what is history? by e. h. carr summary of main points from...

What is History? By E. H. Carr Summary of main points from

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Chapter

No

Contents Page

1. The Historian and His Facts 1

2. Society and Individual 12

3. History, Science and Morality 18

4. Science and Social Science Contrast 21

5. Causation in History 27

6. History as Progress

Objectivity in History p.37

Fact and Value Dichotomy p.40

33

7. The Widening Horizon

Force of Challenge

41

What is History?

Prof. E. H. Carr , 1961. Published by Pelican

Chapter1. The Historian and His Facts:

1 When we attempt to answer the question 'What is History' our

answer reflects our own position in time and our view of the

society we live in. Though appearing to be trivial in first view, this

question is vast and important.

1. The nineteenth century was a great age for facts. 19th

century

historians agreed with Mr. Gradgrind in Hard Times when he said

"What I want is Facts….Facts alone are wanted in life". The 19th


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century view was the positive belief, the clear eyed self-

confidence of the later Victorian Age - 'simply to show how it

was'.

2. The Positivists, anxious to stake out their claim for history as a

science, contributed their weight to this cult of facts. In Great

Britain this view of history fitted in perfectly with the empiricist

tradition that was the dominant strain in the British philosophy

from Locke to Bertrand Russell.

3. The empirical theory of knowledge presupposes a complete

separation of the subject from the object. Facts, like sense

impressions, impinge on the observer from outside and are

independent of his consciousness.

4. The process of reception is passive: having received the data, he

acts on them. The Oxford Dictionary defines a fact as 'a datum of

experience as distinct from conclusion'. This may be called a

common sense view of history.

5. History consists of a corpus of ascertained facts as available in

the form of documents, inscriptions, and so on. A historian

interprets these facts according to his own position in time and

society. The 'hard core of facts' in history can be contrasted with

the 'surrounding pulp of disputable interpretation' as observed by

Sir George Clark in 1952.


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6. First, get your facts right. Then plunge at your own peril in to

the shifting sands of interpretation, that is the ultimate wisdom of

the empirical, commonsense school of history. "Facts are sacred,

opinion is free" (C. P. Scott )

7. However, not all facts about the past are historical facts or are

treated as such by the historians. So, what is the criterion which

distinguishes the facts of history from other facts about the past?

8. What is a historical fact? According to the empirical and

commonsense view of history there are certain basic facts which

form the backbone of history.

9. " Accuracy is a duty, not a virtue" ( Houseman) To praise a

historian for his accuracy is like praising an architect for using

well- seasoned timber or an appropriate mix of concrete in his

building. It is a necessary condition of his work, but not his

essential function. For this a historian needs to rely on the

auxiliary sciences of history, namely, archeology, epigraphy,

numismatics, chronology that are specialized areas of study that

constitute the raw material of the historian rather than history

itself.

10. Next, the necessity to establish these basic facts rests not on the

quality of the facts themselves, but on a priori decision of the

historian. Every journalist knows that the most effective way to

influence opinion is by the selection and arrangement of the

appropriate facts. The saying that facts speak for themselves is


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erroneous. The facts speak only when the historian calls on them.

It is he who decides to which fact to give the floor and in which

order or context. A fact is like a sack. It won't stand up till you've

put something in it. ( One of Pirandello's characters)

11. Professor Talcott Parsons once called science ' a selective

system of cognitive orientation to reality'.1

History among other

things is that. The historian is necessarily selective.

12. What is the process by which a mere fact about the past is

transformed into a fact of history? An event occurs and is recorded

by an eyewitness is a little known memoirs. It is cited by a famous

person in some context and begins appearing as a footnote, then in

the text, in articles and then in books about the period and gains in

validity and significance. Thus the element of interpretation enters

into every facet of history.

13. Ancient and Medieval history is fascinating as it gives the

illusion of having all the facts at our disposal within a manageable

compass. The nagging distinction between the facts of history and

other facts about the past vanishes, because the few known facts

are all the facts of history.

14. History has been called an enormous jig-saw with a lot of

missing parts. We know a lot about what the relevant period was

from one point of view but the other viewpoints are all lost. The

picture of all the existing historical facts is a pre-selected picture.

The dead hand of vanished generations of historians, scribes, and

1 T.Parsons and E. Shills, Towards a General Theory of Action ( 3rd edition 1954) p 167.


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chroniclers has determined beyond the possibility of appeal the

pattern of the past. "The history we read though based on facts, is,

strictly speaking, not factual at all, but a series of accepted

judgements'.2 So there has been a vast winnowing process over the

years for all the facts of history.

15. The plight of the modern historian is grave. Lytton Strachey,

said ' ignorance is the first requisite of the historian, ignorance

which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits.'3 The

modern historian enjoys none of the built-in advantages of

ignorance of the ancient and the medieval historians that make

them so competent. A modern historian must cultivate the

necessary ignorance for himself. He has the dual task of

discovering the few significant facts and turning them into facts of

history, and of discarding the many insignificant facts as

unhistorical. But is the very converse of the 19th century heresy

that history consists of the compilation of a maximum number of

irrefutable and objective facts. What had gone wrong was the

belief in this untiring and unending accumulation of hard facts as

the foundation of history, the belief that the facts speak for

themselves, and that we cannot have too many facts - a belief at

the time so unquestioning that few historians then thought it

necessary to ask themselves the question 'What is history?'

2 G.Barraclough, History in a Changing World (1955) p.14

3 Lytton Strachey, Preface to Eminent Victorians.

* The emphasis on evidence for the judicial system. Not needed at the village level where each person

knows the other by voice, gait and cadence. Insistence of evidence of having seen him clearly in the

darkness of the night or in the dim light of the lantern should not be insisted upon.


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16. The 19th century fetishism of facts was completed and justified

by a fetishism of documents.*

17. What can these historical documents the decrees, the treaties,

the rent-rolls, the blue-books, the official correspondence, the

private letters and diaries- tell us? No document can tell us more

than what the author thought , or what he thought had happened,

what he thought ought to have happened, or perhaps what he

wanted others to think he thought, or even only what he himself

thought he thought. None of this means anything until the

historian has got to work on it and deciphered it. The facts,

whether found in the document or not, have still to be processed

by the historian before he can make any use of them, and the use

he makes of them is the processing process.

18. Facts and documents are essential to a historian. But do not

make a fetish of them. They do not by themselves constitute

history. They provide no readymade answer to this tiresome

question 'What is history?'

