HISTORY
well as describe it.
 Aristotle – systematic account of
a set of natural phenomena
whether or not chronological in
nature
 “the past of mankind”
 Geshehen(to happen) ->
geschichte(that which has
happened)
 History cannot be reconstructed
 Fortiori – the experience of a
generation long dead
 Reconstruction of the total past of
mankind is a goal that is
unattainable
 Testimonies may be
representative of something that
was once real but have no
objective reality of their own; exist
only in the observer’s or
historian’s mind
 To be studied objectively, a thing
must be an object; must have an
independent existence outside
the human mind
 Recollections does not have
existence outside the human
mind; this is the basis for most of
history
 Artifacts(results of events);
written documents( results or
records of events)
 Artifacts and documents are raw
materials from which history may
be written
 Historians deals with the dynamic
or genetic(the becoming) as well
as the static(the being or the
become) and aims to interpret as
 A historical context could only be
given to them only if they can be
placed in a human setting
 The past having happened has
perished forever with only
occasional traces
 The whole history of the
past(history-as-actuality) can be
known him only through the
surviving record of it(history-as-
record) and most of history-as-
record is only surviving part of the
recorded part of the remembered
part of the observed part of the
whole
 History can be told only from
history-as-record and history as
told(spoken-or-written-history) is
only the historian’s expressed
part of the understood part of the
credible part of the discovered
part of history-as-record
 The “object” that the historian
studies is not only incomplete; it
is markedly variable as records
are lost or rediscovered
 The historian’s aim is
verisimilitude with regard to a
perished past, a subjective
process, rather than experimental
certainty with regard to an
objective reality
 Historical method(process of
critically examining and analyzing
the records and survivals of the
past)
 Historiography(imaginative
recontruction of the past from the
 data derived from historical
method)
 Historian is not permitted to
imagine things that could not
reasonable have happened
 Methods of historical analysis:
- The selection of a subject for
investigation
- The collection of probable
sources of information on that
subject
- The examination of those
sources for genuineness
- The extraction of credible
particulars from the sources
proved genuine
 Primary source(testimony of an
eyewitness)
 Secondary source(testimony of
anyone who is not an
eyewitness)
 Original
- Contain fresh and creative
ideas
- Because it was not translated
from the language in which it
was first written
- Because it is in its earliest or
unpolished stage
- Because its text is the
approved text(untampered)
- Because it is the earliest
available source of
information it provides