Vessel of Truth: Analysis of 'What Is History?'

Collingwood (1993) argues, if we take the word ‘science’ to mean ‘any organized body of knowledge’, then it is clear that history is a science but a special kind: whose business is to study events inaccessible to our observation, and to study these events inferentially, arguing to them from something else which is accessible to our observation, and which the historian calls factual ‘evidence’ for the events in which he is interested.

One of the key features of histories, Jenkins (1991) argues, is the use of terms like ‘objectivity’ and ‘balance’. Many historians are therefore unaware of the idea that their works say more about their own theories than they do about phenomena in the past. That we can even see that histories are ‘theory all the way down’ or historiography due to the perceptive efforts of those in neighboring disciplines such as literature (Jenkins 1991). So far, the historian’s claim to be able to fashion objective history seemed uncomplicated. And what marked the historian out from the antiquarian was his interpretative skill. Only through interpretation might historical truth be found. But interpretation, as historians readily accepted, generated views that varied especially according to when a historian was writing. In this way, historians identified might with right and conflated power and objectivity. According to their view, the existing social and political order did not conflict to achieve historical objectivity. On the contrary, they were a necessary condition for a real understanding of the past. However, Carr (1961) on the other hand, noted that historians had to be aware of their own biases and preconceptions so that they could rise above them. With this thought, it would be all the greater because history was, in essence, a scientific rather than a literary endeavor. Its standards of proof and its procedures were not very different from those of the sciences (Carr 1961). The objective historian was the historian who could establish such trends and then assess people, institutions, and events in the past according to the contribution they made to them. Carr (1961) above all argued, in What is History? that historians were not empty vessels through which the truth about the past was conveyed from the documents to the reader, but individuals who brought their own particular views and assumptions to their work, which had to be read with this fact in mind. Perhaps, the most influential of all these propounded in Carr’s book, 'What is History?’– made it clear that historians were not just parroting a wider social discourse when they wrote, but that they had their own individual voices as well (Mehta 1963). He also encourages them, in the long run, to make a virtue of necessity. A genuine historian will never manipulate or distort the materials which the past has left behind and which form the basis for the historian’s work; (Evans 2001) but within the limits of what the sources allow there is plenty of room for differing emphases and interpretations.

History, then, is one form of a system of human knowledge that seeks the Truth, and the 'critical' branch of the philosophy of history is concerned, among other things, with the possibility of achieving objectivity in historical description and the roles and responsibilities of historical agents (Peterson 1997). This branches away from the 'common-sense' theory of truth, which posits that a statement is true if it corresponds to the facts (correspondence theory of truth). Idealists hold that the external world is created by the mind, and thus Truth can only refer to the whole experience because knowledge is part of a single coherent system. Thus, what people would common-sensibly refer to as 'true' and 'false' should properly be referred to as 'partially true' and 'partially false' (coherence theory of truth) (Lyotard 1984).

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Sources drive all histories, these sources provide the raw material with which to reconstruct past events. The development of an awareness of the purpose of different types of source material and the value which can be placed on them is a skill that needs to be acquired, however, all sources are not created equal. We may wish to distinguish between witting and unwitting testimony in the sources we use. Many primary sources contain evidence that the writer intended others to see, the so-called witting testimony; others contain material that was merely unintentional and therefore can be classified as unwitting testimony. Primary sources originate in the time period that historians are studying. They may include personal memoirs, government documents, oral histories and traditions, archaeological evidence, and many others. Historians used to think that some source materials were inherently more reliable than others. Leopold von Ranke considered government documents to be the gold standard of all primary sources. But even government documents are subjective in some way. Like all sources, they reveal some things but remain silent on others that's why a skeptical approach must be considered when dealing with them (Storey 2009). Contrarily, secondary sources reflect on earlier times. Typically, they are books and articles by writers who are interpreting the events and primary sources that an individual is studying. Evaluating secondary work on its own merits, particularly on how well it uses primary sources as evidence is a must for a historian. In some cases, this distinction between primary sources and secondary works may be confusing. Some secondary sources are simply detailed narrative accounts of particular subjects, but others attempt to break fresh interpretive ground and are thus important vehicles for historical revisionism. This does not mean, however, that works of synthesis cannot offer revisionist interpretations, for many of the most important revisionist works are those that offer fresh ways of interpreting the recent secondary literature. The author is expected to take fully into account existing scholarship on the topic, that is, to place his or her analysis within a historiographic frame of reference. We must therefore take into account the built-in bias of the selecting or editing process.(Storey 2009 & Brundage 1938). The volume of resources which is available is not, of course, a guide to its reliability or usefulness. The source material has to be selected to ensure that it is representative of the much larger amount of evidence that is available. It is perhaps wise to resist the tendency to rely more heavily on secondary sources when the primary sources are scarce. The secondary sources may place undue emphasis on the wrong aspects of past events, or regard all events in a similar manner without attempting to place them in a sensible hierarchy of importance. They may also fail to identify the proper causes of events or confuse long-term causes with more immediate precipitating factors. Alternatively, secondary sources may erroneously place undue emphasis on the consequences of the actions of individuals in circumstances where wider social, economic, or political forces were more important in determining historical change. (McDowell 2002).

These primary and secondary sources are usually used by students like me when preparing for research projects. A good quality research project involves the use and analysis of sources, and aligning them to the thesis or argument. There are plenty of resources to find them both and there are benefits to including both in a research assignment. I usually use primary sources to help me learn about a specific event, topic, or historical time period. It contributes to developing my own analysis and argument since the primary source doesn’t include an evaluation from others. In contrast, I usually include secondary sources in my research projects as these sources provide evidence to strengthen my own argument and help me weigh different perspectives (EasyBib 2020). As a history student, I usually try to work systematically and apply scientific thinking, especially when dealing with these sources because historians do not just make random choices. Historians work as systematically and scientifically as possible, and they even share rules for selecting evidence with writers across the disciplines (Storey 2009). We often hear of triangulation — that a piece of information should be corroborated in two other ways — as a means to check and cross-check a point we wish to make. Corroboration can come from other sources within the genre — thus one type of source can be compared and contrasted with its own type, and with the genre's archetype (Cullen 2000). Furthermore, to validate the authenticity of the sources I double-check who published the source (authority), the purpose of the source (objectivity), when it was created/updated (currency), and it's content (accuracy). I also see to it that it has no any potential bias and, if a webpage, provides references or reliable links to other sources, if I use the internet to browse for my resources (Princeton University 2020). Like the scientist with his microscope inspecting the material world firsthand, students, researchers, or historians must go into the primary sources to examine the traces of the period that he was focusing on, applying the textual criticism method. Only then would truth emerge from the mists of historical time; only then could ‘facts’ be discovered. Diligent researchers gather as numerous accounts as they can, critically scrutinizing them, sorting out obvious biases and errors, and fashioning as accurate a reconstruction as possible (Wiley 2018).

Therefore, studying history is not a luxury, but a prime duty that everyone must discharge: When we think of history as merely a trade or profession, a craft or calling, we find it hard to justify our existence as historians (Collingwood, 2004). What can the historian do for people except turn them into historians like himself? And what is the good of doing that? It is not simply a vicious circle, whose tendency is to overcrowd the ranks of the profession and to produce an underpaid ‘intellectual proletariat’ of sweated teachers. This may be a valid argument against the growing number of historians if history is merely a profession, but it can't be if history is a universal human interest; for in that case there are already several historians as there are human beings, and the question to ponder isn’t ‘Shall I be a historian or not?’ but ‘How good will be I am as a historian?’(Dussen 1993).