19. Philosophy of history: the term was first used by Voltaire and

has since been used in different senses. I shall take it to mean our

answer to the question "What is history?" The 19th century was a

comfortable period exuding confidence and optimism for the

intellectuals of Western Europe. The facts were on the whole

satisfactory, and the inclination to ask and answer awkward

questions about them was weak. (a) Rank piously believed that

divine providence would take care of the meaning of history, if he


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took care of the facts. (b) In 1931, Professor Butterfield noted that

'historians have reflected little upon the nature of things, and even

the nature of their own subject'. 4 British historians refused to be

drawn into the debate on the philosophy of history not because

they believed that history had no meaning, but because they

believed that its meaning was implicit and self -evident. (c) The

liberal nineteenth century view of history had a close affinity with

the economic doctrine of laissez-faire, also a product of the serene

and confident outlook on the world.

20. The first challenge to this liberalism and doctrine of primacy

and autonomy of facts in history came in 1880s from the

Germany. From Germany's little known challengers to the cult of

facts, the torch passed to Italy where Croce began to propound a

philosophy of history. All history is 'contemporary history',

declared Croce, because history in reality refers to the present

needs and present situations wherein those events vibrate. 5 For

Croce history consists essentially in seeing the past through the

eyes of the present and in the light of its problems, and that the

main work of the historian is not to record but to evaluate, for if he

does not evaluate how does he know what is worth recording.

Today the awkward question can no longer be evaded.

21. In 1910, Carl Becker argued that 'the facts of history do not

exist for any historian till he creates them'.6 These challenges

were little noticed till the First World War made facts more

4 H.Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (1931) p 67.

5 B.Croce, History as the Story of Liberty, English Translation, 1941, p19.

6 Atlantic Monthly, October 1910, p 528.


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illusionary and thereby made historians more accessible to a

philosophy that sought to diminish their prestige. Croce was an

important influence on the Oxford philosopher and historian

Collingwood, the only British to have made some contribution to

the philosophy of history through his papers published in a volume

"The Idea of History" in 1945.

22. The views of Collingwood - (a) The philosophy of history is

concerned neither with 'the past by itself' nor with 'the historian's

thought about it by itself', but with 'the two things in their mutual

relations'. This reflects the two current meanings of the word

'history' - (i) The inquiry conducted by the historian and (ii) the

series of past events into which he inquires. "The past which a

historian studies is not a dead past, but a past which in some sense

is still living in the present.” But a past act is dead, i.e.

meaningless to a historian unless he can understand the thought

that lay behind it. Hence 'all history is the history of thought '.

'History is a re-enactment in the historian's mind of the thought

whose history he is studying', and this is dependent upon empirical

evidence. The process of reconstitution governs the selection and

interpretation of the facts, and this is what makes them historical

facts. "History if the historian's experience. It is 'made' by nobody

save the historian: to write history is the only way of making it."7

23. The following is revealed from the above : (a) The facts of

history never come down to the present in their pure form as the

pure form does not exist. It invariably gets refracted through the

7 M.Oadeshott, Experience and Its Mode (1933) p 99.


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mind of the recorder of facts. (b) Our first concern with a work of

history should not be with the facts it contains but with the

historian who wrote it. So the reader too must re-enact what has

gone on in the mind of the historian. Study the historian before

you begin to study the facts. Facts are like the fish swimming

about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean, and what the

historian catches will depend partly on chance but mainly on what

part of the ocean he chooses to fish, and what tackle he chooses to

use, which in turn will be determined by the kind of fish he wants

to catch. By and large the historian will get the kind of facts he

wants. History means interpretation.

24. The historian also needs an imaginative understanding of the

minds of the people with whom he is dealing for reaching the

thought behind their act. History cannot be written unless the

historian can achieve some kind of contact with the mind of those

about whom he is writing. Without an elementary measure of this

imaginative understanding others action will always appear to be

senseless, or hypocritical.

25. The third point in Collingwood's hypothesis is that the past can

be viewed and the understanding of the past achieved only through

the eyes of the present. The historian belongs to his own age and is

bound to it by the conditions of human existence. A historian is

obliged to choose and the language forbids him to be neutral.

26. Nor is it a matter of words alone. The historian belongs to the

present and changes in the national attitudes, balance of power and

so on effect his attitude to history. The function of a historian is


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neither to love the past nor to emancipate himself from it but to

master and understand it as the key to the understanding of the

present.

27. This emphasis on the historian tends to rule out objectivity in

history. In place of a history that has no meaning we have a theory

of history with an infinity of meaning, none any more right than

the other- which comes to much the same thing. Both are

untenable, as it does not follow that because a mountain appears to

take on different shape from different angles of vision, it has

objectively either no shape at all or an infinity of shapes. This is

because interpretation plays the necessary part in establishing the

facts of history. As no interpretation is wholly objective one

interpretation is as good as another. Objectivity in history will be

considered later on.

28. In Collingwood's hypothesis the facts of history are nothing and

the interpretation is everything. Knowledge is knowledge for some

purpose. The validity of knowledge depends on the validity of the

purpose. In 20th century history of the Soviet and the anti-Soviet

schools there are too many examples of extravagant interpretations

riding roughshod over facts to convert this danger into a reality.

29. So, what are the obligations of the historian to his facts?. The

duty of the historian to respect his facts is not exhausted by the

obligation to see that his facts are accurate. He must also seek to

bring in to the picture all the known and knowable facts relevant,

to the theme on which he is engaged and to the interpretation

proposed.


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30. Methodology for doing research work: Begin to write soon

after getting a few capital sources, not necessarily at the

beginning, but somewhere, anywhere. Do not divide your work as

collection of material in phases one and writing on its basis in

phase two. Reading and writing must go simultaneously. The

writing is added to, subtracted from, re-shaped cancelled as the

reading progresses. The reading is guided and directed and made

fruitful by the writing. The more one writes the more one knows

what one is looking for, and the relevance and significance of the

finding is understood better in this manner. The two processes of

'input' and 'output' need to be made part of a single process. If

these are separated or if priority is given to one over the other

significance of the work tends to get reduced.

31. In conclusion, the examination of the relation of the historian to

the facts of history leads us to an untenable theory of history as an

objective compilation of facts, of the unqualified primacy of fact

over interpretation, and an equally untenable theory of history as a

subjective product of the mind of the historian who establishes the

facts of history and masters them through the process of

interpretation, between a view of history having the centre of

gravity in the past, and a view of history having the centre of

gravity in the present.

