"Unfortunately, far too many historians these days don't believe in evidence. They argue that since absolute truth must always elude the historian's grasp 'evidence' is inevitably nothing but a biased selection of suspect 'facts.' Worse yet, rather than diminishing the entire historical under-taking as impossible, these same people use their disdain for evidence as a license to propose all manner of politicized historical fantasies or appealing fictions on the grounds that these are just as 'true' as any other account. This is absurd nonsense. Reality exists and history actually occurs. The historian's task is to try to discover as accurately as possible what took place. Of course, we can never possess absolute truth, but that still must be the ideal goal that directs historical scholarship. The search for truth and the advance of human knowledge are inseparable: comprehension and civilization are one."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Rodney Stark, “Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome”, (Oct 31, 2006), pp. 1-2
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Historian
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Historian
34 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Historian →
Related Quotes
"The choice of narrative is an important way of making the facts speak. But this was rarely recognised by nineteenth-c…"
"What really happens is that the author discards the human persona but replaces it by an 'objective¿ one; the authoria…"
"Take one of Voltaire's swift shining shafts of wit: "History is after all only a pack of tricks we play on the dead."…"
"HISTORIAN, n. A broad-gauge gossip."
"Histories are as perfect as the Historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul."
"In a certain sense all men are historians."
"Historians . . . proceed inferentially. They investigate evidence much as lawyers cross-question witnesses in a court…"
"The treatment of the period of Reconstruction reflects small credit upon American historians as scientists. We have t…"
"Historians are really great at predicting the past. But the future is for prophets, and the track records of most pro…"
"History presents an historian with the task of producing a dialogue between the past and the present. But as these te…"