Objectivity in History - Research Paper Example

 Objectivity in History Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………3 Objectivity in History – The Past……………………………………………………………….3 Objectivity vs. Subjectivity in History………………………………………………………….4 Problems in Implementing Objectivity…………………………………………………………5 Discussion…………………………………………………………………….…………….….....7 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………..9 Reference List…………………………………………………………………………………...10 Introduction Can historians write unbiased history? Can history be completely objective? This topic of debate goes as old as the time when historians started writing history. If I see the definition of history, there is nothing subjective about the way history should be written. However, subjectivity creeps into history in a major way and many historians have a different view on this topic. In this paper, how objectivity is important and should be a central component for writing history is discussed. Furthermore, the problems that arise while implementing objectivity and how after much debate, much of what’s written by historians is deeply influenced by subjective factors, will be considered. Two very important books are used for the analysis. Telling the Truth about History by Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob; and The Pursuit of History by John Tosh formed the basis of my argument. Objectivity in History – The Past: History is a consistent subject. Its nineteenth century origins show how objectivity was present in all history writings. 19th century scholars, who adopted the study of history as a profession, adopted the persona of presenting unprejudiced history. Some of them narrated the US history as a clear-cut account of Enlightenment values of freedom, and equality (Appleby, et. al., 1994). There were exceptions of course. But, by and large the profession believed in independent recording of facts. It was left to the reader to draw conclusions from them. However, with the passage of time, historians failed to incorporate objectivity in their writings. Post-modernism in recent years changed the trend and imposed a fragmented approach on history writings (Tosh, 2010). Dubious reassessments arose as the 20th century inherited complete images of science, historical scholarship and American national destiny. History was becoming more of a topic of fiction rather than real knowledge. With the advent of democracy, and the continuing debate about the influence of subjective factors in history writing, the trends are changing again. More and more historians are realizing the importance of objectivity whenever history is being written. But how much they are able to apply it in their writings continues to be a debate of utmost importance. Objectivity vs. Subjectivity in History: Can historians tell a complete truth? Is it possible that their piece of writing would be completely objective? ‘Yes’ is the answer (Appleby, et. al., 1994). However, if this fact is applied in the writing of history today is not a complete ‘Yes’. Let us see why history, which is basically the recounting of facts and what happened in a particular period of time, can be influenced by subjective factors. Every person has his own character, thought and certain biases. Whenever, a person speaks his beliefs will be highlighted in any subject matter that he is talking about. Our beliefs form a major part of what we are and what we do. So, it is also an important part of what we write, if we write something. So, in theory, history should not be marred by a person’s personal biases. But in fact, that’s not the case. When one is writing history, it becomes the part of his job to neutralize his prejudices and compensate for the blind spots that are found in any group, person, community etc. (Appleby, et. al., 1994). A professional historian would apply this to create an output which would be called true history rather than a piece of fiction. Herodotus is one of the founding fathers of history. His way of writing history shows us how central objectivity is to the field of history. He would consider all sorts of events that had no eye-witnesses to them as untrustworthy. Only those events for which he could interview the eye-witness personally would be included in his writing. This shows that there is no place for external factors, personal biases and subjective elements in history. Objective history is the need of our society (Tosh, 2010). Problems in Implementing Objectivity: There are various reasons why the truths in history are not stated in a completely objective manner. Subjectivity influences history in many ways. Some of these problems and their solution are discussed below: 1. Historical truths become subjective, due to the approach taken by the historian. Let’s consider an example. There is a huge quantity of sources available nowadays which are used by historians for the understanding of past events. It becomes impossible for the historian to use all these sources for writing his piece. Prejudice sweeps in when he is selecting the sources and the more convenient option is to select sources which a person identifies with. Solution: A good historian in this case would try to select a varied sample of sources to give a neutral point of view to the best of his ability. Writing factual history is all about how professional a historian is, and how skilled he is in evaluating and comparing various sources so that every relative fact regarding the topic is found out and properly checked against each other. This, however, does not happen in all cases. Many historians are true to their profession but many are not. This leads to and this leads to history becoming subjective in nature and poses a big problem for implementing objectivity in history at large. 2. Another way that history becomes subjective is that many historians believe still believe in the subjective approach to history. Their argument is that recording facts is the job of a chronicler and not a historian. They feel that providing interpretation along with facts is the real job of a historian and that’s what they are doing. This subjective approach is completely conflicting from the objectivity point of view. Solution: This problem can’t be dealt with much, unless these specific historians change their way of thinking. They have to overcome this though process and understand what writing true history is all about. If they understand the importance of objectivity and how it is the most important component in history writing, they would be contributing a great deal to the field of history writing. 