32. But the same dichotomy recurs in the form of empirical and the

theoretical, the objective and the subjective. The predicament of

the historian is a reflection of the nature of man. Man is neither

totally involved in his environment nor unconditionally subject to


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it, is never totally independent of it nor its unconditional master.

This relation of man to his environment is the relation of the

historian to his theme. The relation is one of give-and-take, of

equality. A working historian is engaged in a continuous process

of molding his facts to his interpretation and his interpretations to

his facts. It is not possible to assign primacy to one over the other.

He starts with a provisional selection of facts and a provisional

interpretation in the light of which that selection has been made.

As he works both the interpretation and the selection and the

ordering of facts undergo a subtle and partly unconscious change

through the reciprocal action of one over the other. This reciprocal

action also involves a reciprocity between present and the past,

since the historian is part of the present and the facts belong to the

past. The historian and the facts of history are necessary to one

another, as the historian without his facts is rootless, and the facts

without interpretation are dead and meaningless.

33. Thus, the first answer to the question 'What is history' is that it

is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his

facts, and unending dialogue between the present and the past.

Chapter 2 Society and Individual

1. Society and the individual are inseparable, necessary and

complementary to each other. Soon after birth a child is

transformed from a biological entity into a social unit. The


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language he learns is not an individual inheritance but a social

acquisition from the group in which he grows up. Both language

and environment help to determine the character of his thought,

and his earliest ideas come to him from others. Civilized man like

the primitive man is molded by the society just as effectively as

society is molded by him. What is meant by a complex or

advanced society is a society in which the interdependence of

individual on one another has assumed advanced and complex

forms.

2. The historian: The cult of individualism is one of the most

pervasive of modern historical myths. The right of man and the

citizen proclaimed by the French revolution were the rights of the

individual. Individualism was the basis of the philosophy of

utilitarianism. Increased individualization which accompanied the

rise of modern world was a normal process of advancing

civilization, as a social revolution brought new social groups to

positions of power. It operated as always, through individuals and

by offering new opportunities of individual development. Since

the early stages of capitalism the units of production and

distribution were largely in the hands of single individuals. The

ideology of the new social order strongly emphasized the role of

individual initiative in the new order.

3. When we speak in terms of the tensions between liberty and

equality, or between individual liberty and social justice, we are

apt to forget that these are fights are not between abstract ideas.

These are struggles between individuals as such and society as


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such, with each group trying to promote policies favourable to it

and to frustrate the policies that are inimical to it. Thus,

individualism has become today the slogan of an interested group

which due to its controversial character has in turn become a

barrier to our understanding of what goes on in the modern world.

There is no abstract individual standing outside society.

4. Next, the common sense view of history treats history has

something written by individuals about individuals. This now

seems an over-simplification and inadequate, because the

knowledge of a historian is not an individual possession. Several

generations have participated in accumulating it, acting within the

context of their society. So, history as a process of interaction or a

dialogue between the historian in the present and the historical

facts of the past could also be viewed as social facts. To view the

historian as an individual being as well as a social phenomenon.

5. If history is a 'moving procession' then the relative positions of

the different parts of the procession are constantly changing

through new viewpoints, new angles, new visions that appear to

the historian as he moves along with it. The historian is a part of

history. The point in the procession at which he finds himself

determines his angle of vision over the past. Great history is

written precisely when the historian's vision of the past is

illuminated by insights into the problems of the present. Namier

by passed the great modern revolutions - English, French, and

Russian - to write his penetrating study of the European revolution

of 1848 that had failed and served as a set-back to all hopes of


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liberalism because it demonstrated the hollowness of ideas in the

face of armed forces, the failure of democrats when confronted

with soldiers. Namier called this humiliating failure "the

revolution of the intellectuals" to convey the moral that the

intrusion of ideas in to the serious business of politics is futile and

dangerous. The world of politics has become an arena of

unresolved conflicts between raison d'etat and a morality which is

external to politics, but which cannot in the last resort override the

life and security of the state.

6. Two points emerge from the above. (a) You cannot fully

understand the work of a historian unless you have grasped the

standpoint from which he himself approached it. (b) That

standpoint itself is rooted in a social and historical background.

The historian, before he begins to write history, is a product of

history. The purpose is merely to show how closely the work of

the historian mirrors the society in which he works. Both the

events and the historian are in flux. The historian who is most

conscious of his own situation is more capable of transcending it

than the one who loudly protests that he is an individual and not a

social phenomenon. So before you study a work of history, study

the historian, and before you study the historian study the social

and historical environment, because a historian being an individual

is also a product of history and society.

7. The facts of history: Is the object of the historian's inquiry the

behaviour of individuals or the action of the social forces of the


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time? Sir Isaiah Berlin headed his essay Historical Inevitability

with the phrase 'Vast impersonal forces' taken from T. S. Eliot to

show that individual was the decisive factor in history. The desire

to postulate individual genius as the creative force in history is

characteristic of the primitive stages of historical consciousness.

The ancient Greeks liked to label the achievements of the past

with the names of heroes supposedly responsible for them, to

attribute their epics to a bard called Homer, and their laws and

institutions to a Solon or a Lycurgus. It had some plausibility

when the society was simpler and public affairs seemed to be run

by a handful of individuals, but does not fit in the new society of

our times in which it is growing complexity needed a whole new

science of sociology for it study.

8. It is misleading to attempt to draw a distinction between the

individual historical hero and his society. History is the term for

the process of inquiry in to the past of man in society. Excellent

books can be written about the past that are not history. Carlyle

was responsible for the unfortunate assertion that ' history is the

biography of great men', but he is also concerned with ' Hunger

and nakedness and nightmare oppression lying heavy on twenty-

five million hearts'. ( Carlyle History of the French Revolution, III,

iii, ch.1 ) Lenin said that 'Politics begin where the masses are; not

where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is

where serious politics begin.' ( Lenin, Selected Works, vii,p295)

Carlyle's and Lenin's millions were millions of individuals, and


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there was nothing impersonal about them. Anonymity should not

be confused with impersonality.

9. There is something in the nature of historical events that twists

the course of history in a direction that no man ever intended. ( H.

Butterfield, The Englishman and His History (1944) p.103.) The

facts of history are the facts of individuals in relation to one

another in society, acting as a social force which produces results

that are at variance with, and sometimes opposite to the results

which they themselves had intended.

