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History and Historical Sources

This document discusses key concepts in history and historical sources. It defines history as the study of mankind's past based on available records. Historical knowledge is limited by the incompleteness of records, with only a small portion of the actual past observed and recorded. The historian's role is to objectively interpret artifacts and documents to reconstruct and re-create the past based on available sources. The document also distinguishes between primary sources like eyewitness accounts and secondary sources, as well as original versus derivative sources. It notes the development of historical method over time to critically examine sources.

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Sherinne Jane Cariazo
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83 views11 pages

History and Historical Sources

This document discusses key concepts in history and historical sources. It defines history as the study of mankind's past based on available records. Historical knowledge is limited by the incompleteness of records, with only a small portion of the actual past observed and recorded. The historian's role is to objectively interpret artifacts and documents to reconstruct and re-create the past based on available sources. The document also distinguishes between primary sources like eyewitness accounts and secondary sources, as well as original versus derivative sources. It notes the development of historical method over time to critically examine sources.

Uploaded by

Sherinne Jane Cariazo
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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HISTORY AND

HISTORICAL
SOURCES
HISTORY
✓The English word history is derived from the Greek
noun “TOROPIA”, meaning “LEARNING”
✓As used by the Greek philosopher Aristotle, history
meant a systematic account of a set of natural
phenomena
✓Its common definition, the word history now means “the
past of mankind”, which derived from the two German
words “GESCHEHEN” meaning to “HAPPEN” and
“GESCHICHTE” means “HAS HAPPENED”
OBJECTIVITY AND
SUBJECTIVITY
✓The facts of history do not have objective reality of their
own
✓They exist only in the observer’s or historian’s mind
(SUBJECTIVE).
The word “subjective” mean “illusory” or “based upon
personal considerations” and hence either “untrue” or
“biased”
✓It is to be studied OBJECTIVELY (with the intention of
acquiring detached and truthful knowledge independent of
one’s personal reactions)
ARTIFACTS OR DOCUMENTS
✓Artifacts are the results of events; documents
are the results of the record events
✓Are the sources or the raw materials out of
which history may be written
✓The historian interprets these sources by
explaining why and how things happened and
were interrelated as well as describe them by
telling what happened, when and where, and
who took part
HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE
LIMITED BY INCOMPLETENESS OF
THE RECORDS

✓ Only a small part of what happened in the past was ever observed.
✓ The whole history of the past (what has been called HISTORY-AS-
ACTUALITY) can be known to him only through the surviving record
of it (HUSTORY-AS-RECORD) and most of history-as-record is only
the surviving part of the recorded part of the remembered part of
the observed past of that whole.
✓ In other words, the “object” that the historian studies is not only
incomplete; it is markedly variable as records are lost or
rediscovered.
HISTORY AS THE SUBJECTIVE
PROCESS OF RE-CREATION

✓ The historian restores the total past of mankind in terms of his


own experience. He tries to get as close an approximation to the
truth about the past as constant correction of his mental images
will allow, at the same time recognizing that the truth has in fact
eluded him forever.
✓ For the historian, history becomes only the part of the human
past which can be meaningfully reconstructed from the available
records and from inferences regarding their setting.
HISTORICAL METHOD AND
HISTORIOGRAPHY

✓HISTORICAL METHOD is the process of critically examining


and analysing the records and survivals of the past.
✓HISTORIOGRAPHY (the writing of history) is the imaginative
reconstruction of the past from the data derived from the
historical method.
HISTORY OF HISTORICAL
METHOD

✓The history of historical method dates back during


the time of Thucydides, who in the fifth century B.C.
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN
PRIMARY AND OTHER ORIGINAL
SOURCES

✓ “Primary source” is the testimony of eyewitness or of a witness by other


of the senses.
✓ “Secondary source” is the testimony of anyone who is not an
eyewitness- that is, of one who was not present at the events of which he
tells.
✓ “Original source” means (1) to describe a source, unpolished, uncopied,
untranslated, as it issued from the hands of the authors; (2) a source
that gives the earliest available information (the origin) regarding the
question under investigation because earlier sources have been lost.
THE DOCUMENT

✓The word document (from decere, to teach) has also been


used by historians in several senses.
✓It is define as any process of proof based upon any kind
of source whether written, oral, pictorial, or
archeological.
✓Document becomes synonymous with source, whether
written or not, official or not, primary or not.
THE “HUMAN” AND THE
“PERSONAL” DOCUMENT

✓Human document defined as an account of individual


experience which reveals the individual’s actions as human
agent and as a participant in social life”
✓Personal document defined as any self-revealing record that
intentionally or unintentionally yields information regarding
the structure, dynamics and functioning of the author’s
mental life.

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