3. The above two problems show that the reason for subjective history totally lies in the hands of a historian. It is his individual impartiality of treating the past in a fair way. Whether, it is the imbalance of source material or a completely different belief of the historian, they are the ones bringing subjectivity in history on purpose. However, some historians have a completely different viewpoint on why subjective measures become a part of objective history writing. Some historians argue, that as much as they try to be objective by (i) comparing the most number of sources, (ii) keeping personal biases away from the piece of writing, and (iii) following the objective approach to its core, it becomes impossible to constitute a completely objective truth. This is one problem that makes sense. The historian works to the best of his ability to present a historical truth for the readers and tries to minimize his constraints to the maximum but in some way or the other, a part of it or more has an essence of subjectivity into it. Solution: Everything has a certain chance of error. To solve that problem is to minimize the error to the greatest that you can. A historian should therefore carry out the maximum effort to produce an objective piece and emphasize on areas where he feels that subjective elements may have influenced the argument. Another historian can help him solve the issue by revising the piece to point out certain subjective factors that the main writer may have overlooked. One important point here is that the historian should be open about the fact, when hindsight is being used in his writing. Discussion: When we listen to the word history or are exposed to it, the first thing that comes to our mind is facts and being told the truth. An accurate account of the past is what history is all about. Society looks towards writers of history for relevant and valid history. This is where the point of objectivity becomes more important. History is extremely relevant to society and it is the need of society to be presented with truths that took place in the past. Therefore, history should be conducted with rigorous practices that ensure the presentation of facts in the most precise manner as possible. For this purpose, a heavy task lays for historians to make objectivity the basis of their writings. They should incorporate their most professional behavior and use most accurate methods to do justice to the job of being a historian. This would include shedding of all personal complexes and biases while researching, understanding, and finally writing about any event of the past. A person can make the mistake of incorporating various external influences at any stage from the start to finish of presenting a historical truth. He might acquire selective information (numerous sources available) based on his bias. He might process all the information that he has in a biased manner i.e. using only that information which makes sense to him rather than making sense to the topic being presented. And finally, he might have complete information and might have processed it in the most accurate manner, but while writing about it his personal interpretations may creep in and become a part of stating that historical truth. One needs to keep in mind that presenting history is not about presenting your view on history. It’s just presenting history the way it happened. While we talk about written history, whose accuracy and credibility is of great importance and has helped a lot in preserving past events which would have been long lost if written records were not present. However, in this age, the concept of oral history could also be very helpful in preserving history and that too in a very objective manner. Historians have misgivings about oral history because they over-estimate the integrity and precision of written history. In this case, if one could have a collection of audios or videos which covers all that took place in a particular event. By this form of oral history, we would still benefit from the material we have acquired by tapping into what people who were there have to say, watching it live on television, and hearing about it second or even third-hand felt happened and make an effort to attempt to understand what the results of that event caused and what caused that event. Complete justice would also mean to curtail the chances of chance-subjectivity being included in your work. This can be achieved by minimizing all the negatives to the best of one’s ability. The more objective your piece of writing (historical event) is, the more honesty you have shown in your work, and in effect, the more you are doing for society in a manner that it should be done. Probability of error still remains but that amount of subjectivity, I believe should be allowed in history writings. This should be on the assumption that it is by mere chance that subjective element is present and also that the incidence is very less. Good history needs to be completely objective. However, it’s not the case, that it will not be good history if it isn’t completely objective. Certain exceptions to the rule may apply. But the basic idea is that stating history in the most objective way that one can is the essence of history writing, and it is the need of our society. Conclusion: Hence, I conclude, that objectivity ‘can be’ and ‘should be’ the core element of any historical writing. If a historian is true to his line of work, he can block out maximum subjective influences to create and present the account of past events in the most precise and truthful manner. By doing this he wouldn’t only be doing justice to his profession, but he would also be providing readers the truth that they want to read and have the right to read. Reference List Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (New York: WW. Norton, 1994) John Tosh, The Pursuit of History, 5th Edition (Longman, 2010) Read More