10. Monarchs and rebels alike are the products of the specific

conditions of their age and country. They owe their role to history,

to the mass of their followers, and are significant as social

phenomena, or not at all. The great man is an individual, and being

an outstanding individual, he is also a social phenomenon of

outstanding importance. "The great man of the age is the one who

can put into words the will of his age, tell his age what its will is,

and accomplish it. What he does is the heart and essence of his

age; he actualizes his age." ( Hegel, Philosophy of Right (English

translation 1942) p 295)

11. History, both as the inquiry conducted and the facts of the past

into which it is conducted, is a social process in which individuals

are engaged as social beings. The reciprocal process of interaction

between the historian and his facts is not a dialogue between

abstract and isolated individuals but between the society of today

and the society of yesterday. "History is the record of what one

age finds worthy of note in another." ( J. Burckhardt, Judgements


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on History and on Historians ( 1959) p.158.) The past is

intelligible to us only in the light of the present; and the present

can be fully understood only in the light of the past. As such, the

dual function of history is to enable man to understand the society

of the past, and to increase his mastery over the society of the

present.

Chapter 3 History, Science and Morality

1. Man's knowledge of his world and of his own attributes has

been increased by science. When the concepts of science began to

be applied to the study of society as well social sciences came into

being, and the methods by which science studied the world of

nature began to be applied to the study of human affairs.

2. At first, the Newtonian tradition prevailed according to which

society like the world of nature was thought of as a mechanism.

Herbert Spencer's Social Statics was published in 1851, and

Bertrand Russell hoped that there would be ' a mathematics of

human behaviour as precise as the mathematics of machines' (

B.Russell. Portraits from Memory (1958) p.20)

3. The under the influence of Darwin, the social scientists began

to view society as an organism. Science was concerned no longer

with something static and timeless, but with a process of change

and development. Evolution in science, confirmed and

complemented progress in history, thereby bringing history into

science. But the inductive view of historical method of first


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collecting facts and then interpreting them did not change as it

was assumed without question to be the method of science also.

4. But science itself had undergone a profound revolution with

the emergence of astronomy as the science of the universe, and the

modern physicists were constantly claiming to be investigating not

facts, but events.

5. Concept of law in science itself had changed. In the 18th

century scientists had assumed that laws of nature - Newton's laws

of motion, law of gravitation, Boyle's law, and the law of

evolution and so on - had been discovered and definitely

established and that the business of scientists was to discover and

establish more such laws by the process of induction from

observed facts. Sociologists, desirous of to assert the scientific

status of their studies, adopted the same language and believed

themselves to be following the same procedure. The political

economists came up with Adam Smith's law of the market,

Gresham's law, while Burke appealed to the laws of commerce,

Malthus propounded the law of population, and Marx discovered

'the economic law of motion of modern society'. Today this

sounds as old-fashioned and presumptuous.

6. Henri Poincare started a revolution in scientific thinking with

his small volume La Science et l'hypothese, in which his main

thesis was that the general propositions enunciated by scientists

were hypotheses designed to crystallize and organize further

thinking, and were subject to verification, modification, and

refutation. Hence, laws today no longer exist in the irrefutable


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sense of the term as used in the 18th and 19th centuries. Today it

is recognized that scientists make discovering and acquire fresh

knowledge not by establishing precise and comprehensive laws,

but by enunciating hypotheses which open the way to fresh

inquiry.

7. Scientific method has been described as 'essentially circular'. At

first evidence for principles is obtained by appealing to empirical

material. Then the empirical material is selected, analyzed, and

interpreted on the basis of principles. ( M.R.Cohen and E Nagel,

Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (1934) p.596) The

word 'reciprocal' would be preferable to 'circular' because the

result is not to return to the same place but to move forward to

fresh discoveries through this process of interaction between

principles and material. All thinking requires the acceptance of

certain presuppositions based on observation, which make

scientific thinking possible, but are subject to revision in the light

of that thinking. Such hypotheses are indispensable tools for

thought.

8. Nowadays both scientists and social scientist or historians

advance progressively from one fragmentary hypothesis to

another, isolating their facts through the medium of their

interpretation, and testing their interpretation by the facts.

Professor Barraclough defines history as 'not factual at all, but a

series of accepted judgements'. Dr. J. Ziman defines scientific

truth as 'a statement which has been publicly accepted by the

experts'. ( In a talk on the BBC Listener programme broadcast


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18th August 1960) Neither of these formulas is entirely

satisfactory from the viewpoint of objectivity, but both are

formulating the same problem in almost exactly the same words.

(page 62 What is history?)

8. Science and Social Science Contrast:

Science:

1 Science itself had undergone a profound revolution with the

emergence of astronomy as the science of the universe, and the

modern physicists were constantly claiming to be investigating not

facts, but events.

2. Concept of law in science itself had changed. In the 18th century

scientists had assumed that laws of nature - Newton's laws of

motion, law of gravitation, Boyle's law, and the law of evolution

and so on - had been discovered and definitely established and that

the business of scientists was to discover and establish more such

laws by the process of induction from observed facts. Sociologists,

desirous of to assert the scientific status of their studies, adopted

the same language and believed themselves to be following the

same procedure. The political economists came up with Adam

Smith's law of the market, Gresham's law, while Burke appealed

to the laws of commerce, Malthus propounded the law of

population, and Marx discovered 'the economic law of motion of


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modern society'. Today this sounds as old-fashioned and

presumptuous.

3. Scientific Thinking : Henri Poincare started a revolution in

scientific thinking with his small volume La Science et

l'hypothese, in which his main thesis was that the general

propositions enunciated by scientists were hypotheses designed to

crystallize and organize further thinking, and were subject to

verification, modification, and refutation. Hence, laws today no

longer exist in the irrefutable sense of the term as used in the 18th

and 19th centuries. Today it is recognized that scientists make

discoveries and acquire fresh knowledge not by establishing

precise and comprehensive laws, but by enunciating hypotheses

which open the way to fresh inquiry.

4. Scientific method has been described as 'essentially circular'. At

first evidence for principles is obtained by appealing to empirical

material. Then the empirical material is selected, analyzed, and

interpreted on the basis of principles. ( M.R.Cohen and E Nagel,

Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (1934) p.596) The

word 'reciprocal' would be preferable to 'circular' because the

result is not to return to the same place but to move forward to

fresh discoveries through this process of interaction between

principles and material. All thinking requires the acceptance of

certain presuppositions based on observation, which make

scientific thinking possible, but are subject to revision in the light


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of that thinking. Such hypotheses are indispensable tools for

thought.

