The Practice of History

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Historians face a large problem when studying history. Because history cannot be completely value free and objective, examining one source to gain the truth is not possible no matter how detailed it may be. They must call upon many different sources and analyse each one carefully trying to see past any bias and attempting to look at them with as much objectivity as possible. Breaking them up and analysing them intricately is the best way of coming as close as possible to truth of history. No matter how much historians analyse and decipher, there will inevitably be bias in one form or the other and it will not be 100% accurate to the truth.
To have 'value free' history is something that has been argued over since the start of historiography. Historians such as Cicero and Herodotus tried to distinguish between more and less reliable accounts to try and get a true unbiased account of history. It is hard to have value free history because any source we encounter was created in the past by a person; this person may have created the source with motives. These motives would not reflect the true representation of the events that unfolded. Historians are also biased when reading and deciphering sources. Their job is to discover and analyse history through evidential traces left behind by people. Establishing what happened, when and how. But elements of their personal viewpoint and bias towards what they are studying become apparent in their analysis of sources. When you study a source there is no way of telling if you are correct in your interpretation of the source as the creator has likely long since died. The study of history is more like educated guesswork based on lots of other sources pointing towards the same or a similar conclusio...

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.... (2013) Identity and influence: Art in Wales (1550-1700). [Online] Available from: http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/2253/. [Accessed: 31/12/13]
New York University Libraries. (2013) Primary Sources. [Online] Available from: http://nyu.libguides.com/content.php?pid=38530&sid=612300. [Accessed: 31/12/13]
University of Technology, Sydney. (2013) Primary Sources: Strengths/Weakness. [Online] Available from: http://www.lib.uts.edu.au/guides/primary-sources/primary-sources/strengthsweakness. [Accessed: 31/12/13]
Wesleyan. 2013. Hayden White and Ethan Kleinberg: A Conversation at Wesleyan's Center for the Humanities. [Online]. [31/12/13] Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViG30Fkz2cI
Zalta, E, N. (2008) Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. [Online] Available from:http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/qm-copenhagen/. [Accessed: 31/12/13]

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