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Historical Facts and Their Selection
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
Extract
“Facts are not really like fish on a fishmonger's slab. They are like fish swimming in a huge and sometimes inaccessible ocean; what the historian catches will depend partly on chance, but principally on the part of the ocean which he has chosen to fish in, and also on the bait he is using.
These two factors are, of course, determined by the sort of fish he intends to fish for. In general, the historian will find the sort of facts he wishes to find.”
E. H. Carr, What is History?Our reflections on the objectivity of historical truth will quite naturally begin with the historical fact. It may perhaps be only because we are thinking in a general way—and with justification in a sense—that the divergences amongst historians appear only from the moment when they approach the interpretation of facts; for their structure—if one allows a certain level of knowledge and technique in research—is identical. This being established, it is not necessary to go as far as Ranke's school and ask that the task of the historian limit itself to the presentation of pure facts, without interpretation or commentary; it will be sufficient to state that when we use the term fact in a scientific or historical context, we are expressing ourselves in an unequivocal manner; and that consequently, when someone has established, in a competent way, a historical fact, he has established it for all who are concerned; historical facts as products as well as the work of research carried out to establish them are not, then, influenced by subjective factor in the process of acquiring knowledge, taken in the particular as well as in the social sense.
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- Notes and Discussion
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- Copyright
- Copyright © 1970 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 The comparison and argument are borrowed from Lucien Febvre, who criticised the Positivist conception of "l'histoire historisante" (see Lucien Febvre, Combats pour l'histoire, Paris 1953, p. 114 f.).
2 Carl L. Becker, "What are Historical Facts?" in The Western Political Quar terly, VIII, 3, Sept. 1955, p. 327-340. Quoted by Hans Meyerheff (ed.), The Philosophy of History in Our Time, New York 1959, p. 120-137.
3 Op. cit., p. 120-121.
4 See: Celina Bobińska, Historyk fakt, metoda [The Historian, the Fact, the Method], Warsaw 1964, p. 24-25; Marc Bloch, Pochwała historii [In Praise of History], Warsaw 1960, p. 78-79; Igor Kon Idealism filozoficzny i kryzys buriua zyinej myśli historycznej [Philosophical Idealism and the Crisis of Bourgeois Historical Thought], Warsaw 1967, p. 316 f.
5 Carl L. Becker, "What are Historical Facts?," op. cit., p. 121-122 (my underlining).
6 Op. cit., p. 122-123.
7 Carl L. Becker, "What are Historical Facts?," op. cit., p. 124-125.
8 Carl Becker, op. cit., p. 130-131 (my underlining).
9 E. H. Carr, What is History? London 1962, p. 18.
10 Lucien Febvre, Combats pur l'histoire, Paris 1953, p. 116-117.
11 In various reviews of my works on anthropology, I have been blamed for using this ugly term "product" in this context. Certainly this is a piece of Marxist jargon, but the word "fits" the thought it is meant to express perfectly, and I am unable to find another; anyone who knows Marxism will see that there is no question of my using the term in a vulgarized or oversimplified way, so that the problem is only an apparent one.
12 E. H. Carr, op. cit. p. 24.