5. Facts The empirical theory of knowledge presupposes a

complete separation of the subject from the object. The cult of

facts of the 19th century wanted- 'simply to show how it was'.

Facts, like sense impressions, impinge on the observer from

outside and are independent of his consciousness. The process of

reception is passive: having received the data, he acts on them.

The Oxford Dictionary defines a fact as 'a datum of experience as

distinct from conclusion'. This may be called a common sense

view of history. History consists of a corpus of ascertained facts

as available in the form of documents, inscriptions, and so on. A

historian interprets these facts according to his own position in

time and society. The 'hard core of facts' in history can be

contrasted with the 'surrounding pulp of disputable interpretation'

First, get your facts straight, then plunge at your own peril in to

the sifting sands of interpretation - that is the ultimate wisdom of

the empirical, commonsense school of history. "Facts are sacred,

opinion is free" ( C.P.Scott)

5. What is the criterion which distinguishes the facts of history

from other facts about the past? What is a historical fact?

Accuracy is a necessary condition of a researchers work, but not

his essential function. The necessity to establish these basic facts

rests not on the quality of the facts themselves, but on a priori


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decision of the historian. The saying that facts speak for

themselves is erroneous. The facts speak only when the historian

calls on them. It is he who decides to which fact to give the floor

and in which order or context. A fact is like a sack. It won't stand

up till you've put something in it. ( One of Pirandello's characters)

6. Professor Talcott Parsons once called science ' a selective system

of cognitive orientation to reality'.8

History among other things is

that. The historian is necessarily selective. The element of

interpretation enters into every facet of history. The picture of all

the existing historical facts is a pre-selected picture. "The history

we read though based on facts, is, strictly speaking, not factual at

all, but a series of accepted judgements'.9 (G. Barraclough,

History in a Changing World (1955) p.14). There been a vast

winnowing process over the years for all the facts of history.

7. Lytton Strachey, said ' ignorance is the first requisite of the

historian, ignorance which simplifies and clarifies, which selects

and omits.' (Lytton Strachey, Preface to Eminent Victorians) The

modern historian has the dual task of discovering the few

significant facts and turning them into facts of history, and of

discarding the many insignificant facts as unhistorical. But is the

very converse of the 19th century heresy that history consists of

8 T.Parsons and E. Shills, Towards a General Theory of Action ( 3rd edition 1954) p 167.

9 G.Barraclough, History in a Changing World (1955) p.14


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the compilation of a maximum number of irrefutable and objective

facts.

8. The 19th century fetishism of facts was completed and justified

by a fetishism of documents.* No document can tell us more than

what the author thought , or what he thought had happened, what

he thought ought to have happened, or perhaps what he wanted

others to think he thought, or even only what he himself thought

he thought. None of this means anything until the historian has got

to work on it and deciphered it. The facts, whether found in the

document or not, have still to be processed by the historian before

he can make any use of them, and the use he makes of them is the

processing process. By and large the historian will get the kind

of facts he wants. History means interpretation. 'all history is the

history of thought'

9. Collingwood’s hypothesis:

a) The facts of history never come down to the present in their pure

form as the pure form does not exist. It invariably gets refracted

through the mind of the recorder of facts

b) Our first concern with a work of history should not be with the

facts it contains but with the historian who wrote it. So the reader

too must re-enact what has gone on in the mind of the historian.

Study the historian before you begin to study the facts.


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(c)The historian also needs an imaginative understanding of the

minds of the people with whom he is dealing for reaching the

thought behind their act. The past can be viewed and the

understanding of the past achieved only through the eyes of the

present. The function of a historian is neither to love the past nor

to emancipate himself from it but to master and understand it as

the key to the understanding of the present. This emphasis on the

historian tends to rule out objectivity in history. As no

interpretation is wholly objective one interpretation is as good as

another.

In Collingwood's hypothesis the facts of history are nothing and

the interpretation is everything. Knowledge is knowledge for some

purpose. The validity of knowledge depends on the validity of the

purpose. So, a historian's obligations to his facts is that he must

ensure that they are accurate and must also seek to bring in to the

picture all the known and knowable facts relevant, to the theme on

which he is engaged and to the interpretation proposed.

10 In conclusion, the examination of the relation of the historian to

the facts of history leads us to an untenable theory of history as an

objective compilation of facts, of the unqualified primacy of fact

over interpretation, and an equally untenable theory of history as a

subjective product of the mind of the historian who establishes the

facts of history and masters them through the process of

interpretation, between a view of history having the centre of


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gravity in the past, and a view of history having the centre of

gravity in the present.

A working historian is engaged in a continuous process of molding

his facts to his interpretation and his interpretations to his facts. It

is not possible to assign primacy to one over the other. He starts

with a provisional selection of facts and a provisional

interpretation in the light of which that selection has been made.

As he works both the interpretation and the selection and the

ordering of facts undergo a subtle and partly unconscious change

through the reciprocal action of one over the other.

II Causation in History:

( Chapter 4 page 87)

1. A great thinker is the man who asks the question 'Why?' about

new things or in new contexts. The study of history is a study of

causes. Herodotus, defined his purpose in the opening of his work

(a) to preserve a memory of the deeds of the Greeks and the

barbarians (b) to give the cause of their fighting one another'. But

the ancient writers had no clear conception of causation.

2. In the 18th century Montesquieu took as his starting point the

principles that ' there are general causes, moral and physical,

which operate in every monarchy, raise it, maintain it, or

overthrow it' and that ' all that occurs is subject to these causes'.


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The behaviour of men is based on certain principles derived from

the 'nature of things'. Thereafter, historians sought to discover

causes, sometimes in the mechanical or biological terms,

sometimes in the metaphysical or economical terms. History

became the marshalling of events of the past in an orderly

sequence of cause and effect.

3. The causal approach (why it happened?) had a parallel in the

functional approach (how it happened?) but as the causal

invariably involved the question of how it happened, the

functional approach led back to the causal approach.

4. A historian normally assigns a number of causes to the same

event, and so a historian deals with a multiplicity of causes. Then

he reduces the list to establish a hierarchy of causes so as to reach

the cause of all causes in the final analysis. As such a historian is

known by the causes which he invokes in the interpretation of his

theme, and every historical argument revolves round the question

of the priority of causes.

