Name: Mary Heart T.

Bantayan Instructor: Renato Valdez

Exercise 1.4 Historical Criticism.

Explain and discuss the following items below.

1. What is historical criticism?

Historical criticism is the historical approach to literary criticism. It involves

looking beyond the literature at the broader historical and cultural events occurring during
the time the piece was written. An understanding of the world the author lived in (events,
ideologies, culture, lifestyle etc.) allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the
work. The meaning of words often changes from generation to generation. Therefore,
historians must find out the meaning and sense in which it has been used in the document.
The misinterpretation of terms may lead to a misunderstanding of historical development.

2. Discuss the importance of historical criticism.

Historical criticism is what turns an artefact or a text into a source, the actual
foundation of historical argumentation. Its importance is to help discover the text's
primitive or original meaning in its original historical context and its literal sense. It also
seeks to establish a reconstruction of the historical situation of the author and recipients
of the text.

3. Do you believe that writing history is subjective? Why? Explain.

Yes, because you bring your background and pre-existing beliefs to your work. You
have pre-existing views about the value of certain authors, certain approaches, and certain
works, and you’ll value those things based on your beliefs. History began not as a ‘science’,
but as a branch of rhetoric. Subjectivity is always part of what you’re doing.

4. How can the writing of history objective? Explain

History is usually objective, but, resources vary, clarity is an aim, some balance in
the weighing and assessing is essential, new inputs demand new efforts and conclusions, so,
history lives and never dies, stays acceptable until it is not and must adapt over time, it is
never static for long. The real objective nature of writing history is to try to address the
facts, as every side had seen the event, and never to choose a side that you may personally
agree with.

5. What criteria do historical researchers use to validate their sources of data?

Discuss.

Historical data has to be examined for its authenticity and truthfulness. Such
examination is done through criticism; by asking and researching to help determine
truthfulness, biases, omissions and consistency in data, accuracy and reliability, currency
and timeliness, and credibility. The historian’s primary tool of understanding and
interpreting the past is the historical sources. Historical sources ascertain historical
facts. Such facts are then analysed and interpreted by the historian to weave historical
narrative.

 Truthfulness- truth discovery is an emerging topic that attracts much attention.

 Reliability- the data reliability issue poses great difficulty to many decision making tasks
when the data contains inconsistent, inaccurate, or even false information that could
mislead the decisions and eventually result in invaluable losses.
 Biases- it is taken to mean interference in the outcomes of research by predetermined
ideas, prejudice or influence in a certain direction. Data can be biased but so can the people
who analyse the data.
 Omissions and Consistency- An omission is a failure to act, which generally attracts
different legal consequences from positive conduct. Consistency refers to the requirement
that any given database transaction must change affected data only in allowed ways. Any
data written to the database must be valid according to all defined rules, including
constraints, cascades, triggers, and any combination thereof.
 Accuracy- refers to error-free records that can be used as a reliable source of
information. In data management, data accuracy is the first and critical
component/standard of the data quality framework.
 Currency- refers to how recent the information in a source is.
 Timeliness- defined as the time lag at which the correlation between two data sources is at
maximum significance.
 Credibility- one that is unbiased and is backed up with evidence.
 Authenticity- refers to a set of data held by a body that has been appointed by a legal act
to manage these data, which are authoritative in a particular area of competence. The data
must concern natural person or legal entities or legal facts.