different types of evidence :

• Circumstantial Evidence: Evidence that tends to prove a factual matter by proving other events or circumstances from which the occurrence of the matter can be reasonably inferred.

• Corroborating Evidence: Evidence that is independent of and different from but that supplements and strengthens evidence already presented as proof of a factual matter.

• Hearsay: A statement made out of court and not under oath which is offered as proof that what is stated is true (usually deemed inadmissible)?

• Exclusionary Rule: A rule of evidence that excludes or suppresses evidence obtained in violation of a defendant's constitutional rights.

Relevance and Irrelevance of evidence :

• If the allegation of one party are not discuted by the other, the allegations are admissible so no proof is required. The proof is thus irrelevant. • A proof has to be loyal and legal to be accepted. If the proof has been taken by illegal way, it would not be accepted.

Evidence in Social Sciences

Evidence is key in the social sciences to create powerful arguments, especially those that use several types of evidence. The four types of evidence used are:

1. Anecdotal Evidence – this type of evidence is often used in journalism or in short reviews, where people wish to challenge someone else’s claim. It provides weak evidence to support an argument, especially if one uses a general anecdote to argue in favour of a narrow topic. It does, however, provide a strong counterexample for disproving an argument.
2. Testimonial Evidence – the testimonies of credible experts or researchers can strongly strengthen an argument. It is, however, important to consider the implicit biases or opinions of each testimony. One testimony alone is thus insufficient evidence to support a claim. In the social sciences it provides the empirical evidence from participant observation and ethnographic research.
3. Statistical Evidence – provides a generalised knowledge of a certain phenomenon. In social sciences, statistical evidence is often used by summarising trends in order to reduce the complexity of a certain issue. The diversity and accuracy of sampling highly impacts the credibility of statistical evidence and as they may vary it is important to provide a varied range of sources.
4. Analogical Evidence – uses the act of comparison to a well established idea to explain a certain phenomenon. Although an analogy can help researchers create connections and illustrate new perspectives, it doesn’t provide hard evidence to prove nor establish an idea.  One must also be careful as analogies can be misinterpreted when badly executed.

Evidence in Art

Art can be used as evidence to learn about the past as well as about the 'spirit of an age'. When analysing art it is important to think about its authenticity, credibility and whether it is representative of the period it is depicting.

When analysing paintings of monarchs it is important to consider that the monarchs themselves commissioned the pieces and therefore that the depiction portrays them how they want to be perceived rather than being completely accurate and truthful. Although this may detract from the painting's credibility, it helps to inform us about the period, particularly on the sovereign's influence and the popular view of them. For example, in 'The Rainbow Portrait', Queen Elizabeth I is wearing a dress covered in eyes and ears. This tells us that she wanted England to know that she could hear and see everything, emphasising all the rebellions and plots she faced during her rule. Therefore, paintings can always be useful as evidence as long as the context behind the painting is taken into consideration.

Evidence can also be seen in modern art, particularly through what they reveal about social issues. Mexican printmaker Jose Guadalupe Posada's art provides insight on national politicians of his time. He depicts them as skeletons and skulls, highlighting the abuses of governments. This helps to highlight how art provides a lens through which to analyse both the past and the present through the evidence it depicts.

Evidence in Literary Criticism

Within the field of literary criticism, there are several different forms of evidence which can be utilised in justifying interpretations of a given text. However, the extent to which each of these forms of evidence is relevant to the field has been a matter of great controversy.

In their 1946 journal article ‘The Intentional Fallacy’, W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley identified three types of evidence that may be of use to the literary critic:

Internal Evidence: This is ‘public’ evidence found within the text itself, primarily through the analysis of language, grammar and literary technique.

External Evidence: This is ‘private’ evidence that is not present within the text itself but is instead discovered through such means as personal letters and interviews in which the author of a work informs us of their intent and the context in which the work was written.

Intermediate Evidence: This is evidence pertaining to an author’s biography and the meanings that specific words have for that author.

However, the boundaries between these categories may not always be clear, with Wimsatt and Beardsley identifying the distinction between ‘external’ and ‘intermediate’ evidence as particularly problematic in this regard.

Proponents of the New Criticism movement in literary theory, Wimsatt and Beardsley concluded that external evidence should be discarded in literary criticism, arguing that, once published, a literary text belongs to the public and so authorial intent becomes irrelevant to the interpretation of the work.

This viewpoint was famously adopted by French literary critic Roland Barthes and espoused in his 1967 essay ‘The Death of the Author’, wherein he argued that both authorial intent and biographical text should be discarded from literary analysis and the text judged solely on its own merits.