5. Henri Poincare noted that science was advancing

simultaneously 'towards variety and complexity' and 'towards

unity and simplicity' and this was a necessary condition of

knowledge. (La Science et l'hypothese, 1902, pp 202-03) The

historian, too, by expanding and deepening his research,

constantly accumulating more and more answers to the question

'Why?' is also interpolating the knowledge and viewpoints from

other social sciences - sociology, psychology, statistics,

economics, social, cultural and legal history, political history, -


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that have enormously increased the range number and range of his

answers.

6. Like the scientists, the historian is also compelled to simplify

the multiplicity of his answers, to subordinate one answers to

another, and to introduce some order and unity into the chaos of

happenings and the chaos of specific causes. He must work

through simplification and through multiplication of causes.

History like science advances through this dual and apparently

contradictory process.

7. Determinism is the belief that everything that happens has a

cause or causes, and could not have happened differently, unless

something in the cause or causes had also been different. The

logical dilemma about free will and determinism does not arise in

real life. The fact is that all human actions are both free and

determined, according to the point of view from which one

considers them.

8. For the historian human actions have causes which are in

principle ascertainable. It is the special function of the historian to

ascertain these causes, but instead of the term 'inevitable' he may

use the term 'extremely probable'. Nothing in history is inevitable,

except in the formal sense that for it to have happened otherwise,

the causes would have had to be different. A historian's business is

simply to explain what happened and why?

9. The trouble about contemporary history is that people

remember the times when all the options were still open, and find


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it difficult to adopt the attitude of the historian for whom they

have been closed by the fait accompli.

10. The role of chance in the theory of history was commented

upon by Marx under three heads (a) it was not very important. It

could 'accelerate' or 'retard' but not radically alter the course of

events. (b) One chance is compensated by another so that in the

end chance cancelled itself out. (c) Chance was especially

illustrated in the character of individuals. This appears to be a

jugglery with words. Equally inadequate is the view that chance in

history is merely a measure of the historian's ignorance, simply a

name for something he fails to understand. This no doubt happens

sometimes when something is described as a mischance as a

favourite way of exempting oneself from the tiresome obligation

to investigate its causes.

11. History begins with the selection and marshalling of historical

facts by the historian. However, the distinction between historical

and unhistorical facts is not rigid or constant and any fact may

become a historical fact at any point of time. The relation of the

historian to his causes is similarly dual and reciprocal in character.

The causes determine his interpretation of the historical process,

and his interpretation determines his selection and marshalling of

the causes. The hierarchy of causes, the relationship of one cause

or a set of causes to another, is the essence of his interpretation.

12. History therefore, is a process of selection in terms of historical

significance. It is a selective system not only of cognitive but of

causal orientations to reality. Just as from the infinite ocean of


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facts, the historian selects those that are significant for his

purpose, so from the multiplicity of sequences of cause and effect

he extracts those, and only those, which are historically

significant, and the standard of historical significant is his ability

to fit them into his pattern of rational explanation and

interpretation. Others have to be rejected not because the relation

between cause and effect is different, but because the sequence

itself is irrelevant to the interpretation of the historian and for that

purpose it has no meaning either for the past or the present.

13. Interpretation is history is always bound up with value

judgements, and causalities is bound up with interpretation. The

dual and reciprocal function of history - to promote an

understanding of the past in the light of the present and of the

present in the light of the past. However, the present has no more

than a notional existence in an imaginary dividing line between

the past and the future. Since past and future are part of the same

time-span, interest in the past and interest in the future are

interconnected. This line of the present is crossed when people

cease to live in the present and become consciously interested both

in the past and in their future.10

10

Note for the Dessertation. Past situation is to be interpolated with the present position and the

implementation strategy for the future.


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14. History begins with the handing down of tradition, and tradition

means the carrying of the habits and lessons of the past into the

future. Records of the past begin to be kept for the benefit of the

future generations. Good historians have the future in their bones.

Besides the question 'Why?' the historian also asks the question

'Whither?' 'Historical thinking is always teleological' says the

Dutch historian Huizinga in his Varieties of History ( ed. F.Stern,

1957, p.293) Good historians have the future in their bones.

Besides the question 'why?' the historian also asks the question

'Whither?'

Chapter 5 History as Progress

( Page 109)

Two most popular views :


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1. Mysticism = the meaning of history lies somewhere outside

history.

2. Cynicism = history has no meaning or a multiplicity of equally

valid or invalid meanings, or the meaning we choose to give to it.

3. 'A constructive outlook over the past' (Powicks,F. Modern

Historian and the Study of History. (1955) p174

1. The Teleological view: In the classical antiquity, History was

not going anywhere because there was no sense of the past or of

the future. Virgil was alone in giving the classical picture of a

return to the golden age in the Aeneid breaking through the cyclic

conception. The Jews and then the Christians introduced a new

element of postulating a goal towards which the historical process

is moving. This gave history a meaning and a purpose but at the

expense of its secular character. Enlightenment restored the

primacy of reason and the rational character of the historical

process itself.

2. History became progress towards the goal of the perfection of

man's estate on earth. According to Gibbon every age has

increased the real wealth, happiness and knowledge of the human

race.11

The cult of progress reached its height with the British

Empire's prosperity, power and self confidence in the Victorian

11

The Decline and the Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter xxxviii as quoted by

E.H.Carr, in What is History? p.111


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Age of 'hopefulness that was easy.'12

. Acton referred to history as

'a progressive science'

3. What is implied in the concept of progress? What assumptions

lie behind it and how far these have become untenable? First, the

muddle about progress and evolution. Two incompatible views

adopted were (1) laws of history were equated with the laws of

nature. ( 2) A belief in progress. What ground was there to treating

nature as progressive , as constantly advancing towards a goal?

4. First, Hegel sharply distinguished history which was

progressive, from nature which was not. Darwinian revolution

equated evolution and progress and confused the biological

inheritance of evolution (measurable only in millennia) with

social acquisition of progress in history (measured in generations).

The essence of man as a rational being is that he develops his

potential capacities by accumulating the experience of past

generations. The transmission of acquired characteristics, which is

rejected by biologists, is the very foundation of social progress

through the transmission of acquired skills from generation to

generation.(P.114)

5. Secondly, progress need not be conceived as having a finite

beginning or end. For example, the belief that civilization was

invented in the Nile Valley in the 4th millennium B.C. is no more

credible than the Egyptian claim about the creation of the world in

4004 B.C. Civilization is an infinitely slow process of

development in which spectacular leaps occur occasionally. Hence

12 B.Russell, Portraits From Memory (1956) pg.17 (quoted by E.H.Carr in What is History? p.112.


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the beginning cannot be viewed as an invention from a particular

date.

