ABSTRACT
Sometimes historians do not have a fixed preconception of what a subject is like, but examine details of the subject to discover what general description of it will both relate many of the facts they have discovered about the subject, and help to explain them. General descriptions arrived at in this way can be called summary interpretations of the subject. There are usually several different general descriptions which can sum up a lot of information about a subject, each more or less equally justified, and each showing how elements of the subject are related to one another, thus displaying their meaning or significance. That is why general descriptions can be called summary interpretations of the subject.