However, there are also many who contest this approach. In his article “Roland Barthes’s Resurrection of the Author and Redemption of Biography”, J.C. Carlier argues that, contrary to popular belief, “The Death of the Author” is in fact a satirical work intended to highlight the importance of authorship and biography in literary analysis. Furthermore, there remain many defenders of intentionalist criticism, which views an understanding of authorial intent through the analysis of external evidence to be crucial in achieving accurate interpretations of texts.

Evidence In Literature

Introduction

The notion of evidence within literature, and indeed within many of the arts, is rarely discussed and evidence is often dismissed as being subjective when discussing literature. In a field which is inherently creative, relying on emotion and imagination to craft a narrative as opposed to the quantitative thinking and logic where evidence is more frequently discussed, people often forget to consider how the issue of evidence can be applied to literature. This is a shame, as in fact evidence can be applied to the discipline in a range of contexts.

Perhaps most concretely, the concept of evidence-based literature can be applied to the discipline. This involves using literature as a device to collate data and form written pieces which can then be presented as evidence. In this regard, much of scientific evidence is built from evidence-based literature. The use of literature as a device to forward an argument is often overlooked, however within academia it is where literature is most used.

Evidence can also be applied to the field of literature in a more abstract manner. The use of evidence is also a literary device which is used to provide information to a reader. The literary device of evidence has also been adapted in many ways so it can be applied to a range of genres. Some of these examples will be explored below.

Evidence-Based Literature

As mentioned above, evidence-based literature demonstrates how much of the evidence put forward by researchers across all disciplines takes the form of literature. Literature is a powerful persuasive device and something that is elegantly written, well structured and lexically sound will be far more persuasive when presenting evidence as opposed to a random collection of data and statistics.

Medicine is a discipline which heavily relies on evidence-based literature. Within medicine there are three types of publication known as primary publications, secondary publications and tertiary publications. Primary publications take the form of articles and observations that were done close to the origin of the event. Secondary publications are usually a step or two removed from the original event and then tertiary publications take the form of encyclopedias, dictionaries or textbooks which summarise events.

Reference List:  

http://www.literarydevices.com/evidence/

https://guides.lib.umich.edu/c.php?g=282799&p=1888545

https://research.library.gsu.edu/c.php?g=115558&p=868127

Evidence in Economics

• Many say that Economics is not a hard science, as it formulates predictions and cannot be experimented. Economists are often excluded from the scientific society as they do not have the certainty that what they are modelling will fall through.
• However, with the recent increase in data gathering, Economists have accumulated enough economic evidence to make models and predictions that come true.
• Evidence is of the utmost importance in certain subfields of Economics, such as Health Economics, for effective policy decision making.
• Today, central banks have shifted from using more traditional economics to evidence-based economics.
• Evidence is at the source of any type of decision-making and policy-making in Economics.

Evidence in Religion and Theology

Anecdotal Evidence

Belief in events arising from extraordinary powers based on experience of individual(s), such as the Catholic ritual of canonisation and beatification. These pieces of evidence are often adjudicated by religious authorities, and given meaning based on the authorities' interpretation of the claim. While interpretivists may find this evidence valuable in the meaning it has to people and society, as the waivers for time required to pass before one could be canonised by the church for Mother Teresa reflects the agendas of the stakeholders; positivists would take issue with the very subjective nature of this evidence, as it is interpreted by people with seemingly arbitrary judgement.

Mother Teresa was canonised on an expedited track amidst criticism

Signs

Belief in the will of one’s subconscious or a higher being encoded in a proxy, such as Tarot card reading, which claims to be a window into one’s inner soul ; or Fung Shui, which takes the likeliness of various symbols into its calculations of its fortune telling process.

Myths, Stories, and Legends

Evidence in religion often takes the form of one or more founding legends that illustrates and justifies the teachings of the particular religion. While they often claim authenticity as the truth passed down by religious figures, texts like the bible were written centuries after the alleged events that they are recording happened, and begs a reader to question the reliability of the writer, given how information could be lost or changed over time. This is especially true from a positivist perspective, since the evidence cannot be verified, tested, and cross-checked. While interpretivists may embrace the meanings that the religious has conferred upon these writings, they would still criticise the ambiguity of the writings as they do not really address human interest as their meanings are unclear.

Moreover, the writers may not be credible, since the texts like the bible are written by the followers of religious figures, who would likely be biased toward their idol. Moreover, the meanings of the writings are often unclear and open to interpretation. For example, fundamentalist christians would take the bible's narrative on Genesis very literally that the world was created by god in seven days, while conservative christians would believe that god may operate in a different reality, hence the the world could be created by god but not necessary in seven days on the human time scale, while liberal christians could interpret the story as a figurative piece of information that teaches christians about how god has created the world.

