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The Limitation of Historical Knowledge

Historians are limited in their ability to fully understand history due to the incompleteness of historical records. Most human events were not recorded, and even artifacts that remain may lack context of the surrounding environment. Historians can only study the small fraction of records that still exist from the totality of past events. Reconstructing history requires subjective interpretation of scattered documents and relics. The historical method involves critically examining sources to extract credible details and synthesize them into a narrative reconstruction, but historians can never fully recount the past as it entirely occurred.

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Julie-Mar Valleramos Labaclado
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2K views2 pages

The Limitation of Historical Knowledge

Historians are limited in their ability to fully understand history due to the incompleteness of historical records. Most human events were not recorded, and even artifacts that remain may lack context of the surrounding environment. Historians can only study the small fraction of records that still exist from the totality of past events. Reconstructing history requires subjective interpretation of scattered documents and relics. The historical method involves critically examining sources to extract credible details and synthesize them into a narrative reconstruction, but historians can never fully recount the past as it entirely occurred.

Uploaded by

Julie-Mar Valleramos Labaclado
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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THE LIMITATION OF HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE

The incompleteness of record has limited man’s knowledge of history.


Most human affairs happen without leaving any evidence or records of any kind, no
artifacts, or if there are, no further evidence of the human setting in which to
place surviving artifacts. Although it may have happened, but the past has
perished forever with only occasional traces. The whole history of the past
(called history-as-actuality) can be known to a historian only through the surviving
records (history-as-record), and most of history-as-record is only a tiny part the whole
phenomenon. Even the archeological and anthropological discoveries are only small
parts discovered from the total past.
Historians study the records or evidences that survived the time. They tell history
from what they understood a credible part of the record. However, their claims
many remains variable as there can be historical records that could be discovered,
which may affirm on refute those that they have already presented. This
explains the “incompleteness” of the “object” that the historians study.

HISTORICAL AS THE SUBJECTIVE PROCESS OF RE-CREATION


From the incomplete evidence, historians strive to restore the total part of
mankind. They do it from the point of view that human beings live in different times and
that their experiences maybe somehow comparable, or that their experiences may have
significantly differed contingent on the place and time. For the historians, history
becomes only that part of the human past which can be meaningfully
reconstructed from the available records and from inference regarding their setting. In
short, historian’s aim is verisimilitude(the truth, authenticity, plausibility) about a past.
Unlike the study of the natural science that has objectively measurable
phenomena, the study of history is subjective process as documents and relics
are scattered and do not together comprise the total object that the historian is
studying. Some of the natural scientists, such as geologists and paleo-zoologists
who study fossils from the traces of a perished past, greatly resemble historians in this
regard, but they differ at certain points since historians deal with human
testimonies as well as physical traces.
HISTORICAL METHOD AND HISTORIOGRAPHY
The process of critically examining and analyzing the records and survivals of the
past is called historical method. The imaginative reconstruction of the past form the
data derived historiography. By means of historical and historiography (both of
which are frequently grouped together simply as historical method), he historian
endeavors to reconstruct as much of the past of mankind as he/she can. Even in
this limited effort, however, the historian handicapped. He/she rarely can tell the
story even of a part of the past as it occurred. For the past conceived of as
something “actually occurred” places obvious limits upon the kinds of record and of
imagination that the historians may use. These limits distinguish history from fiction,
poetry, drama and fantasy. Historical analysis is also an important element of historical
method. In historical analysis, historians:(1) select the subject to investigate; (2) collect
the probable sources of information on the subject; (3) examine the sources of
genuineness, in part of in whole; and (4) extract credible “particulars” from the
sources (or parts of sources). The synthesis of the “particulars” thus derived is
historiography. Synthesis and analysis cannot be entirely separated since they have a
common ground, which is the ability to understand the past through some
meaningful, evocative and convincing historical or cross-disciplinary connections
between a given historical issue and other historical contexts,periods, or themes.

(Sullivan, 2021)

Elbert, C. (2017, January 1). Retrieved from


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Boris_Kossoy_-
_Photo_Critic_and_Historian_%2838065947614%29.jpg

Small, A. (2019). Retrieved from https://slideplayer.com/slide/13234411/

Sullivan, N. (2021, October 7). Retrieved from https://study.com/academy/lesson/historical-


methodology-evidence-and-interpretation.html

Tan, S. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://pdfcoffee.com/readings-in-phil-history-chapter-1-pdf-free.html

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