Aims and Purposes of History

To what extent do aims and purposes of each historian distort the construction of history?

 

‘It has been said that though God cannot alter the past, historians can’

--Samuel Butler, ‘Erewhon Revisited’ (1901)

 

While it is alleged that “the purpose of history is to accurately understand the past” (Chris J Bickerton, 2006), it appears that historians also construct history with the purpose of serving a culmination of ideological, social, political, cultural and personal motivations, which subsequently influences the general construction of history. Hence, Samuel Butler’s quote cited above appears particularly fitting, as it invokes that historians possess the power to serve their various purposes through their influences on the construction of history.

Hence can we really believe anything we read? Can objectivity in history ever be achieved?  What do people think?

 

Edited by egyptian goddess - 21-Apr-2009 at 09:43

Bah.

Knights makes a nice distinction.

Egyptian Goddess;

I'd like to discuss your use of Carr's quote first of all. In his 'What is History', Carr makes an equivalent distinction to the one I made in my first post - that of 'historical facts' and 'history'. He terms these "facts of history" and "facts of the past", respectively. The former, he goes on to explain, are objective for all intents and purposes - my example of 'dates' in history, for instance. The latter however, "the facts of the past", are those which he views as being the primary concern of historians. For the remainder of the book, after setting these out in Chapter One, Carr deals with 'facts of the past', which he goes on to make the 'fish in the ocean' analogy about. Thus, in your quote Carr is referring to these 'facts of the past', which are subjectively interpreted and subsequently represented, by the historian. His quote is not talking about 'historical facts'. In essence, I am saying that what Carr deems 'facts of history', and what I mentioned earlier as 'historical facts' are objective, whilst Carr's 'facts of the past' (my 'history') are open to selective representation by the historian.

Now in regards to the rest of the post. I will apply what I have said above, to my argument.

You quoted Commager as saying "Facts are subjective, they exist in the mind of the historian, and they change their character with each historian". Here, either Commager is denying that say, 'dates', are objective (ignoring the occasional bit of contention between sources - I am talking about uncontentious dates, like the year which the First Fleet arrived in Australia - 1788); or, he is purely referring to what I discussed above as 'history'/'facts of the past'. I do not see how a historian can possibly 'subjectively interpret' and then 'selectively represent' a date in history - a 'historical fact' - or at least, get away with doing so. I therefore think it is desirable and possible to represent historical facts objectively.

When arguing against Ranke's quote, you use the quotes of another historian or two as evidence of why Ranke is wrong. I don't believe this method is justifying your position, as one could equally reverse the situation and argue that your quotes are wrong, by merely using Ranke's quote. Just someone might write or say something, doesn't mean it can't be unfounded, illogical or without basis.

Clearly, it is crucial to distinguish between the nature of history, and historical facts. Gcle raises an excellent related point about hypotheses - either a null or alternative hypothesis can be used to quantify or falsify and objective fact. And I thought, just for the sake of it, I'd close by stating what everybody probably already realises. If you are arguing that nothing can be objectively 'true' or 'fact', then no weight is leaned to your argument, by the very contradictory nature of it: "nothing is true --> what about that statement? --> circularity"...

Regards,

- Knights -

Originally posted by gcle2003 All you clearly show is that a few people claim that there is no existing distinction between historical facts and history. You haven't produced any argument to say they are right to claim it.

Your qualification is correct, but it is by no means a minor one. No historian believes that "the facts do not exist until the historians create them". If they did they wouldn't be historians. And if the historians created the facts, they wouldn't be facts.

Parnell has requested that this thread be closed, to save confusion and redundancy, because of the 'Historiography' thread. I thought I would check with Gcle and Byzantine Emperor before doing so, as they are active in this thread recently - what do you two think?

Originally posted by Chilbudios Originally posted by Parnell Essentially history writing is an exercise in reason. It is a deductive activity which attempts to create a narrative of events and to explain the causes that led to these events. One's interpretations of the causes of events may frequently differ, and usually differ quite profoundly depending on ones political stance. But the essential narrative remains - IE, Constantinople fell in 1453, The European Second World War broke out in September 1939, Urban II called the first Crusade in 1096 etc. [...] History is a noble subject, thankfully far removed from the innane terminology and jargon of philosophy and political science. Lets keep it that way. Is it so? I'm not sure what types of histories are you reading but in many enough recent scholarly journals and books I'm reading I see a weaker impulse to create narratives of events or explain causes.

I'm in no mood of feeding such trolling. In this thread or the other one.

What trolling?