Historical method

Common card · No. 273991

Historical method is the collection of techniques and guidelines that historians use to research and write histories of the past. Secondary sources, primary sources and material evidence such as that derived from archaeology may all be drawn on. The historian's skill lies in identifying these sources, evaluating their relative authority, and combining their testimony appropriately in order to construct an accurate and reliable picture of past events and environments. In the philosophy of history, the question of the nature, and the possibility, of a sound historical method is raised within the sub-field of epistemology. The study of historical method and of different ways of writing history is known as historiography. Though historians agree in very general and basic principles, in practice "specific canons of historical proof are neither widely observed nor generally agreed upon" among professional historians. Some scholars of history have observed that there are no particular standards...

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