Art or Science

Updated on May 23, 2018

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Is History Art or Science?

Authored by James Muñoz
History is the academic discipline that gives the human species
the ability to understand the present through past events.
History allows for a more comprehensible illumination of the
present; the possibilities of our future; and the exuberant
lineage under a basic past that molds and shapes the outcome
of nations, the many traditions and our human endeavors.
History is most important in times when the mysteries of the
present day can be traced back to its root causes or influential
catalytic events of the past. Without history we as a species
would not fully understand the present and the future, as the
present would have been directly created and molded from
humanities historical past. History with some scholars is a
discipline that collects data from the past and pieces together
such data to create a historical event. Within the collection of
data we find the epicenter of art and science within the study of
history. Interpretation of data begins and the fragmentation of
historical data is linked together to form a historical event or
finding. Now when data is interpreted or understood; the art of
this academic discipline would be the ability to conclude or
deduce lost pieces of history to establish this historical fact or
event. Therefore History is thought to be an art to some scholars
while to other scholars’ history is science or both. To further
understand this concept we must dig deeper and fully
understand history as an academic discipline and unearth
history’s academic systems and definitions. Next, as we examine
the academic discipline of history, we must take its composition
and determine how this discipline correlates to science and or
art. Finally let us re-assemble the fine pieces of the academic
discipline of history and see how history functions under a
scientific schema or under an artistic schema or both. We will
then conclude with our findings, if indeed the academic
discipline of history stems from science, stems from art or a
combination of science and art.
To fully understand history and its conceptual aspects as an
academic discipline; we will need to unravel history’s many
systems in order to begin our investigation of history as an
academic discipline and unearth history’s academic systems and
definitions. First we must find the answer to the question, “What
is history?” As this question brings to light of the broad spectrum
of history entails; we then appreciate how scholars may distill
information or interpretations of the past. “History is not a
collection of facts about the past whose primary value is to
improve one’s skills while playing trivia games; it is an
interpretation of the past based on the weight of available
evidence.”[i] History, therefore allows for a perspective into the
present from the past. History provides a basic platform of the
present; rooting itself from the past which is history. We may see
history as a vital link of present and past and the historian’s
interpretive narratives with facts and how they are associated to
one another. “What is history?, is that it is a continuous process
of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending
dialogue between the present and the past.”[ii] History
therefore can be seen as a continuous relationship between the
historian and his facts. Now without the interaction of the
historian and his facts; these facts would not be found or used
and the historian would not have evidence or a basis for
interpretive conclusions. With all these aspects of history we
may also understand the study of history in a combination of art
and science respectively. “Hence the study of history offers living
proofs of the complementary nature of art and of science. One
might think that this would be a source of pride to
historians.”[iii]As we further define history we begin to merge
the science and art of history and how these concepts merge
with one another. History at a broader scale utilizes various
academic disciplines and merges these academic disciplines to
better ascertain historical facts and how these facts have
emerged or played out in history to the present. “Historical
scholarship has begun to establish firm ties with such
neighboring intellectual disciplines as economics and
sociology.”[iv] Historians utilizes many tools at their disposal;
such as various academic disciplines in sociology, economic,
anthropology, religion, and many more academic disciplines to
assist with facts and interpretive nature of deciphering facts and
figures. The historian often finds themselves in the realm of
science while some historians begin to combine the areas of art
such as literature interpretation and the human psychological
nature. It is at this point where we begin to contemplate history
as science or a combination of art with science. “The evidence
for the past events is therefore always incomplete and
fragmentary. Many pieces of evidence are lost, and others are
often faded and warped. Historians fit the pieces together as
carefully as possible, but holes remain in the picture they try to
reconstruct…What emerges may closely resemble what
happened, but we can never be completely sure that what we
know as history is an exact replica of the past.”[v] Therefore with
this understanding the beginning of filling in the gaps of
historical facts begins the aspects of art of history and the
historian’s ability to deduce a subjective narrative to piece
together the facts to form a reconstruction of history. This is
where the art in history begins. Although with the pieces of fact
and gaps being managed by historians we still have the aspect of
hypothesis and theories within history and historical findings. A
balance by the historian must be achieved to better enhance
historical facts and historical narratives. This area of balance is
often a point at which the historian may eschew evidence or
interpret such facts to be interpreted subjectively. “Whereas
historians might find it impossible to eschew their own point of
view, they must be aware of their own prejudices and guards
against letting these intrude into their approach to historical
study.”[vi] We find the battle between objectivity and
subjectivity of historical data and evidence, which at most
instances are bits and pieces of a much broader historical event
or perspective. Thus in this scenario we see how the historian
may test the evidence under a hypothesis or under a theory.