6. The hypothesis of progress towards a finite end is equally

misleading. Hegel was condemned for seeing the end of progress

in the Prussian monarchy, while T. Arnold in 1841, had thought

that modern history would be the last stage in the history of

mankind. Yet Acton's vision of the march of history as an

unending progress towards liberty seems chilly and vague. (

Acton, Lectures on Modern History (1906), p.51) ( on p 115 of

What is History?)

7. History as course of events is progress towards liberty; history

as the record of those events as progress towards the

understanding of liberty, and the two progresses advanced side by

side. ( P 115)

8. Thirdly, there cannot be a linear historical progress in an

unbroken straight line without reverses or deviations. There must

be period of regression as well as periods of progress. A class,

nation, group, civilization that has played a leading role in

advance of progress in one period will be too imbued with

traditional interests, and therefore, unlikely to play a leading role

in the next period as it may not be able to adapt itself to the new

conditions. This creates a feeling of loss of relative power and a

craving towards a lost golden age while life is lived sluggishly

along in the present. (R.S.Lynd,(1939) Knowledge for What? P.88

as referred to on pg 116 in What is History?)


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9. Fourthly, What is the essential content of progress in terms of

historical action? When people struggle to extend civil rights or

reform the law they are consciously not seeking to 'progress' to

realize some historical 'law'. They are merely living their sluggish

life in the present. It is the historian who applies to their actions

his hypothesis of progress, and interprets their actions as progress.

10. But this does not invalidate the concept of progress, because '

progress and reaction ….are not empty concepts.'13

The

assumption of Progress rests on the transmission of acquired

assets, both in the form of material possessions and as a capacity

to master, transform and utilize one's environment in the

technological sense.

11. History has known many turning points where the leadership

and initiative has passed from one group to another. But these are

usually times of violent upheavals and struggles for power. The

old authorities weaken and landmarks disappear, and a new order

emerges. During such periods of conflicts, the human capacities or

moral qualities do not decline or diminish, but they come under

enormous strain and get limited and frustrated for their

effectiveness for positive achievement. (P 118).

12. Belief in progress means belief not in any automation or

technological progress but in the progressive development of

human potentialities. Progress is an abstract term. Its concrete

13

Berlin, Isaiah. Foreign Affairs, xxviii, No.3 (June 1950), p.382 as quoted in E.H Carr What is History?

on page 117.


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ends pursued by mankind arise out of the course of history from

time to time, and not from some source outside it. (p 119)

Objectivity in History (Pg. 119 - 129)

13. The word itself is misleading. The social sciences cannot

accommodate to a theory of knowledge which puts subject and

object asunder, and enforces a rigid separation between the

observer and the thing observed. We need a new model that does

justice to the complex process of interrelation and interaction

between them.

14. The facts of history are selected and interpreted by the

historian. Objectivity in history cannot be objectivity of fact, but

only of relation between fact and interpretation, between past,

present and future. The social scientist does not need to deal in

absolutes of the types dealt with by a scientist, as they are

inadequate and totally misleading for his purpose. The social

scientist is dealing with human society which is always in a state

of flux, ever growing and ever changing.

15. The objectivity needed to deal with the nonliving elements and

substances is not needed by him/ her. The social scientist in his

task of interpreting the society also needs his standard of

significance which is also his standard of objectivity for the

purpose of distinguishing between significant events and

accidental events from the point of view of relevance applicable to

the purpose of his research. But as the interpretation itself is

evolving during the research, the purpose and relevance of


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research is also evolving during the same period. The assumption

that change has always to be explained in terms of something

fixed and unchangeable is contrary to the experience of a social

scientist. In history, 'the only absolute is change'.14

16. The process itself is progressive and dynamic. Our sense of

direction, our interpretation of the past and the present are subject

to constant modification and evolution as we proceed. (p122) At a

deeper level this process is a synthesis of the past and the future.

'Imagine the past and remember the future'.15

Only the future can

provide the key to the interpretation of the past; and it is only in

this sense that we can speak of an ultimate objectivity in history. It

is at once a justification and the explanation of history that the past

throws light on the future, and the future throws light on the past.

17. An objective social scientist is one who not only chooses the

right facts and gets his facts right, but that he applies the right

standard of significance. When we call a historian objective it

means two things, - 1 - that he has the capacity to rise above the

limited vision of his own situation in society and in history. 2.

That he has a capacity to project his vision into the future in such a

way as to give him a more profound and more lasting insight into

the past. (p 123) - a long term vision over the past and the future, a

dialogue between the events of the past and the progressively

emerging events of the future.

14

Butterfield, H. (1931) The Whig Interpretation of History. p.58, as quoted by E.H.Carr in What is

History? on page 121. 15

Namier, L.B. Conflicts (1942) p.70, as quoted by E.H.Carr in What is History? (1961) pp 123.


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18. Historical Judgement theory: implies a) that success is the

ultimate criterion of judgement in the future and b) that if

whatever is in the present is not right, then whatever, will be in the

future is right. For two hundred years historians have not only

assumed a direction in which history is moving but have

consciously or unconsciously believed that this direction was on

the whole the right direction; the mankind was moving from the

worse to the better, from the lower to the higher. The test of

significance applied by historians involved their own sense of

moral involvement in the course of history. This optimistic view

was a product of the overwhelming confidence in the future

experienced by all the rich beneficiaries of the Empire.

19. History recognizes 'delayed achievement' - the apparent failure

of today may turn out to have a vital contribution to the

achievement of tomorrow. One of the advantages of this criterion

over the criterion of supposedly fixed and universal principles. (

p.129)

20. The objectivity in history does not and cannot rest on some

fixed and immovable standard of judgement existing here and

now, but only on a standard which is laid up in the future and is

evolved as the course of history advances. History acquires

meaning and objectivity only when it establishes a coherent

relation between past and future.

21. Fact and Value Dichotomy


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The statement that value cannot be derived from facts is partly true

and partly false, as it is one sided and misleading. An examination

of the system of values prevailing reveals the extent the

environment has molded facts. Value words such as liberty,

equality, or justice have changed their meaning not only through

the historical periods, but within a period they differ in different

regions and countries. ( See Carr, 1961: 130) If the statement is

reversed to say that facts cannot be derived from values, it may

also be misleading and require qualification. Our picture of the

facts of our environment is molded by our values, that is by the

categories through which we approach the facts.

