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The following is an excerpt from a roundtable discussion held during the 1994 MLA convention in which a group of academics discussed "The Status of Evidence":
Stephen Orgel: Do we prove things Heather? We certainly demonstrate them, but do we prove them? We could give certain bibliiographical proofs, I imagine, but otherwise do we prove?
Heather Dubrow: There's still a political imperative to prove - for example, proving the oppression of women in early modern England and hence proving current oppression.
Nancy Vickers: If we limit ourselves to what we can prove, the field of our inquiry becomes so restrictive that it's of little interest.
David Vander Meulen: But isn't it nonetheless our goal [I initially mistyped this as gaol - Freudian slip?] to try to prove? We don't limit ourselves to investigating only topics about which we can come to a conclusion, but don't we still have proof as a goal?
Nancy Vickers: We don't limit ourselves to publishing only what we feel we have proved. There is a place for argument in the marketplace of ideas that is not necessarily proof but that will stimulate a next stage of argument.
Martha Banta: I value a high level of speculation, which may be exemplified by a performance that's simply brilliant and playful and stimulating but that doesn't necessarily go anywhere. This quality is rare now. I'm not talking about mere cleverness. I have my moments when I'm delighted to receive the pleasures of that kind of speculation, as in Emerson's writings. People who take Emerson seriously debate whether he put himself forward as a philosopher, a quester after truth. As a transcendentalist he upheld a Neoplatonic absolute. But then you have to deal with the man, his incredible level of speculation that's never intended to prove anythig. It's just to reignite, make one's mind be reborn. He has profound and serious purpose, but it has nothing to do with what's provable. There are large areas where arguably nothing can be proved - the area of transcendence, of mystery. The ethnologist James Clifford said you have to deal with the mysterious, with traces of magic, and you often have to speculate, and yet his work is serious and scholarly.