Scribd
Upload
325 views13 pages

The Historian and His Facts

The document discusses the role of historians and the nature of historical facts. It makes three key points: 1) Historians interpret facts and historical evidence, they do not simply record neutral facts. The facts only speak when the historian decides what context and interpretation to give them. 2) Historical facts are open to interpretation and our understanding of the past depends on the historian's processing and evaluation of the available evidence. 3) The past can only be understood through the lens of the present. Historians must understand the thoughts and context behind historical events and facts in order to bring the past to life. Their goal is to understand the past as a way of understanding the present.

Uploaded by

Justine May S. Colico
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
325 views13 pages

The Historian and His Facts

The document discusses the role of historians and the nature of historical facts. It makes three key points: 1) Historians interpret facts and historical evidence, they do not simply record neutral facts. The facts only speak when the historian decides what context and interpretation to give them. 2) Historical facts are open to interpretation and our understanding of the past depends on the historian's processing and evaluation of the available evidence. 3) The past can only be understood through the lens of the present. Historians must understand the thoughts and context behind historical events and facts in order to bring the past to life. Their goal is to understand the past as a way of understanding the present.

Uploaded by

Justine May S. Colico
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 13

The Historian and His Facts

by Edward Hallett Carr


(What Is History? 1961)
What is history?
 It is a unique opportunity of recording,
in the way most useful to the greatest
number, the fullness of the knowledge
… By the judicious division of labour we
should be able to do it, and to bring
home to every man the last document,
and the ripest conclusions of
international research.
Historians …
 Expect their work to be superseded again and again
 Consider that knowledge of the past has come down
through one or more human minds, has been
“processed” by them and therefore cannot consist of
elemental and impersonal atoms which nothing can
alter…
 The exploration seems to be endless...
Historians…
 Ascertain the facts, then draw conclusions
from them
 History consists of a corpus of ascertained facts.
 The facts are available to the historian in
documents, inscriptions and so on, like fish on the
fishmonger’s slab. The historian collects them,
takes them home, and cooks and serves them in
whatever style appeals to him
What is a historical fact?
 Certain facts which are the same for all
historians and which form, so to speak,
the backbone of history.
Help of Auxiliary Sciences
 The historian is not required to have the
special skills which enable the expert to
determine the origin and period of a
fragment of pottery or marble, to
decipher an obscure inscription, or to
make the elaborate astronomical
calculations necessary to establish a
precise date.
Points to discuss:
 The facts speak only when the historian calls
on them.
 It is he who decides to which facts to give the
floor and in what order or context.
 The status as a historical fact will turn on a
question of interpretation.
 History has been called an enormous jig-saw
with a lot of missing parts.
Points to discuss:
 The history we read though based on
facts, is strictly speaking, not factual at
all, but a series of accepted judgments.
 Ignorance is the first requisite of the
historian, ignorance which simplifies
and clarifies, which selects and omits.
Points to discuss:
 All history is contemporary history. History
consists essentially in seeing the past through
the eyes of the present and in the light of its
problems, and that the main work of the
historian is not to record, but to evaluate ;
for, if he does not evaluate, how can he know
what is worth recording?
 The facts of history do not exist for any
historian till he creates them
Points to discuss:
 No document can tell us more than what the author
of the document thought had happened, what he
thought ought to happen or would happen, or
perhaps only what he wanted others to think he
thought, or even only what he himself thought he
thought.
 None of this means anything until the historian has
got to work on it and deciphered it. The facts,
whether found in documents or not, have still to be
processed by the historian before he can make use of
them: the use he makes of them is, if I may put it
that way, the processing process.
Points to discuss:
 The philosophy of history is concerned
neither with “the past by itself” nor with “the
historian’s thought about it by itself”, but with
“the two things in their mutual relations.
 The past which a historian studies is not a
dead past, but a past which in some sense is
still living in the present.
 But a past act is dead, meaningless to the
historian, unless he can understand the
thought that lay behind it
Points to discuss:
 The function of the historian is neither
to love the past nor to emancipate
himself from the past, but to master
and understand it as the key to the
understanding of the present
History
 Is a continuous process of interaction
between the historian and his facts, an
unending dialogue between the present
and the past.

You might also like