Doug, I would like to think that, when Tolkien has put forward conflicting theories in his writings, there remains considerable scope for debate. Indeed, the origins of Orcs has occupied considerable thread-space on this forum. It's really up there with Bombadillo and Balrog's Wings. Questions arise such as how can Orcs have been derived from men when they were around before men awoke; how can they be mere beasts and still have conversations like those we witness between Shagrat and Gorbag; if they were derived from Elves, are they immortal; if they have feä, is redemption available to them? All these discussions have taken place, with many different opinions expressed, and I am sure that there are many more potential discussions which have yet to occur.
Many who have posted here have quite rightly made the distinction between matters of fact and matters of interpretation (although the distinction is not always an easy one to make, as I consider further below). But the question of the nature and origin of Orcs is quite clearly an issue of fact. Within the Legendarium, Orcs existed and so they had to have come into existence somehow. Because we have no clear answer on this from the author, I would say that the reader is entitled to choose the theory which best suits his or her Middle-earth world-view (or perhaps even come up with a different theory), or to try to reconcile the conflicting theories, or even to reject the issue as unimportant. (It is, I suppose, a perfectly respectable argument to say that, because the only theory set down in a published and completed work is that given in the Silmarillion, namely that Orcs were derived from Elves captured by Morgoth, then that must be the "truth" of the matter. But the reader still has freedom to make his or her own choice and the scholar still has freedom to debate the point.)
Quite clearly, as a general proposition, we have to accept, if we are taking a book seriously, what is actually said in the text. We cannot very well choose to believe, for example, that Boromir never attempted to seize the Ring, or that the Hobbits met Aragorn at Rivendell rather than Bree. But even in this area, the issue is not clear-cut. For example, Tolkien himself tells us not to take everything that Treebeard says at face value, since he is "not one of the Wise, and there is quite a lot he does not know or understand" (Letter 153). And there are those who assert that some of the "facts" presented in the Hobbit were mere fanciful elaborations by Bilbo, the Stone Giants for example (although I do not hold with this theory myself). So it would seem that there is some (albeit limited) scope for rejecting some of what we are told in the text itself.
As for the secondary material, we all seem to agree that the reader has the freedom to accept or reject "facts" which are presented there. But is this because (at least with regard to what Tolkien says in his Letters) they are actually not matters of fact at all, but rather matters of interpretation?
Sharkey, you categorise Tolkien's comment that Gollum was pushed into the fires of Orodruin as a matter of interpretation, rather than fact. But is that really the case? If Tolkien had told us in LotR itself that this was what happened, we would surely have to accept it as fact. Does it take on a different characterisation, simply because he wrote about it in a letter rather than inserting it in the primary text? And does this apply to other matters which are quite clearly more factual in nature? Should we take it as an issue of fact, for example, that the Rohirrim spoke with a slower tempo and more sonorous articulation (Letter 193), or is this a matter of interpretation because it is not said in the primary text? (I am assuming that it is not, but I have not checked and stand to be corrected.) Is it an issue of fact or interpretation that no one (Bombadil excepted) could willingly have destroyed the Ring? Perhaps it does not matter since the reader is entitled to reject anything which is not said in the primary text in any event. But, if we are to take issues of fact stated in the secondary material as being of greater weight in establishing the "truth" of the Legendarium than issues of interpretation, the point assumes greater significance. Presumably it depends upon how the point is expressed. Obviously, if the author says that his interpretation of X is Y, then that is a matter of interpretation. And the texts presented in
Unfinished Tales and the HoME series are perhaps more likely to be factual than interpretational. But it will not always be clear. Which, I suppose, provides yet more scope for debate.
