![]() Verification and causation, he points out, do not simply mean that change is initiated by singular people or monolithic institutions, and he rebukes those who portray recent writing in social history in such medievalist terms. reach some tenable conclusions about what it all meant." Evans defends time-honored methods for proving the validity of facts, upholding faith in the notion that causality can be reasonably deduced from the proper chronological arrangement of events. Like most historians, Evans confronts accusations that history is either dead or mere ideology designed to prop up bourgeois institutions by answering that the past "really happened, and we really can, if we are very scrupulous and careful and self-critical. Richard Evans's In Defense of History not only defends historians from these fashionable barbs, but shows how the discipline is adapting to this assault on its empiricist base. ![]() ![]() History's claims to objective knowledge have recently been critiqued by post-foundationalists who argue that facts cannot exist outside of the "prison house" of language. In the 19th and 20th centuries, historiographers established scientific methods and standards for the historical profession. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |