Berlinski on History

In a recent discussion with the Discovery Institute, David Berlinski remarked about the danger of reading history backwards from our present concerns:

It is a mistake to read back into the recent past the political and emotional structure of discussions now current.

Reading things backwards is vulgar as intellectual history and false to the facts – vulgar because it assigns an aspect of permanence to our own obsessions; and false because it distorts the play of forces playing just a few decades ago.