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Historical Facts and Their Selection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Adam Schaff
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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?

Type
Notes and Discussion
Information
Diogenes , Volume 18 , Issue 69 , March 1970 , pp. 99 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © 1970 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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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.