Mrr1 Notes

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“The meaning of history”

1. History means accounts of the phenomena especially in human affairs that is in chronological
order.
2. The past of mankind is beyond recall meaning that no one cannot re-create their own past.

“Objectivity” and “Subjectivity”

1. The facts of history are derived from testimony and therefore facts of meaning. It may be said in
a symbolic or a representation of something that once was real, but it has no objective reality of
their own. Thus, it only exists in the mind of the historians therefore the facts of history may be
called subjective.
2. For a historical fact to be objective, it should have an independent existence outside of the
human mind.
3. Because facts of history are more of a subjective type, the necessity of the application of special
kinds of safeguards should be considered against the error.

Historical Knowledge Limited by Incompleteness of the Records

1. Only a part of the past was observed and was remembered by those who observed it.
2. The whole history of the past can only be known through the surviving records of it.

History as the Subjective Process of Re-creation

1. A historian tries to get as close approximation to the truth about the past as a constant
correction of his mental image allowing him to recognize the truth that will elude him forever.
2. The task of a historian was to acquire a complete knowledge of irrecoverable pasts by means of
surviving evidence in which to recreate a verisimilar image.

Historical Method and Historiography Defined

1. By means of historical method and historiography the historian endeavors to reconstruct as


much as he can the past of mankind.
2. Recreation and not creation should be considered in accounting the history.

Imagination in historiography

1. It is platitude that a historian who knows temporary life best will understand past life best.
2. Since human mentality does not change noticeably, present generations can understand past
generations of their own experience.
History of historical method

1. In order to conduct historical analyses, the following should be considered: (1) the selection of a
subject for investigation; (2) the collection of probable sources of information on that subject;
(3) the examination of those sources for genuineness; and (4) the extraction of credible
particulars from the sources proved genuine.

Primary Particulars Rather than Whole Primary Sources Sought

1. Primary and secondary sources are important to the historian because they contain primary
particulars.

The “Human” and the “Personal Document”

1. The human document is defined as an actual account of individual experience that reveals with
individuals’ actions as a human agent and as a participant in social life while personal document
was defined as “any self-revealing record that intentionally or unintentionally yields information
regarding the structure, dynamics and functioning of the author’s mental life.
2. All documents are both human and personal since they are the work of human beings and shed
light upon their authors as well as upon the subjects the authors were trying to expound.
3. Sometimes the historians may learn more about the author than the author intended that he
should.

CHAPTER 6

1. Forged or misleading documents


2. Tests of authenticity
a. To distinguish a hoax or a misinterpretation from a genuine document, the historian
makes the best guess he can of the date of the document. He will examine the materials
to see whether they are not anachronistic.
3. Garbled documents
a. Sometimes garbled documents are hard to evaluate but sometimes causes less trouble
than those documents that are unauthentic.
4. The Restoration of the texts
5. Sciences Auxiliary to History
6. Identification of Author and the date

CHAPTER 7

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