Under these testable scientific conditions the historian often
finds himself with gaps and fragments at which art begins its
path for the historian as he must begin to piece together or
create a basic structure with missing links or paths toward the
historical past. As we begin to further isolate interpretation,
subjectivity and objectivity; under the context of history we must
further dissect the academic discipline of history to fully see the
range of the mechanisms of history; as associated with how
history is a form of art and or science.
As we explore the academic discipline of history, we must take
its elements and investigate how this discipline correlates to
science and or art. “Historiography, or the study of the history
and methodology of historical interpretation, is of great interest
to historians.”[vii] We now must understand the processes of
history and its methods of interpretation. “Understanding
historiography is important to historians in that it shows what
questions have received much or little attention, and reveals
question of the past that might be ready for a second
look.”[viii] Historiography allows for an understanding of
historical interpretation upon how the information was
constructed in its associated context. With better understanding
of different scholars or schools we may better understand the
contexts and format for the use of science and art within the
academic discipline of history. School of Ranke or the Ranke
method, “…argued that while the historian could attempt to
understand the past on its own terms, it required a certain leap
of imagination.”[ix] We may see clearly with Ranke’s method
“imagination” begins the point at which history is an art. With
the emergence of further scientific approaches with regards to
Ranke’s methods; these scientific approaches began to yield
from the Ranke school what was called Positivism which claimed,
“…to be objective, and in the extreme, argued that by using the
scientific method, historians could efface themselves of their
biases, report what had occurred, and ultimately uncover the
laws of human behavior. By claiming to be scientific historians
could confidently make truthful claims about the past.”[x] This
aspect was further carried forward and a Progressive school
emerged from the scientific approach more into a sociological
approach. The Progressive school began to think in terms of the
methods of a social scientific emergence with history. Further
progression occurred and another interpretive school emerged
which was the Annales School approach to history which,
“sought to write total history that examined history over the long
term. Their interest in studying the rhythms of everyday life…”
Through these different interpretive schools we mostly see the
aspect of the emergence of the interactive ability of social
science and scientific method. As each method evolved or
emerged with a scientific objectivity for history; therein we have
fragmentation by which is relevant with history, and thus
emerges postmodernism. “For postmodernists, fragmentary
evidence and the inability of an observer to escape his or her
point of view make the past unknowable. Instead, they believe
that history is little more than an artistic representation of the
past that reveals more about the author than the period
discussed.”[xi] We now may begin to link past historical
fragmentation even with the use of scientific methods; as a
rendering of the artistic approach to gaps and missing links of
historical events and or the past. Furthermore such meanings as
gender, race, class, and ethnicity have a greater range to
institutionalize within history. Thus these elements will lead the
historian to the inevitable spectrum of the social science
spectrum within the gaps and imaginations of piecing together
the artist spectrum. As an artist creates his painting so does the
historian with all their methods as his paint brush of history he
begins to piece together a portrait of history. The historian next
has different genres or subjects which begin the specialization of
history into unique categories such as political, military,
diplomatic, intellectual, religious, economic and social history.
Perhaps many more are evolving in the field of history as there
becomes further expansion of history’s ability to merge with
various academic disciplines. Now with each vast specialty
therein lies its philosophical attributes and unlimited historical
nature of historical examination. Within each historical context
lies its scientific and artistic approach to history.
Finally let us re-assemble the fine pieces of the academic
discipline of history and see how history functions under a
scientific schema or under an artistic schema or both. Now that
we have looked into the different components of history and
have a larger understanding for the academic discipline of
history; let us go ahead and relate history in its entirety with
regards to science and art. “The two processes, that of science
and that of art, are not very different. Both science and art form
in the course of the centuries a human language by which we can
speak about the more remote part of reality, and the coherent
sets of concepts as well as the different styles of art are different
word or groups of words in this language.”[xii] We may now
visualize the adeptness of art and science within history in its
entirety and how both shape historical outcomes for the
historian. “If a scientific hypothesis is a metaphor, so is a plastic
design or a phrase of music. At the same time as metaphors they
are radically incommensurate.”[xiii] Thus we now may see that
the study of history offers both spectrum by which compliments
each other through the endeavors of historical writing and
analysis. Science and art complement each other in history as to
various aspect of gathering historical facts and events; while art
brings the broader approach that the historian investigates,
examines, and correlates through years of historian experience
the ability of solving mysteries as a true artistic approach.
