School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemThe early history of the Diamond Valley, 1836-1854( 1969)“History,” said Francis Bacon, “maketh men wise.”, and whether the historian’s matter be a wide-ranging study of civilizations or a local history on the smallest scale, I believe this is the primary aim he must keep clearly before him. History is a purposeful discipline, motivated and directed by this objective. From an examination of the past the historian seeks wisdom for the present; this is the ultimate criterion of all historical writing and all historiographic values and judgements are tributary to it. The study and writing of history is both a science and an art. As a scientist the historian seeks out and balances his source materials, evaluates their validity, and analyses them to determine the facts of the past. But the history he writes must go further than a bare recital of facts which is a dull product, sterile of wisdom. My experience in this work is that the study of history becomes ultimately an act of understanding by a creative imagination and a disciplined mind, steeped in the facts of the past, and keenly aware of the present, and this has been my objective. History is no less scientific or “true” because it is an imaginative re-creation: contemporary writers on the method of the physical sciences make a very similar claim for their disciplines. History is about the men of the past whose thoughts and ideas rough-hewed our destiny, and our minds can be schooled to reach back to their times just as their best minds stretch forward towards us. Like a physical science, history is always a transitional understanding. The disciplined and creative historian with the hindsight of a century may perceive within the ideas and actions of the past significant developments germane to his purpose that were indiscernible to all but the acutest minds of the period he is studying. These may be nowhere explicitly recorded in the documents, for the men of the past were no more able than we ourselves to foresee what meaning future generations might be seeking from the records of their times. Documentary sources may provide specific statements of men’s conscious objectives and motives in the past, but each historian’s research, directed by his quest for wisdom in his own day, sets them in a new context, ae meaning which a later age reads from the record of men’s attested deeds and stated policies may be very different from that which their authors attributed to them. Thus there can be no comprehensive final understanding of the past. In every age men will re-write their history to answer the questions of their time, seeking wisdom from the past to bring order into the confusion of the present, by adding to it a perspective, a proportion, a direction, and a rationale. To attain an insight into our past is to illuminate our present and give us the priceless wisdom to know ourselves and shape our destiny. The writing of history is an art. The historian who seeks to convey to other men what he has found in his studies will require all the artistry he can command to tell his story well within the discipline which historiography prescribes. He must communicate to the minds of his readers a re-creation of the past that gives meaning to the present. He must be aware that his selection and marshalling of facts and his allocation of emphases are swayed by subjective considerations and by the questions of his own time which he is seeking to answer, and that these inevitably bias the history he writes. Finally, since a historian’s primary obligation is to be correct about what happened in the past, he must take care that his bias does not falsify the accuracy of the whole. His task becomes a delicate gauging and balancing of priorities. He cannot tell the whole truth, but he is required to tell nothing but the truth and not to distort the remainder. (From Introduction)