What are History and

Historical Sources?
History is derived from the Greek noun meaning learning.
Aristotle used history to meant a systematic account of a set of natural
phenomena, whether or not chronological ordering was a factor in the
account. (natural history or science)
 In Latin, history is reserved for accounts of phenomena (human affair) in
chronological order.
Most common definition of history in the modern times means "the past of
mankind."
Objectivity
and
Subjectivity
The quality or character of being objective:
lack of favoritism toward one side or another:
freedom from bias (Merriam-Webster).
Objectivity is a standard that promotes truth,
defined as a ‘correspondence, grounded in
correctness, between thought and reality’
(Heidegger, 1943).
The quality of being based on or
influenced by personal feelings,
tastes, or opinions (Oxford
dictionary).
Subjectivity is generally
conceptualized as the way research is
influenced by the perspectives,
values, social experiences, and
viewpoint of the researcher (Allen,
2017).
 Artifacts as sources of History
Artifacts or documents are raw materials which history may
be written.
Historians deals with the genetic (becoming) , the static (the
being or the become), and aims at being interpretative as
well as descriptive (what happened, when and where, and
who took part).
 Historical Knowledge limited by
incompleteness of the Records
The vestiges of the past perished and left us only scanty
traces.
Not all historical writings cannot be credited as few of what
happened were observed.
Not everything that happened was observed.
Only a part of observed was remembered.
Only a part of remembered was recorded.
Only a part of records survived.
only a part of what survived came to the historian's attention.
Only a part was credible
Only a part of what is credible was grasped
A part of what is grasped can be expounded by historians.
The whole history of the past (history-as-actuality) can be
known through surviving records (history-as-record).
History can be told only from history-as-recorded; and history
as told (spoken-or-written-history) is only the historians'
expressed part of the understood part of the credible part of
the discovered part of history-as-record.
 History as the Subjective
Process of Re-creation

Historian can grasp of history-as-actuality can be nothing more than a mental

image of a series of mental images based upon an application of his own
experience, real and vicarious.
A historian's aim is verisimilitude with regard to the perished past.
He tries to get as close to the truth.
Historical Method and
Historiography

Defined

 Historical method

The process of critically examining and analyzing the records and survivals of
the past.
Historiography (the writing of history) is the imaginative reconstruction of the
past from the data derived by that process.
Through historical method and historiography historians reconstruct as much
of the past of mankind.
According to historian Leopold von Ranke historian can rarely tell the story even of
a part of the past as it actually occurred due to inadequacy of the human
imagination and human speech for such an actual re-creation.
 Imagination and Historiography

Historian is not permitted to imagine things that could not reasonably

have happened.
Human mentality has not changed noticeable in historic times, and
present generations can understand them best own their own
experiences.
 History of
Historical Method
 Thucydides
Wrote his famous history of the Peloponnesian War
in the 5th century B.C.
He invented speeches to put into the mouths of
contemporaries.
 Methods of historical analysis

the selection of a subject for investigation

the collection of probable source of information on that subject
the examination of those sources for genuineness
the extraction of credible particulars from the sources proved
genuine.
 Sources

Archeological Epigraphical numismatical materials

Official records Private papers
archives papers of business houses
courthouses the muniment rooms of ancient castles
governmental libraries prized possessions of autograph collectors
records of parish churches
 The Distinction
between Primary and
Other Original
Sources
 Written and oral sources are divided into
two kinds:

A primary source is the testimony of an eyewitness, or of a witness by any other

of the senses, or of a mechanical device like the dicta-phone (eyewitness).
A secondary source is the testimony of anyone who is not eyewitness.
Primary sources provide firsthand information
that is closest to the object of study.

Common examples of primary sources include speeches, letters, diaries,

autobiographies, interviews, official reports, court records, artifacts,
photographs, and drawings.
In the social sciences, original reports of research found in academic journals
detailing the methodology used in the research, as well as in-depth descriptions
and discussions of the findings, can be considered primary sources of
information. These sources are often referred to as empirical.
A primary source does not need to be original as a later copy would just do.
A document can be considered as original
contains fresh and creative ideas
not translated from the language
it is unpolished
unmodified and untampered
earliest available source of the information it provides.

 A secondary source is a source that provides

non-original or secondhand data or information
Secondary sources are usually based on primary sources. Books by historians,
articles in academic journals, and literature review articles are common
secondary sources. Historians typically use these secondary resources to get a
better understanding of a topic and to find further primary and secondary
sources on a topic.
Other examples of secondary sources include biographies, critical studies of an
author's work, and compilations of essays by historians.
 Primary particulars rather than
whole primary sources sought
Historians will not rely totally on one source alone but he can rely to secondary
sources and use them as first-hand evidence if they are genuine and relevant.
Sources whether primary or secondary are important to the historians
because they contain primary particulars.
The particulars are reliable due to the reliability of the narrator as a witness of
those particulars.
 The Document
The process of proof based upon any kind of
source whether written, oral, pictorial, or
archeological (documentation).
Document becomes synonymous with source,
whether written or not, official, or not, primary or
not.
 The Human and the Personal Document
Human document is defined as an account of individual experience which
reveals the individual's actions as a human agent and as a participant in social
life.
Personal document is defined as any self-revealing record that intentionally or
unintentionally yields information regarding the structure, dynamics and
functioning of the author's mental life.
Examples: autobiographies, and letter.
documents written in third person describing human attitudes such as
newspaper accounts, court records, records of social agencies.