Evidence in sociology

Evidence in sociology is a complex issue because sociology is not a 'hard science ' meaning sociology does not solely rely on testable predictions, mathematical methods and the process of hypothesis followed by experiments and quantifiable data analysis. Sociology is defined as the study of the development, structure and functioning of human society. Human society is not constant, it is based on human behaviour which is not predictable and quantifiable therefore evidence can become problematic. In sociology, statistics are used to explore theories. For example, when looking at the role of gender in society, the sociological approach aims to answer the questions:

- Do social actors have a different role in society based on gender?

-What practices, assumptions and expectations besides biological differences, are associated with and which ones with females?

Studies are conducted on a population sample to draw conclusions about gender inequalities. For example, a study conducted by the Fawcett Society, a feminist charity, revealed that only 7% of Britons considered themselves 'feminists '. However, this study was done on a sample of population and therefore is not representative of the number of all Britons which identify as feminist. Furthermore, this statistic is given without the explanation of what feminism means to each participant in the survey. Therefore, this data does not prove anything and that is why evidence is an issue in sociology.

Scientfic Evidence, a contrast to human moralities

Science is one of the most important branches in which humans specialize themselves. It is the origin what we accept as truths. What gives science its legitimacy is evidence: experiments carried out to prove a formula, a theory, a hypothesis. These are vital to science, but can be contested under moral arguments. Religion is an argument: science is often seen as the opposite of religion. In fact, one leads to truth through evidence and the other has the truth without evidence. This is somewhat an issue as religion has been mainly a pillar for society. As of today, the main debates are related to climate change, immigration, gender issues and increasingly animal treatment. One of the main ways to get evidence in some sciences was and still is animal experimentation, so animal cruelty. Some scientists in the past became aware that animal could feel pain and have emotions, like Voltaire who opposed Descartes on his theory of the machine like animal. He explains in his Dictionnaire philosophique (1764) sarcastically how scientists, described as being barbaric immobilize a dog on a table to dissect him living to see the structures of his veins. He even proclaimed that treating animals like objects is a sassy contradiction to nature. Later on, some rules have been implemented to limit the sufferance of the animals as cruelty is against human morality. These were made official under the Animal Welfare Act in 1966 in the United States and 40 years later in the United Kingdom. Two of them are: minimise the suffering as much as possible in al experiments; if human benefits are gained which could not be obtained through another method. In fact, scientists are encouraged to follow the three Rs: Reduction, Refinment, Replacement. Reduction implies to reduce the number of animals used in experiments by improving data analysis and experimental techniques whilst sharing information with other researches. Refinement implies the best treatment possible for animals: less invasive techniques as well as better medical care and living conditions. Replacement implies replacing animals: with the help of a computer model, experimenting on cell cultures, studying human volunteers. Overall, these experiments are sometimes vital, especially concerning pharmaceutical products and researches. The nature of this evidence is often justified with the argument that the good that it brings to the humans outweighs the harm done to the animals tested on. However, this argument isn´t balanced: the out coming harm to the animals is certain whilst the harm done to humans without the animal testing is only theoretical. Furthermore, even though the laws make animal testing legal, this questions radically human moralities.

Evidence Of God

Arguing the thesis of Atheists

Many people ask themselves the question : Does God really exist ?

Atheists think that if there is no empirical evidence of the existence of God, then it must be concluded that it does not exist. However, by reasoning, thus, atheism commits an error of logic. This is called the "ignorance argument." The absence of evidence would be evidence to the contrary. But that's wrong. The lack of proof of the existence of a thing is not proof of its non-existence. If I have no evidence that a cat is walking in a Chinese village at the moment, I can not conclude that no cat is currently walking in a Chinese community. For atheism to claim to be a rational position, it would have to provide proof of the non-existence of God. But such a thing seems difficult to do because to be able to affirm that a thing does not exist, it would be necessary to be able to know the whole reality, including the imperceptible facts, and to note that it is not there. Atheism, therefore, does not provide a conclusive answer to the question of the existence of God.

In what does the universe indicate the existence of God?

The first clue is the fact that the universe had a beginning. Now everything that has a start has a cause. The universe must, therefore, have a compelling cause, capable of creating it. The second clue is the order in the universe, a mathematically describable order, and precisely adjusted to allow life. The fact is that life is very fragile and requires stringent conditions to develop. It would have been enough for the laws and fundamental constants of physics to be slightly different in order to make life impossible. In other words, among a multitude of possible universes, a tiny number of them are favorable to life. In so far as such a result is more difficult to attain by chance than by the fruit of intelligence, it appears much more probable that the universe is the result of an extraordinarily intelligent cause. Too many coincidences ? All of this thesis might not prove the existence of God but maybe the existence of a superior force ?