I don't feel like getting into politics, but I think some of my feelings might be clear from what I am about to cover. I find myself in an odd place these days, but I used to feel I knew where I fit. I still do with writing.
I am a firm believer in science. Some people don't understand a few things about it. Some see science as a monolithic stone structure - unchanging and unmoving. That couldn't be further from the truth. Sure, there are aspects of science that have a long history and have been tested and proven over and over again. But there is another area of science. This is cutting edge and theoretical science. This is an ever changing battle ground of ideas, tests, and results. I've heard some people say that if someone changes their mind or says something different that they can't be trusted. And I'm like.... that is what science does. You form a theory and test it. And the initial results may tell you one thing, but further examination or further testing reveals that the first results should be interpreted in a different way. So it is a constantly changing landscape. In some areas they have competing theories that battle back and forth for years. Sometimes with neither one ever being proven right. Take our current virus. It broke onto the scene as new and different. A mutation from what had come before. So what we knew before didn't really apply, but that was what we had to start with. There were many questions and many theories. So as the questions came up, test were run and our knowledge grew and some things change greatly and some have bounced back and forth as we narrow in on the real facts. It isn't that anyone is lying, it is that they are learning and growing the body of knowledge in real time. It seems to confuse quite a few people. No need. Just go with the latest and don't sweat it. You are watching science at work.
History is a different thing all together. History is the gathering of knowledge of the past. Facts, observations, stories, etc. You have to put everything together to get the full picture. There is what those who lived through that time have to say. Often this is a mix of in the moment writing and looking back writing. Then you have hard facts. Photos, artifacts, less opinion based reporting. Archeology plays a part. It can uncover missing or incorrect elements. In the end, you have to put it all together and some things don't look the same when the full picture comes into focus. In 1912 a great ship sank in the North Atlantic. Only a third of the people on board survived. Man eye witness reports said the ship broke in two, but during the official investigation, no one brought in those witnesses and the official report was that the ship sank intact. Fast forward to 73 years later and the ship was found on the bottom in 2 large pieces and many smaller pieces. It broke in two. But it wasn't until the sea bed was fully surveyed in 2011 that all the pieces were found and the full story of that night could be finally put together. So many movies were made based on what was believed true at the time and at this point, they are all incorrect due to the incomplete information available at the time.
Genealogy is a guessing game. First off, we like to believe that our ancestors were faithful to their marriages and in the age of photographs and now of DNA we can know for sure. But as you delve into the mists of time, that becomes less certain. The realities of family relationships are hidden. Are those really the correct parents. Was the child adopted, were they legitimate, was it some other blood relation or were they strangers. We can't say. Genealogy is partly a research into your DNA and partly a research of family relationships. And it can be fun when you find a mistake. I found I'm related to Benedict Arnold because one family was disconnected from the mother (probably due to her relation to him) even thought he mother was alive when the youngest was born. Setting right such an old error is rewarding. But you still never know what the truth was. One of my grandmother's cousins was really her cousin by blood, but his mother died shortly after he was born and he was given to his childless aunt to raise. Fast forward to when he was in his eighties and he finally found out. Some of those secrets can never be uncovered because the people who knew took them to their grave.
What is true for me in each of these is that it is the hunt for information that draws me. The mystery of what can be found. I follow science more than research it personally, but I have conducted historical and genealogical research. It is truly rewarding. Almost as much as writing. If I wrote in a different genre, like some writer friends of mine, those discoveries could be fodder for stories. Instead I prefer to dream up my own worlds and explore them. Still, those discoveries often creep in anyway.
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