What is History

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 int

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History is the active study of finding the answers, the causes, of events. ’” But there in lies a contradiction – there is no such thing as accurate interpretation when one is talking of history. In this way, the translations of the facts by the historian are often employed to reflect the historian’s time and place. Often, people will just search for the explanation or the logic behind the situation, instead of reasoning with the multiple causes. ” 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 constantly hounded by the theories of society and it is the job of your framework to find out what fact is and what fiction is. ” It is the duty of the individual historians to provide an accurate interpretation, just as Houseman says, “‘Accuracy is a duty, not a virtue (Carr). 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. Historians will be a part of history just as much as their society, for it is through the individual that society carries on and through society the individual learns and lives. Thus, it is the job of the historian to search through stories and determine which ones are evidence, which ones might be the fabrication of a common person’s life, and which ones are original. Richard Evans summarized it best by saying, “Facts thus precede interpretation conceptually, while interpretation precedes evidence (Evans). Historians must formulate an answer to all of their facts, but these answers are often clouded by the historians’ society and upbringing. In conclusion, I believe history to be the continuous interaction of the historian, his facts, and his society’s thought collective in his or her search of finding the answer to the past and the present. To avoid this, one must continually ask “Why?” in studying history. erpretation of a historian because historians are interested in the connection of facts.

Common topics in this essay:
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Approximate Word count = 1432
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

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