4.

TRUTH AND FACT IN HISTORY

Historical enquiry concerns itself with human thoughts and actions in the past. The
historian therefore explores the past in order to find out what humans thought and did in
the past. To make these past thoughts and actions meaningful or comprehensible to his
or her readers, the historian also explains why they occurred when they did. Significant
historical narratives therefore consist of true statements or ‘facts’ about what actually
happened and the historian’s explanation or interpretation of why things happened the
way they did.

However, philosophers differ over the question whether historians should simply make
true statements about the past or they should go beyond statement of facts to also
interpret the facts. Philosophers who favour the mere statement of facts belong to the
positivist school of thought while those who support the interpretation of facts are
idealists. Corresponding to these two streams of thought are the correspondence theory
of history and the coherence theory of history.

Briefly sated, the correspondence theory of knowledge states that facts in any field are
what they are irrespective of the enquirer into them. In other words, they exist whether
or not anybody is thinking about them. Facts are ‘hard’, ‘stubborn’ and ‘given’. Applied
to historical enquiry, this would mean that facts exist whether the historian is enquiring
about them or not. The historian should therefore discover the facts and let them speak
for themselves. He should not make any attempt to interpret them. This is also known
as the ‘common sense view of history’.

Opponents of the ‘common sense’ view, however, state that the type of history
advocated for by the positivists would be uninteresting as it would be dry-as-dust. Such
history would be mere compilation of chronicles and encyclopaedic. In fact, Collingwood
call it ‘scissors-and-paste history’, meaning history which is mere compilation of facts. In
short, opponents of the positivist school insist that interpretation is the blood of history
and without it historical facts are dead.

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Positivists have also been criticised for their unwarranted belief in sources of historical
evidence or documents. The faith positivists have in sources of historical evidence
suggests that historians should simply believe what the sources say. But critics of this
view point out that historians should scrutinise sources of evidence carefully in order to
be able to decide what is credible and what is not credible. In other words, the historian
should sift through the information provided by sources in order to establish the facts.
First, the historian should establish the authenticity of the source and then proceed to
check whether what the source says is actually what happened by collaborating one
source with another. In some cases, sources do not say what happened but instead say
what the authors thought happened or what they wanted others to think happened or
what they would have liked to happen. Therefore no source should be taken at face
value.

Positivists are also blamed for insisting on the unending accumulation of facts as the
foundation of historical enquiry. By viewing facts as solid or substantial matter,
positivists insist that historical narratives should be based on solid foundations of facts.
But while accepting the necessity of factual accuracy in historical research, critics of the
positivist view point out that historical enquiry is necessarily selective. The historian not
only selects a small aspect of the past for investigation but also selects only the
important facts about issue under study. This is the case because the historian does not
have all the information about the past event. Moreover, not all the information about a
particular event is relevant to the historian’s interest in that event.

The coherence view of history maintains that all historical judgements are probable and
are subject to revision as knowledge accumulates. According to this theory, there is no
ultimate truth in history. Historical knowledge is therefore relative as it depends on the
evidence available to the researcher and his ability to interpret it. Supporters of the
coherence view are mainly professional historians and are sometimes known as
relativists. They are the main critics of the correspondence theory of history and
therefore of the positivist.

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Relativist or idealist philosophers tend to over-emphasise interpretation in historical
research in relation to facts. To them, facts do not simply exist but are ‘created’ by the
historian. It is the historian who selects the facts he needs for his narrative. In E. H.
Carr’s words, ‘facts do not speak for themselves. They only speak when the historian
calls on them. It is he who decides to which facts to give the floor and in what order or
context’.

The relativist view on facts has been criticised by positivists on the ground that it implies
that historians make history. But relativists do not deny that historians make history. For
example, Professor Michael Oakeshott states that history is the historian’s experience.
It is the historian who ‘makes’ history by enquiring into the past. So long as the past is
not being researched, it remains dormant. These views are shared by other idealists like
Croce, Dilthey and Collingwood.

It was in respect to historian’s ability to ‘create’ history that Croce stated that all history
is contemporary history. By this Croce meant that though historical facts are about the
past, the historian, who is a creature of his time, researches into the past with a view to
‘solving’ a present problem or answering a present question. In other words, historical
enquiry into the past is meant to inform the present and even the future. Historians
therefore usually study those aspects of the past that are relevant to present and future
aspirations of their readers or listeners. In fact, this is the reason why every generation
finds it necessary to rewrite its history. Every generation writes the same history in a
new way and puts upon it a new construction.

The phrase ‘all history is contemporary’ also means that the past is linked to the present
through surviving evidence. In other words, the past is only knowable through evidence
about it which exists in the present. This evidence could be in existing records, in
people’s memories, in the form of artefacts, fossils and monuments. It is from these
sources that the historian can reconstruct the past. This is what professor Oakeshott
meant when he said that a fixed and finished past, a past divorced from the present, is a
past divorced of evidence and is consequently nothing and unknowable.

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However, it should be noted that neither the correspondence theory of history nor the
coherence one is complete in itself. A combination of the two theories would therefore
be more relevant to historical enquiry than the emphasis on one at the expense of the
other. For example, historians do not entirely make history, but they do interpret past
human thoughts and actions with a view to making the past more comprehensible to us.
Similarly, the past as such is not important. Its importance or relevance to us can only
be brought out through critical analysis of surviving evidence. In other words, every
assertion the historian makes must be supported by evidence.

Properly written history is therefore living history because it enriches the reader’s mind
through multiple images of events, places, people, ideas and emotions outside their
personal experiences. It enriches the reader’s experiences by bringing to their mind the
experiences of other individuals, communities, nations and races. Such history enables
the individual to orientate himself in a larger world than the personal one. It helps him or
her to place the petty and intolerable present in a longer perspective, thus enabling him
or her to judge the thoughts and actions of human beings (including one’s own).