The Meaning of “History” and

“Historical Sources”
Source: Gottschalk, Louis (1969). Understanding
History: A Primer of Historical Method.

prepared for READPHI (Readings in Philippine History)

by
Renato G. Maligaya, Ph.D.
August 2018
 What is “History”?
• English word “history” derived from Greek word
noun –“historia” meaning “learning” or knowing by
inquiry.
• For Aristotle – history meant a systematic account
of a set of natural phenomena.
• In the course of time, Latin word “scientia” or
science came to used more regularly to designate
non-chronological systematic accounts of natural
phenomena;
 then “history” became reserved for accounts of
phenomena in chronological order.
•Now a common definition – “History” as “the past of
mankind”
•There’s a recognition that in a sense history cannot be
reconstructed.
•The past of mankind for the most part is beyond call; even
those who are blessed with the best memories can not re-
create their own past.
• “fortiori” – the experience of generation long
dead, most of whom left no records or whose
records, if they exist, have never been disturbed, is
beyond the possibility of total recollection.
• The reconstruction of the total past of mankind for
the historians is totally unattainable.
 “Objectivity” and “Subjectivity”

• Sometimes objects like ruins and other artifacts survive from the
past, otherwise, the facts of history are derived from testimony and
therefore are facts of meaning.

• They cannot be seen, felt, tasted, heard or smelled; said to be

symbolic or representative of something that once was real, but
they have no objective reality of their own.

• In other words, they exist only in observer’s or historian’s mind

and thus may be called “subjective” .
• To become objective, an object or thing must have
an independent existence outside of the human
mind.
• Recollections, however, do not have existence
outside the human mind; and most of history is
based upon recollections – that is, written or spoken
testimony.
• And most of history is based upon recollections –
that is, written or spoken testimony.
• There is a prejudice against “subjective” knowledge as
inferior to “objective” knowledge, largely because the
word “subjective” has also come to mean “illusory” or
“based upon personal considerations”, hence either
“untrue” or “biased”.
• however, knowledge may be acquired by an impartial and
judicially detached investigation of mental images,
processes, concepts and precepts that are one or more
steps removed from objective reality; the word
“subjective” is not used to imply disparagement but it does
imply the necessity for the application of special kinds of
safeguards against error.
 Artifacts as Sources of History
• Only where relics of human happenings can be found
– do we have objects other than words that historian
can study. These objects, however, are never the
happenings or the events themselves. If the artifacts,
they are the results of events; if written documents,
they may be the results of the records of events.
• Whether artifacts or documents, they are raw
materials out of which history may be written.
• the historian deals with the dynamic (the
becoming) as well as the static (the being or the
become) and he aims at being interpretative
(explaining why and how things happened and
were interrelated) as well as descriptive (telling
what happened, when and where, and who took
part).
• Such descriptive data as can be derived directly
and immediately from surviving artifacts are only
a small part of the periods to which they belong.
 History as the Subjective Process of Re-creation

• The historian can grasp of the history-as-actuality, no

matter how real it may have seemed while it was
happening, can be nothing more than a mental image
or a series of mental images based upon an
application of his own experience.
• Historian tries to get as close an approximation to the
truth about the past as constant correction of his
mental images will allow, at the same time
recognizing that the truth has in fact eluded him
forever.
• Historian responsibility shifts from the obligation to
acquire a complete knowledge of the irrecoverable
past by means of the surviving evidence to that of
re-creating a verisimilar image of as much of the
past as the evidence makes recoverable.
(verisimilar is “like true,” but is not
necessarily actually true)

• For the historian, history becomes only that part of

the human past which can be meaningfully
reconstructed from the available records and from
inferences regarding their setting.
 Historical Method and Historiography Defined

Historical method – the process of critically examining and

analyzing the records and survivals of the past.
Historiography (the writing of history) – the imaginative
reconstruction of the past from the data derived by that process.
•Both historical method and historiography helps historians to
reconstruct as much of the past of mankind as they can.
• Historian must be sure that his records really
come from the past and are in fact what they
seem to be and that his imagination is directed
toward re-creation and not creation. These limits
distinguish history from fiction, poetry, drama
and fantasy.
 Distinction between Primary and other Original
Sources

• Written and oral sources are divided into two

kinds: primary and secondary;
• A primary source is the testimony of an
eyewitness, or of a witness by any other of the
senses, or of a mechanical device like Dictaphone
– that is, of one who or that which was present at
the events of which he or it tells (eyewitness).
• A secondary source is the testimony of anyone
who is not an eyewitness – that is, of one who was
not present at the events of which he tells.
• A primary source must thus have been produced by
a contemporary of the events it narrates; it does
not, however, need to be original in the legal sense
of the word “original” whose contents are subject
of discussion.
• “Original” is a word of so many different meanings that it
would have been better to avoid it in precise historical
discourse; it can be, and frequently is, used to denote five
different conditions of a document, all of which are
important to the historian; A document may be called
“original”:
• 1. because it contains fresh and creative ideas;
• 2. because it is not translated from the language in which it
was first written;
• 3. because it is in its earliest, unpolished stage;
• 4. because its text is the approved text, unmodified
and untampered with; and
• 5. because it is the earliest available source of the
information it provides.
• These five meanings of the word may overlap, but
they are not synonymous.
• unfortunately, the phrase “original sources” has
become common among historians, and it is
desirable to define its usage accurately.
• It is best used by the historian in only two senses –
• 1. to describe a source, unpolished, uncopied,
untranslated, as it issued from the hands of the
authors (e.g. the original draft of the Magna
Carta)
• 2. a source that gives the earliest information
(i.e. the origin) regarding the question under
investigation because earlier sources have been
lost.
• Primary sources need not be original in either of
these two ways. They need to “original” only in
the sense of underived or first-hand as to their
testimony. This point ought to be emphasized in
order to avoid confusion between original sources
and primary sources.
• It should be remembered that the historian when
analyzing sources is interested chiefly in particulars
and that he asks particular whether it is based on
first-hand or second-hand testimony.
• Sources whether primary or secondary, are
important to the historian because they contain
primary particulars. The particulars they finish are
trustworthy not because of the book or article or
report they are in, but because of the reliability of
the narrator as a witness of those particulars.
 The Document
•The word document has been used by historians
in several senses. On the one hand, it is sometimes
used to mean a written source of historical
information as contrasted with oral testimony or
with artifacts, pictorial survivals, and
archeological remains.
•Documentation – signifies any process of proof
based upon any kind of source whether written,
oral, pictorial or archeological.
• Document becomes synonymous with source, whether
written or not, official or not, primary or not.
• The human document has been defined as “account of
individual experience which reveals the individual’s
actions as a human agent and as a participant in social
life”.
• The personal document had been defined as “ any self-
revealing record that intentionally or unintentionally yields
information regarding the structure, dynamics and
functioning of the author’s mental life”.
 Social Sciences Area
College of Education, Arts and Sciences
MB 600, Apolinario Mabini Hall
DE LA SALLE LIPA