Science and art within history is the essence to historians, due to
the fact that historical facts are often extracted orally or
secondary through many avenues such as eyewitness
testimonials, artifacts or manuscripts; from which the historian
begins the creation of historical writings from his previous
discovered facts. Thus we may now see the merge of science and
art from the historian’s perspective as historical fact or event
come to light. As the historian find these fact or testimonies; the
historian may have used scientific methods to extract his findings
or a more artistic approach of piecing together his finding from
other findings or past discoveries. “Historians-in contrast to
investigators in almost any other field of knowledge-very seldom
confront their data directly. The literary or artistic scholar has
the poem or painting before him; the astronomer scans the
heavens through a telescope; the geologist tramps the soil he
studies; the physicist or chemist runs experiments in his
laboratory. The mathematician and the philosopher are
abstracter from reality by definition and do not pretend to
empirical competence. The historian alone is both wedded to
empirical reality and condemned to view his subject matter at
second remove.”[xiv] Thus by the historians realm alone; the
historian faces the combination of art and science enabling the
historian the ability to write their accounts.
We may now conclude with our findings, that indeed the
academic discipline of history stems from science, stems from
art or a combination of science and art. “Historians are by nature
wary of precise definition; they hate to be confined within tight
terminological boundaries, and they are ever alert to the fallacy
of misplaced concreteness; they much prefer to write ordinary
words in their common sense usage and then let the reader little
by little become aware of how these words have subtly changed
their significance through time.”[xv] We may learn that
historians through their literary uniqueness tend to gravitate to
the artistic medium despite the usage of the scientific medium.
A historian with their nature to not pinpoint themselves with
precise language therefore leaves room to navigate within the
realm of the artistic approaches to history. Again from this
standpoint we may conclude the ability for science and art to
merge in the event of a historian avoiding precise language in
their writing. History allows for a more comprehensible
illumination of the present; the possibilities of our future; and
the exuberant lineage under a basic past that molds and shapes
the outcome of nations, the many traditions and our human
endeavors. We are reminded of the influence of history from our
daily lives as our traditions, nationalism, and human
achievements blossom from a historical past, but yet it is with
these influences that artful literary prowess progress and
scientific facts adorn each other. History influences the present
through its artful historical depictions and records. History is
most important in times when the mysteries of the present day
can be traced back to its root causes or influential catalytic
events of the past. Without history we as a species would not
fully understand the present and the future, as the present
would have been directly created and molded from humanities
historical past. History, therefore allows for a perspective into
the present from the past. History provides a basic platform of
the present; rooting itself from the past which is history. We may
see history as a vital link of present and past and the historian’s
interpretive narratives with facts and how they are associated to
one another. As we further define history we begin to merge the
science and art of history and how these concepts merge with
one another. Science and art complement each other in history
as to various aspect of gathering historical facts and events;
while art brings the broader approach that the historian
investigates, examines, and correlates through years of historian
experience the ability of solving mysteries as a true artistic
approach. With better understanding of different scholars or
schools we may better understand the contexts and format for
the use of science and art within the academic discipline of
history. The historian often finds themselves in the realm of
science while some historians begin to combine the areas of art
such as literature interpretation and the human psychological
nature. It is at this point where we begin to contemplate history
as science or a combination of art with science. Science and art
for history is of essence to historians due to the fact that
historical facts are often extracted orally or secondary through
artifacts or manuscripts; from which at this point the historian
begins the creation of historical writings from previous
discovered facts. “Solving such puzzles of history involve both
science and art. Science is a synonym for knowledge. But
knowledge of what? History includes data-evidence, the names
of people and places, when things happened, where they
happened, bits of information gathered from many sources. It
also includes interpretations of historians and others in the past
who have written on the topic that the writer decided to treat in
an essay. The art of history lies in combining fact and
interpretation to tell a story about the past…”[xvi] As we have
seen, history’s methods of recording and deciding where
interpretations of the historian would best fit; establishes the
formulation of stories from the past. We have seen the different
aspects of which the historian may correlate his or her findings
from the past. The historian may seek a better understanding
through various aspects of interpretive notion or beliefs; yet the
historian’s scientific approach obligates the historian to seek
past facts. The historian’s interpretation and approach
influences the historical data and depending on the scientific
method or objective school of thought (Ranke, Annales,
Postmodernism); the historian will still need to utilize a format
or artistic additive in order to piece together the fragmented
historical data. Next the historian’s actual present day life may
also affect the ability of the historian to interpret the historical
facts; thereby often influencing the historical events and its
context. As the historian may influence the historical context
through his daily life it is at this point where art again affects the
historical data and better fits the historian’s arrangement of his
interpretation for the historical data or finding. Thus we may see
that the historian with his known variables must be an artist of
making sense to the historical data through such an array of
influences. “He cannot escape it, its pressured are all around
him. And if his trade has more than antiquarian meaning for him,
he will feel impelled to comment on the recent past. For the
same dilemmas of personal loyalty and ideal allegiance, of the
inborn ruthlessness and good will toward men, which have
troubled his mind in his study of remote ages will force
themselves upon him when he rests his weary eyes for a
moment on the circumstances in which he is actually
living.”[xvii] The historian must understand that his own time
may affect or influence his interpretation of the past. This
present time affect may develop in the form of present day
influential factors such as politics, ideology, and or groups that
could change the psychoanalytical objectiveness of the historian.
