What is History?

http://home.comcast.net/~cphenlymbk2006/ibnapresentation.htm

CARR Link, at the bottom of the page.

The Positivists: (19th century-1830s) (counter-claim to Abel)

-obssessed with facts.

-"Cult of Facts"

-They saw history as a science.

-Empirical strain of studying history.

-objective-->concerned with the facts only. when a bias come inot it, it's not history, it's just opinion.

-"The process of p/reception is passive: having received the data, he then acts in them."

- Common-sense view of history

"here are certain basic facts which are the same for all historians and which form, so to speak, the backbone of history."

Carr:

- history are major events.

-if an event happened, but it was not recorded, not analysed as important, then it is not a historical fact.

-it's not history until someone has deemed it important, and has written it down.

-"A historian is necessarily selective."

-"The belief in a hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian is a preposterous fallacy."

- a selection, of a selection of a selection of facts.