History and Historiography
History, in its broadest sense, is the totality of all past events, although a more realistic definition would limit it to the known past. Historiography is the written record of what is known of human lives and societies in the past and how historians have attempted to understand and interpret them. The term historiography also refers to the theory and history of historical writing. Of all the fields of serious study and literary effort, history may be the hardest to define precisely, because the attempt to uncover past events and formulate an intelligible account of them necessarily involves the use and influence of many auxiliary disciplines and literary forms. The concern of all serious historians has been to collect and record facts about the human past and often to discover new facts to fill up as many gaps as possible in our historical knowledge. Except for the special circumstance in which historians record events they themselves have witnessed, historical facts can only be known through intermediary sources. These include testimony from living witnesses; narrative records, such as previous histories, memoirs, letters, and imaginative literature; the legal and financial records of courts, legislatures, religious institutions, or businesses; and the unwritten information derived from the physical remains of past civilizations, such as architecture, arts and crafts, burial grounds, and cultivated land. All these, and many more sources of information provide the evidence from which the historian deciphers historical facts. The relation between evidence and fact, however, is rarely simple and direct. The evidence may be biased or mistaken, fragmentary, or nearly unintelligible after long periods of cultural or linguistic change. Historians, therefore, have known that the information requires careful attention and they have to assess their evidence with a critical eye. All have tried to discover in the facts patterns of meaning addressed to the enduring questions of human life. Before the late 18th century, historiography or the writing of history did not stand at the centre of any civilization. History was almost never an important part of regular education, and it never claimed to provide an interpretation of human life as a whole. This was more appropriately the function of religion, of philosophy, even perhaps of poetry and other imaginative literature. The historian’s education was that of any cultivated man: careful reading of general literature, followed by the study of rhetoric, the art of fluent and persuasive use of language that dominated ancient higher education. The ideal historian would combine rigorous truthfulness and freedom from bias with the gift of developed expression. As examples of literary art, early historical accounts are interesting and dramatically unified, though sometimes at the expense of truth or verifiability of evidence. Impartiality was at least a goal, if it was not always achieved. Many of these works set standards for historical writing in their lands and beyond their bounds. The complex relation between literary art and historiography has been and continues to be a subject of serious debate. Modern historians aim to reconstruct a record of human activities and to achieve a more profound understanding of them. This conception is quite recent, dating from the late 18th and early 19th centuries when history aligned with other modern sciences as an independent academic discipline with its own critical method and approach, requiring rigorous preparation. The combination of the neutral, non-partisan approach to the sources (at least as an ideal) with the acute realization that all observers are the products of their specific time and place and are thus necessarily subjective recorders promised to break history’s ancient connection to the intuitive literary arts. The purpose of history as a serious endeavour to understand human life can never be fulfilled by the mere shifting of evidence for facts. Fact-finding is only the foundation for the selection, arrangement, and explanation that constitute historical interpretation. The process of interpretation informs all aspects of historical inquiry, beginning with the selection of a subject for investigation, because the very choice of a particular event or society or institution is itself an act of judgement that asserts the importance of the subject. Once chosen, the subject itself suggests a provisional model or hypothesis that guides research and helps the historian to assess and classify the available evidence and to present a detailed and coherent account of the subject. The historian must respect the facts, avoid ignorance and error as far as possible, and create a convincing, intellectually satisfying interpretation. Furthermore, in the 20th century the scope of history has expanded immeasurably, in time, as archaeology and anthropology have provided knowledge of earlier ages, and in breadth, as field of inquiry entirely unknown in the past (such as economic history, psychohistory, history of ideas, of family structures, and of peasant societies) have emerged and refined their methods and goals. To many scholars, national history has come to seem an outmoded, culture-bound approach, although history written on thoroughly international assumptions is extremely difficult to achieve. Historians have looked more and more to the social sciences – sociology, psychology, anthropology, and economics – for new methods arid forms of explanation; the sophisticated use of quantitative data has become the accepted approach to economic and demographic studies. The influence of Marxist theories of economic and social development remains vital and contentious, as does the application of psychoanalytic theory to history. At the same time, many scholars have turned with sharpened interest to the theoretical foundations of historical knowledge and are reconsidering the relation between imaginative literature and history, with the possibility emerging that history may after all be the literary art that works upon scholarly material.
Commentary:
except – гл. 1) исключать; изымать, элиминировать; отводить (свидетеля) I hope you do not except yourself? — Я надеюсь, вы себя не исключаете? The whole kingdom, a small corner excepted, was subjected to the Turkish yoke. — Все королевство, за исключением небольшого уголка, было под турецким игом. Syn: exclude, leave out 2) возражать, протестовать; противиться (чему-л.) The criminals who excepted against him were generally condemned. — Преступники, которые противились ему, бывали как правило осуждены. Syn: object 2. 2. пред. исключая, кроме, за исключением; (тж. except for) The rabble of mankind know nothing of liberty except the name. — Чернь ничего не знает о свободе, кроме имени. Everything is arranged except for the tickets to the theatre. — Все устроено, кроме билетов в театр. 3. союз. 1) за исключением того, что The cases are quite parallel, except that A. is a younger man than B. — Эти случаи совершенно аналогичны, за исключением того, что А. моложе Б. – except as - кроме тех случаев, когда 2) если не; кроме как в случаях, когда She never offered any one advice, except it were asked of her. — Она никому не давала советов, если только ее не просили.
because – союз - потому что; так как
between пред. 1. между •• between hay and grass — ни то ни се; ни рыба ни мясо between ourselves, between you and me (and the bedpost) — между нами, конфиденциально between the cup and the lip a morsel may slip — не радуйся раньше времени between the devil and the deep sea — в безвыходном положении; между двух огней between this and then — на досуге; между делом between times, between whiles — в промежутках between wind and water — в наиболее уязвимом месте
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