These tremendous variables that affect the outcome of the
historian’s interpretation greatly influence the outcome and it is
in these variables that the art manifests into the academic
discipline of history. The psychological spectrum that influences
the imagination and the environmental vectors are mechanisms
to art as it is utilized within historical connotation. Through
various schools of ideology within the interpretation of history;
we may clearly see the evidence of history being a science and
an art despite interpretive conclusions. No matter how scientific
the historian may administer his ideology of interpretive
findings; there will be a point where science ends and art begins.
Science alone within the field of history would not be able to
piece together the entire historical event as proven by scientific
limitation and through the fragmented historical past actualities.
“For the historian who sees not incompatibility between his
different roles- who is at least as much an artist as he is a social
scientist-is uniquely equipped to lead others toward the
imaginative fusion of these attributes, and thereby to illuminate
the era in which we live.”[xviii] The historian yields the ability to
utilize science within many scientific disciplines and further fuses
the imagination to balance a historical outcome and sort through
the past and piece together a historical time frame. Perhaps the
comparison would be how an artist finds shapes and sizes of
material that nobody would see or comprehend and begins to
sculpt and piece together a work of art. Where the ordinary
person fails to see the possibilities or imagination to construct
the art is where also the historian begins to find and see the
possibilities of piecing together historical facts and stories. The
artist utilizes the laws of science as in molding, sculpting,
recreating pieces; thus we have history as an art and as a science.
Notes:
1. Chris J. Arndt, Michael J. Galgano, and Raymond M.
Hyser, Doing History Research and Writing in the digital Age,
(Boston MA: Thomson Corp, 2008), 1.
2. Edward H. Carr, What is History? , (New York: Random House,
1961), 35.
3. H. Stuart Hughes, History as Art and as Science: Twin Vistas on
the Past, (New York: Harper
and Row, 1964), 3.
4. H. Stuart, 2.
5. Richard Marius and Melvin E Page, A Short Guide to Writing
About History 7thEdition, (New York: Pearson Education Inc,
2010), 4.
6. Arndt, Galgano, and Hyser, 5.
7. Arndt, Galgano, and Hyser, 6.
8. Arndt, Galgano, and Hyser, 6.
9. Arndt, Galgano, and Hyser, 7.
10. Arndt, Galgano, and Hyser, 7.
11. Arndt, Galgano, and Hyser,12.
12. H. Stuart, 2.
13. H. Stuart, 2.
14. H. Stuart, 4.
15. H. Stuart, 6.
16. Marius and Page, 3.
17. H. Stuart, 106.
18. H. Stuart, 107.
Bibliography
Arndt, Chris J., Galgano, Michael J., and Hyser, Raymond
M. Doing History Research and
Writing in the digital Age, Boston MA: Thomson Corp, 2008.
Carr, Edward H., What is History? , New York: Random House,
1961.
 Marius, Richard and Page, Melvin E. A Short Guide to Writing
About History 7thEdition,
New York: Pearson Education Inc, 2010.
Stuart, Hughes H., History as Art and as Science: Twin Vistas on
the Past, New York: Harper
and Row, 1964.
