2: Historical Methods and Sources Flashcards
The process of critically examining and analyzing the records and survivals of the past.
HISTORICAL METHOD
To study objectively (intention of acquiring detached and truthful knowledge independent of one’s personal reactions) a thing must first be an object and must have an independent resistance outside the human mind).
HISTORICAL METHOD
Most of history is based on the human mind since most of history is based upon ______
recollection (written or spoken history).
Historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use ________ and other evidence to research and then to write histories in the form of accounts of the past.
primary sources
The question of the nature, and even the possibility, of a sound historical method is raised in the philosophy of history as a question of ______
Epistemology
The study of historical method and writing is known as
historiography
True or False
In reconstruction, every part of what was observed is remembered, every part of what was remembered is recorded, was recorded in historian’s attention.
FALSE.
It was only a part (not every part in history is written)
any thing or place from which something comes, arises, or is obtained; origin:
Source
Published materials (books, journals etc.) and manuscript (handwritten and unprinted like archival materials and memoirs)
These are what type of source?
Written Sources
What type of Source?
-Oral history, artifacts, fossils, etc.
Non written Sources
-Testimony of an eyewitness
This is what type of Origin?
Primary Sources
- It must have been produced by a contemporary of that is narrated. It is a document or physical object written or created during the time under study. These sources were present during an experience or time period and offer an inside view of a particular event.
This is what type of Origin?
Primary Sources
Interpret and analyze primary sources
This is what type of Origin?
Secondary Sources
They are one or more steps removed from the event. Examples are printed textbooks.
This is what type of Origin?
Secondary Sources
Historical Sources according to Form
Written Sources
Non written Sources
Historical Sources according to Origin
Primary Source
Secondary Source
is a set of skills that allows you to think carefully about the nature of historical sources. Rather than simply accepting what sources say, these skills help you to develop a healthy skepticism about the reasons a source was made and whether you can trust it.
HISTORICAL SOURCE CRITICISM
The two Scandinavian historians that formulated the core principles of source criticism
Olden-Jørgensen (1998) and Thurén (1997)
Human sources may be relics. Give example of relics
Fingerprint; or narratives such as a statement or a letter
True or False
Narratives are more credible sources than Relics.
False.
Any given source may be forged or corrupted
True or False
True
Strong indications of the originality of the source increase its
reliability
True or False
The closer a source is to the event which it purports to describe, the more one can trust it to give an accurate historical description of what actually happened
True
A _____ is more reliable than a secondary source which is more reliable than a tertiary source, and so on.
Primary source
If a number of independent sources contain the same message, the credibility of the message is _______
The credibility of the message is strongly increased
should be minimized or supplemented with opposite motivations.
Tendencies (Bias)
The _____ of a source is its motivation for providing some kind of bias.
Tendency
If it can be demonstrated that the witness or source has ________ in creating bias then the credibility of the message is increased.
no direct interest in creating bias
Internal Criticism is referred also as
Historical reliability or Constructive Feedback
it is the researcher’s effort to recover the text’s sense. This is the hermeneutic process in which the scholar interacts with the text’s context rather than the document’s exterior features.
Internal criticism
External criticism is referred also as
Authenticity and provenance
is a mechanism whereby historians decide whether a source is credible by testing the source’s authenticity.
External criticism
to recover the text’s sense
hermeneutic process
