ABSTRACT
This treatise of historical methodology, originally published in 1950 is based upon a liberal conception of history which excludes no narrator of past events from the ranks of historians. It defines history as the accurate story which preserves the memory of the past experiences of human societies. The functionof history determines its method and provides the answer to the question: how secure is our knowledge of the past? In the author’s view, history is empirical and its results are for ever provisional. The relative merits of dogmatism and scepticism are examined and several interpretations among English historians are scrutinized.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |74 pages
What is History?
chapter |20 pages
The Story that must be told
chapter |46 pages
Nothing but a Story
chapter |6 pages
The Past Itself?
part |81 pages
The Detection of Events
chapter |19 pages
Events and their Traces
chapter |13 pages
Detecting the Traces
chapter |9 pages
From Trace to Event
chapter |27 pages
Certitude, Doubt and Common Sense
chapter |11 pages
Our Knowledge of Events
part |90 pages
Telling the Story