Bibliography
Arndt, Chris J., Galgano, Michael J., and Hyser, Raymond
M. Doing History Research and
Writing in the digital Age, Boston MA: Thomson Corp, 2008.
Carr, Edward H., What is History? , New York: Random House,
1961.
Marius, Richard and Page, Melvin E. A Short Guide to Writing
About History 7thEdition,
New York: Pearson Education Inc, 2010.
Stuart, Hughes H., History as Art and as Science: Twin Vistas on
the Past, New York: Harper
and Row, 1964.
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Editorial History: science or art? HEN K WESSELING * Is history a

science or an art? There are several ways of looking at this well
known and frequently debated question. One way would be to
look at the categorization of disciplines as made by the Academia
Europaea. This organization has given a great deal of thought to
the matter, resulting for the moment in the rather practical
solution of essentially distinguishing four broad categories:
Humanities, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences and Life Sciences.
It is noticeable that, apart from the Humanities, all other scholars
use the term 'science' to describe their work. But not all of them
will be considered as scientists proper because, in the English
language, the word science (or sciences) in its simple form,
without any adjective, refers exclusively to the natural sciences.
To a certain extent the same is true in France. Of course, the
concept of the sciences humaines or the sciences de I'homme is
well established - although they are not altogether too clearly
distinguished from the sciences sociales - but here again 'les
sciences' in its simple form is the term used for the natural
sciences. Thus, the Institut de France includes five academies but
only one of them simply calls itself Academie des Sciences, and
that, of course, is the one for the natural sciences. In German -
and Dutch - the situation is different. The term Wissenschaft
does not exclusively refer to the natural sciences. There is no
Wissenschaft as such. There is Naturwissenschaft and there is
Geisteswissenschaft or Kulturwissenschaft. They are different,
but both are Wissenschaft. This may be because the term
Wissenschaft comes from Wissen (knowledge) and although the
humanities may not be scientific, obviously it cannot be denied
that they are based on knowledge. The German notion of the
Kultur or Geisteswissenschaft has much to do with the
development of history as a scientific discipline in the course of
the 19th century. This was a new development, because
originally, in its traditional or classical form, history was
considered as a form of literature. After all, apart from,
somewhat surprisingly, astronomy, it is the only discipline to
have its own muse: Clio. Classical historians were, and still are,
considered as part of classical literature: Herodotus, Livy, Tacitus
and even Caesar are - or should we say were? - read at school,
just as were Euripides, Virgil and Horace. This was also the case
with historians like Machiavelli, Schiller and Voltaire, who were,
at the same time, famous writers. This tradition continued well
into the 19th century: Macaulay, Carlyle, Michelet were all
typically literary historians. * The Netherlands Institute for
Advanced Study, Merjboomlaan 1, 2242 PR Wassenaar, The
Netherlands. available at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S106279870000329X Downloaded
from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address:
121.97.200.179, on 14 Aug 2019 at 01:15:22, subject to the
Cambridge Core terms of use, 266 Editorial Then there came a
reaction to this situation with the plea for the introduction of
scientific methods in history. The first stage in this process of
'scientification' brought the introduction of the so-called
philological and text-critical method. The principal task of the
historian was supposed to be the truthful reconstruction and
interpretation of historical texts and documents. The aim of a
historian's work was verstehen: to understand the past. The
word verstehen already indicates that this was a typically
German movement, which indeed it was. But the German
example was followed all over Europe. We owe a great deal to
the German historical school of the 19th century. We owe it
some important notions that are still part and parcel of historical
thinking: the notion of development over time; that is, the
diachronic concept of history, as well as the synchronic concept
of history, i.e. the notion that every period has its own character
and that there is a unity that connects all the phenomena during
a certain period. Furthermore, we owe to it the notion that goes
with this, namely that every period should be judged according
to the standards of its own time or, in the famous words of the
German historian Ranke, that every period is unmittelbar zu
Gott. All this can be summarized as what the Germans call
Historismus (historicism). Historicism strongly underlined the
uniqueness of historical events. This led to the great debate at
the end of the 19th century that was, in particular, animated by
the German neo-Kantian philosophers Rickert and Windelband,
who claimed that there were, in fact, two models of science, the
model of the natural sciences which they labelled 'nomothetic'
because it is interested in regularities and thus in laws, and
another totally different concept of science, which they labelled
'idiographic', because it is not interested in laws but in the
particular and the unique. Its aim is to give an accurate
description rather than to discover laws and rules. This was the
first strategy used by historians in order to have their discipline
accepted as a science: to promote their activities as a science sui
generis, in its own right. It was not wholly unsuccessful but
ultimately it was vulnerable because it was in contradiction to
the very powerful notion of the unity of science. After all it is not
easy to accept that there exist two practices that are very
different but have the same name of science. But it was not only
'idiographic' theory that was criticized, for historical practice was
also attacked. The criticism was that this approach to history was
too narrow, too focused on great men and political events.
