Friday, 15 January 2021
The Definition of Genealogy
A theoretical article proposing an atomic model of genealogical data: each fact answers who–what–where–when. From single data "atoms" (birth, marriage, death) the discipline builds up to biography, family, lineage and genealogy as a historical science. Published in Genos 1999.
Published in Genos 1999: 123–126.
The starting point for this article is dissatisfaction with the way genealogy guidebooks and other genealogical literature define the discipline. The definitions can generally be characterised as statements of what the particular author thinks genealogy should be. This article attempts to define genealogy from as simple a set of basic terms as possible — starting, one might say, from first principles. The approach might be called epistemological or atomistic, because the starting point is a single piece of information, an “atom”, from which larger wholes are built up.
Let us first review how genealogy has previously been defined. In his well-known genealogy guide, Alf Brenner considered that genealogy, like all research, aims to expand the sphere of knowledge. Its subjects are people. It seeks information about their descent, the blood ties that connect them into groups, their inner and outer characteristics and the life course those characteristics determine, and not least their relationships to society. Brenner divided genealogical tasks into two main categories: historical and biological.
Sirkka Karskela, in Sukututkijan tietokirja, defines it as: “genealogy is a historical science that seeks and clarifies the descent relationships of persons descended from a common ancestor, the forms in which families appear and function, and studies the lives and environments of family members.” The Otava encyclopaedia defines it as: “genealogy is the science that studies the mutual descent relationships of persons, primarily on the basis of historical material. It is an important auxiliary discipline of history, jurisprudence, sociology and also biological sciences (primarily genetics).”
Bengt Hildebrand took as his starting point the feeling of kinship, which transforms into curiosity about family, and personal knowledge leading to a desire for deeper understanding. For him genealogy is a historical science using the historical method. He distinguishes between family research (sukuhistoria, släkthistoria) and biography (henkilöhistoria), with genealogy encompassing both.
Danish scholars Albert Fabritius and Harald Hatt place genealogy closer to the social sciences than to history. They follow Johan Wretman’s distinction between a narrower and a broader definition: the narrower covers the basic genealogical facts (birth, marriage, death), social position and kinship relationships; the broader, following Ottokar Lorenz, encompasses “the full content and proper character of observing the human being as recognised in its personal descent and hereditary relationships in respect of physical, psychological and social characteristics.” Historical sciences enter genealogy through its sources, to which historical-critical method must be applied.
From Single Data Atoms to Biography
If we set aside all the definitions above and start, so to speak, from a clean slate — the basic premise for knowing anything about anything is a single piece of information. We might call this an “atom” of information, a basic nucleus of knowledge from which all other genealogical concepts can be derived.
What must be required of a single information atom for it to constitute knowledge? A single basic unit of information is an event — a happening that can no longer be divided into smaller parts. For an event to be fully identified, we should know the answer to the question series:
who — what — where — when
Information thus has several dimensions. The basic unit of information can be compared to a crystal that, when cut, illuminates far. The “cutting” consists of answering the question series who, what, where and when.
Take birth as an example. The event itself (the “what”) is being born. This information is useless unless we also know who was born. Since everyone has been born at some point, the information is meaningless without also knowing when and where. The more precisely the time and place are known, the better. By convention, time is recorded to the precision of a date and place to the precision of a municipality or parish.
From individual data atoms, a biography is built when all the information atoms relating to a particular person are assembled together. Everything begins with birth and baptism and ends with death and burial. The biography is named after the person in question.
Kinship Relationships: Connecting Biographies
From biographies built of data atoms, genealogy emerges when connections are created between biographies — when one biography is linked to another. A single data atom already contains connections: a birth record has a built-in connection between parents and child. Before there can be children there must be parents, so the first connection is marriage — between a man and a woman. From marriage often come children, creating a second type of kinship — descent — linking people across generations. This forms a family.
The Family Grows into a Lineage
One family is not yet a lineage (suku). A lineage consists of several mutually related families descending from the same founding person — an ancestor (kantaisä or kantaäiti). When children of that family marry and have children in turn, the lineage spreads across time and space.
When this result is compared to the earlier definitions of genealogy presented above, we find that we have arrived at the narrower definition — but reached it by deriving it from a single data atom. The derivation can be extended toward a broader definition by assuming the existence of society as the totality of all lineages, with individual events providing the link between a lineage’s members and the whole.
A separate question is the relationship between genealogical sources and data atoms. Sources transmit information about data atoms more or less well — that is, they answer the question series who–what–where–when more or less completely. When we also take into account that a birth is not always reported by the primary source (the birth register) but by one or more secondary sources (communion register, oral tradition, gravestone), genealogy joins the historical sciences in the way that Ottokar Lorenz described: it becomes a historical science through its sources, and historical-critical method must be applied to those sources.
Alf Brenner: Sukututkimuksen opas, Helsinki 1956, pp. 11–13; Sirkka Karskela: Sukututkijan tietokirja, Naantali 1983, p. 3; Otava iso tietosanakirja, Keuruu 1964, vol. 8, p. 272.
Bengt Hildebrand: Handbok i släkt- och personforskning I, London 1977, pp. 7–12.