22. Values are an essential part of every human being, and provide

the capacity to adapt, affect and control the environment and

thereby make history a record of human progress. Progress in

history is achieved through the interdependence and interaction of

facts and values. An objective historian penetrates most deeply

into this reciprocal process. (p 131) If valueless facts are the North

Pole and at the South Pole are the value judgements struggling to

transform themselves into facts, the realm of historical facts then

lies somewhere between these two extremes. A historian is

balanced between fact and interpretation as he cannot separate

them, except in a static world, which would be meaningless to a

historian. The belief that we come from somewhere is closely

linked to the belief that we are going somewhere. View of history

reflects our view of society. (p.132)


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Chapter 6 The Widening Horizon ( 'And yet- it moves')

23. History begins when Time ceases to be recognized in terms of

the natural processes of seasons and lifespan, and is measured in a

series of specific events consciously affected and influenced by

men - 'the break with nature caused by the awakening of

consciousness'.16

In the modern period of history that began with

the Enlightenment man is self-conscious and history conscious to

an unprecedented degree. He peers eagerly into the past in the

hope of being able to understand the path ahead. Past, present and

future, are linked together in the endless chain of history.

24. Attempts have been made to replace the complex of customs

governing the social order by simple elementary rules based on

reason and natural laws. In Marx's final synthesis history meant

three things:

a) the motion of events in accordance with objective and the

primarily economic laws,

b) the corresponding development of thought through a

dialectical process

c) a corresponding action (class struggle) which reconciles and

unites the theory and practice of revolution. What Marx offers

is a synthesis of objective laws and of conscious action to

translate them into practice.

d) In the modern period the primary function of reason is no

longer to understand objective laws governing society, but to re-

16

Quoted in Carr, E.H. What is History? (1961) p.134


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shape society by conscious action. This is the extension of the

function and power of reason into a new sphere. In the sphere of

economics, for example, the transition has been made from

laissez-faire to planning, from the unconscious to the self-

conscious, from belief in objective economic laws to own control

of economic destiny. Social policy has developed hand in hand

with economic policy. The belief in social reform by conscious

effort has been superseded by the belief in liberty.17

e) Through reason, man has not only transformed his environment

but also himself. Maltus attempted to establish objective laws of

population on the lines of the market laws of Adam Smith, but

today nobody believes is such objective laws, and population

control is now a part of a rational and conscious social policy.

f) The primary function of reason is no longer to understand or

investigate, but to transform and control through application of

rational processes in the fields of sociology, economics, and

politics. The most far reaching consequence of the industrial

revolution has been the progressive increase in literacy and in the

number to those who have learnt to think and to use their reason.

This also indicates that the social, the technological, and the

scientific revolutions are part and parcel of the same process.

g) Increasing individualization also implies a weakening of social

pressures for conformity and uniformity. This is paradoxical

because education which a necessary and powerful instrument in

17

Quoted in Carr, E.H. What is History? (1961) p. 141


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promoting individualization is also a powerful instrument for the

special interest groups for promoting social uniformity.

h) Reason is now applied not merely for exploration but

constructively; not just statically but dynamically. Yet, in every

society more or less coercive measures are applied by the ruling

groups to organize and control mass opinion. This constitutes an

abuse of reason. (p.145) The remedy lies not in a cult of

irrationalism but in a growing consciousness in all social strata, of

the role which reason can play in the technologically advancing

society.

i) The Changed Shape of the World is another progressive

revolution. The discovery of new continents resulting in the

shifting of the centre of gravity from the Mediterranean to the

Atlantic. Europe is now an appendage of the United States of

America.

j) Till the 18th century history was a history of elites. In the 19th

century the trend towards histories of the whole national

community emerged with the expansion of reason. Thereby, the

history of groups and classes, of people and continents began to be

written. For the first time a whole world consisting of peoples

became the concern of history.

k) A sense of change as a progressive factor of history and a belief

in reason as the tool for understanding its complexities. Progress

in science and human affairs has come mainly through the bold

readiness no to be confined to seeking piecemeal improvements


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in the way things are done, but to present fundamental challenges

in the name of reason to the current way of doing things. (p.155)

l) Change is no longer thought of as achievement, as opportunity,

as progress, but as an object of fear of 'the end of civilization as

we know it' - the end of the Colonial period. At a time when the

world is changing its shape more radically and rapidly that at any

time during the last 500 years, it is singular blindness to wish that

the world wide movement will be stayed.

Force of Challenge

Belief in Progress

m) The Relativist view is that one interpretation is as good as

another, that every interpretation is true in its own time and place.

n) The task of the historian is to interpret the event of the past. The

task of the statesman, the economist and the social reformer is to

liberate and organize human energies in the present with a view to

the future. The business of the politician is to consider not only

what was morally and theoretically desirable, but also the forces

which exist in the world, and how they can be directed or

manipulated to probably the partial realization of the ends in view.

Hence, political decisions are rooted in this compromise.

o) The old interpretation is not rejected but is both, included and

superseded in the new.

p) History is largely a record of what the people did, not of what

they failed to do. The forces that triumphed were dragged into

prominence and those that were swallowed were thrust into the


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background. The criterion of judgement in history is not some

'principle claiming universal validity' but 'that which works best'.

(p127)

q) Debates on : (a) basis of some principle of general application

are preferred (b) those on what would work in given historical

conditions

ABSTRACT /

IMAGINATIVE / IDEAL/

Utopian / and other

philosophical abstractions.

Rule of Law

Progress

Dichotomy between 'is' and

'ought'

'fact' and 'value', to be

resolved / cannot be

resolved as it is an

absolute.

- penetrates most deeply

into this reciprocal

process.

Balance between facts and

judgements = Objectivity

in social sciences.

POSITIVE /

1. Rule of law in practice.

2 New interpretation that

includes and supersedes

the old.

3. Standard of significance

in social sciences - the dual

belief of constantly

expanding and deepening

insights in to the course of

events. ('a constructive

outlook over the past')

a) and a touchstone for

distinguishing between the

real and the accidental.

b) 'Delayed achievement' -

c) Existence of a sense of

direction is to be accepted


the Book 2018

10x10 Learning

for proper analysis. The

belief that we come from

somewhere is closely

linked to the belief that we

are going somewhere.

d) View of history reflects

our view of society.

e) Balance between facts

and interpretation, between

fact and value as a social

scientist cannot separate

them except in a static and

lifeless world.

IRRATIONAL NEGATIVE

Old interpretations


the Book 2018

10x10 Learning

what is history? by e. h. carr summary of main points from...

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