History should also study the anonymous people who had always
represented the vast majority of the population. Thus, social
history came about and methods were developed to study the
unknown people of the past, first in Europe, the peasants and
the labouring classes, later on also in the rest of the world, the
so-called 'people without history'. This led to the second strategy
of historians in trying to become accepted as a science, the one
of the conversion to the social sciences. This school of thinking
with which the name of the French Annales group is intimately
connected, was dominant during the greatest part of the 20th
century. It had a strong impact on history not only in France but
also elsewhere. It played an important role in the renewal of
historical studies, by introducing new themes, new approaches,
new methods and new techniques. It continues to be important
but, in recent years, a new school has become fashionable which
may be labelled the narrative school. Essential for this school's
way of thinking is the claim that history is not only not a social
science but that it is not a science at all and that the purpose of
doing history lies in something else, namely in the enjoyment of
'the pleasures of the past'. The background of this development
is manifold. It concerns available at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S106279870000329X Downloaded
from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address:
121.97.200.179, on 14 Aug 2019 at 01:15:22, subject to the
Cambridge Core terms of use, Editorial 267 postmodernism and
the so called 'linguistic turn', but of course it is also connected
with the general decline in appreciation of the social sciences. To
be a social scientist may have seemed attractive in the 1960s,
but it did not sound so very sexy in the 1980s! Who is right? The
narrativists or the scientists? To the non-philosophical mind it is
clear that the answer lies somewhere in the middle. If history is
a science it is a rather special sort of science, but if it is to be
considered as a form of literature, it is also a very special form of
literature. History is different from the sciences in so far as it is
very difficult to speak of scientific progress. Science in its proper
sense is characterized by the accumulation of knowledge, and
thus by progress. Very few school-teachers of today will have the
mind of Newton or Darwin but most of them have a better
insight into nature than these geniuses had. This is not the case
in history. History is not based on the accumulation of
knowledge. We know now more about the French Revolution
than Michelet did. We can also agree that some interpretations
of the Revolution have proved to be untenable, that they have
been 'falsified', to put it in Popperian terms. But we cannot say
that we now know the truth about the French Revolution while
our ancestors did not. In this respect history is more like the arts
where the idea of progress is also either absent or ambiguous.
Who, for example, would say that, now that we can enjoy Appel,
Albee and Andriessen, we can happily get rid of the works of
Rembrandt, Shakespeare and Mozart? In this respect history
may also be somewhat similar to philosophy, insofar as that
discipline too is hardly considered as a story of continuous
progress - from the clumsy reasonings of Plato and Aristotle to
the high levels of sophistication of Heidegger's 'Nichtendes
Nichts' and Sartre's 'etre en soi'. On the other hand, history is not
simply literature either. This can also be pretty easily
demonstrated. A novelist may write: 'It was a rainy day in
Carlovia, the splendid capital of Ruritania, when Queen Diana
woke up on the morning of November 11, 1945. The Queen felt
miserable, she hated rain and was always depressed by it'. It is
prose that may not lead straightaway to the Nobel or the Booker
Prize, but, apart from aesthetic concerns, no objection can be
made to it. A historian however could only write this if he or she
had evidence for all his or her statements: was it indeed raining
that day? Was the Queen depressed? Was this because of the
weather? How does the historian know that? This the historian
will have to explain by giving references and mentioning sources.
In other words, like the novelist the historian writes a story, but
in the historian's case sources are needed to justify the story.
Historians have often been worried by the ambiguous character
of their trade. But they should not be. Whatever their discipline
may be, it is appreciated both by the public at large and by their
peers from other disciplines. In a way, their work is more
respected than that of their colleagues in the social sciences.
They can write for large audiences, while at the same time and
for the same work also be praised by their fellow historians.
Historians may receive the Nobel Prize for Literature but they
have also received it for Economics. In short, they live in the best
of two worlds and they should better enjoy it. For more than
anybody else they ought to know that things may change.
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