What is History
History is more than the past and the present, it is a field of study where many questions are asked and many answers can be found. As a field, it is the interpretations of facts by historians, but how are historians able to objectively interpret the information? As Angus MacFayden said in Braveheart, as the character of Robert the Bruce, "Historians from England will say I am a liar, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes (MacFayden)." History is naught but stories, changed and molded to fit the current society, which are passed down through generations. The study of history is not the answer, but the means of finding the answer for our times. The most important object to historians and their field of study are facts. Facts are the skeletal structure to history, and without them, there would be nothing to build history on. As Edward Carr said in What is History, "historical facts are the same for all historians and which form...the backbone of history (Carr 8)." A fact is independent from the historian, but is the historian interested more in single facts or the connection between facts, which then makes it evidence? A single incidence is a fact, but to become evidence it must go through the theory and i
History is the perceptions of historians. Every age has a way of visualizing and understanding. " Sir Geoffrey Elton argued that "the present must be kept out of the past if the search for the truth of that past is to move towards such success as in the circumstances as possible (Elton 65). It is because of this that historians are unable to stop the opinions of their society from showing in their works, because they can never separate themselves from society. Also, historians need be wary of secondary sources and must interpret original documents in order to obtain the greater truth because interpreting a secondary source would merely be interpreting someone else's interpretation. Also, most stories are written by successors with little or no regard to those who are weaker. As Carr said, "The relation of the historian to his causes has the same dual and reciprocal character as the relation of the historian to his facts (Carr 135). To avoid this, one must continually ask "Why?" in studying history. They are often revised to fit into the current thought collective's ideals and therefore, are the truth for them and may not be the real truth. The interpretations of facts are often subject to historians' beliefs and the beliefs of their societies. Historians must formulate an answer to all of their facts, but these answers are often clouded by the historians' society and upbringing. Fleck says that the historian's "mind is structured, and necessarily so, under the influence of this ever-present social environment, and he cannot think in any other way (Fleck). '" But there in lies a contradiction - there is no such thing as accurate interpretation when one is talking of history. The interpretations of facts by historians often lead to stories that are passed down throughout the generations. Richard Evans summarized it best by saying, "Facts thus precede interpretation conceptually, while interpretation precedes evidence (Evans).
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Geoffrey Elton,
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history carr,
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Acceptance Essays
