Reconstruction of the Past

METHODS OF INQUIRY

It brings insight to divide the principal methods of inquiry into two broad, distinct
categories: those that reconstruct the past and those that discover or create new
knowledge.
The first is the method of the historian, archeologist, epidemiologist, journalist,
and
criminal investigator; the second, that of the scientist in general (as well as the
creative
artist). Although usefully stated as a dichotomy for the sake of a conceptual
distinction,
these methods finally fuse in the minds of the better thinkers and practitioners,
for the
reconstruction of the past often makes use of the scientific method, while
science and art
build on and digress from the past. Further reflection suggests that any thorough
inquiry
employs techniques common to both. This certainly applies to the best practice
in criminal
investigation. Disciplines as diverse as geology, physical geography, physical
anthropology,
forensic medicine, statistics, computer technology, and criminalistics can make
a contribution.
Indeed, the discrete methods they employ may be seen as a continuum, with
the ideal
drawing on history, science, and art in varying proportions depending on the
subject under
probe. Therefore, just as the model investigation must utilize both principal
methods of
inquiry, so must the model investigator. This is not to say that a unique
investigative technique
may not be developed to deal with a specific problem, and be helpful with others
as
well. For testing the authenticity of a confession for example, the tools of
psycholinguistics
could be put to use. That they have not (thus far) indicates the wide range of
resources yet
to be tapped by criminal investigators.
More than 30 years ago, the sociologist W.B. Sanders1 and the historian Robin
Winks2
saw the relationships between their fields and the field of criminal investigation.
They see
the parallels between the ivory-towered inquirer and society’s more familiar
figure, the
detective: both study human behavior and both employ information-gathering
practices
such as interviews and observations. Sanders recognizes that the sociologist can
learn from
the detective, among other things, how to combine several methods of inquiry
(or research)
and sources of information (or data) into a single inquiry. Winks’s selection of
essays by
writers and historians reveals how scholars penetrate rumors, forgeries, false
accounts, and
misleading clues to unravel old mysteries. Not only do the essays “point up the
elements
of evidence within them to emphasize leads and clues, straight tips, false
rumors, and the
mischief wrought by time,” they demonstrate that the historian and detective
are on common
ground when confronting the techniques and pitfalls of dealing with evidence.3
The historian must collect, interpret, and then explain his evidence by
methods which are not greatly different from those techniques employed
by the detective, or at least the detective of fiction. . . . Perhaps the real
detective trusts more to luck, or to gadgetry, or to informers than does the
fictional hero. . . . Much of the historian’s work then, like that of the insurance
investigator, the fingerprint man, or the coroner, may to the outsider
seem to consist of deadening routine . . . yet the routine must be pursued
or the clue may be missed, the apparently false trail must be followed in
order to be certain it is false; the mute witnesses must be asked the reasons
for their silence, for the piece of evidence that is missing from where one
might reasonably expect to find it is, after all, a form of evidence itself. .
. . We are all detectives, of course, in that at one time or another we all
have had to engage in some genuine deductive routine. Each day we do so,
if only in small ways. By the same token, we are all historians, in that we
reconstruct past events from present evidence, and perhaps we build usable
generalizations upon those reconstructions.4
Attention will now be turned to the scientific method; then to the means for
reconstructing
the past.

The Scientific Method

Evolving from the efforts of many workers over the course of several thousand
years, the scientific method is a way of observing, thinking about, and solving
problems objectively and systematically. As the prestigious nineteenth-century
student of science Thomas Huxley
emphasized, its use is not limited to scientists. A lesson Huxley learned early was
“to make
things clear,” and his easy, plain-talking style in the opening paragraphs of this
piece serves
well as an introduction to the scientific method.
The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the
necessary mode of working of the human mind. It is simply the mode by
which all phenomena are reasoned about, rendered precise and exact. There
is no more difference, but there is just the same kind of difference, between
the mental operations of a man of science and those of an ordinary person,
as there is between the operations and methods of a baker or of a butcher
weighing out his goods in common scales, and the operations of a chemist
in performing a difficult and complex analysis by means of his balance and
finely graduated weights. It is not that the action of the scales in the one case,
and the balance in the other, differ in the principles of their construction
or manner of working; but the beam of one is set on an infinitely finer axis
than the other, and of course turns by the addition of a much smaller weight.
You will understand this better, perhaps, if I give you some familiar example.
You have all heard it repeated, I dare say, that men of science work by means
of induction and deduction, and that by the help of these operations, they,
in a sort of sense, wring from nature certain other things, which are called
natural laws, and causes, and that out of these, by some cunning skill of their