E.H. Carr Define a "Fact" in What

¶ … E.H. Carr define a "fact" in What is History? How does it compare with the definitions of Bloch and Becker? Which one do you think is most useful as you begin preparing for your senior research seminar? According to Carr in the book What is History? He first provides the definition of a fact by citing the oxford English Dictionary, which refers to a fact as "a datum of experience as distinct from conclusions" (Carr, 2008, p.6).

Carr elaborates by explaining that this is what is usually viewed as a commonsense perspective of history: "History contains acorpus of ascertained facts. The facts are available to the historian in documents, inscriptions, and so on, like fish on the fishmonger's slab. The historian collects them, cooks them, takes them home, and cooks and serves them in whatever style appeals to him" (Carr, 2008, p.6).

This is extremely revelatory regarding exactly what Carr views as a fact: facts are things which essentially people agree upon in our collective society, but which can still be tweaked and adjusted according to the way that a particular person wishes to view a fact. As Carr discusses, a fact is something which is not exactly absolute, but which can be adapted and determined according to the whims of individuals. Facts are mutable and changeable according to interpretation.

This ideology isn't terribly different from the opinions of Carl Becker, who notoriously stated that "the facts of history do not exist for any historian until he creates them" (Carr, 2008, p.23). With both Carr and Becker, there is still the idea that facts are things which can be invented, particularly when it comes to history.

While there might not be any dispute regarding fire being hot or water wet, or human subject to the Earth's gravity, because history and historians deal precisely and particularly with times past, there is a certain amount of mutability that historian engage in. Carr and Becker view "historical facts" as more subjective and more connected to the historian's particular agenda. With many "historical facts" there aren't ways to verify most of these items within 100% certainty.

Even though humankind has this propensity to invent, shape and color facts to their own liking, as Carr illuminates, there has still long been a strong desire to absorb and to determine facts which are pure. As Carr demonstrates, a desire to gather real facts has been a big part of the human condition for the last few hundred years. "The positivists, anxious to stake their claim for history as a science, contributed the weight of their influence to this cult of facts.

First ascertain the facts, said the positivists, then draw your conclusions from them. In Great Britain, this view of history fitted in perfectly with the empiricist tradition which was the dominant strain in British philosophy from Locke to Bertrand Russell" (Carr, 2008, p.8). This speaks to a desire of the human condition to purify facts and to make them seem more scientific and organized than they actually generally are treated. This came from a desire to treat the process of fact-gathering as systematically as one treats the scientific method.

One of the most useful parts of this discussion that I found were when Carr discusses the limitations of the historian. He makes many very valid points and observations about how limited the historian is. This is truly important to keep in mind when beginning my senior research as it gives me a much bigger sense of perspective.

When going through so-called historical facts, I feel like I will now have a more critical eye, will thus be more empowered to examine these facts with a greater level of scrutiny, seeing them more clearly for what they are.

Furthermore, it's also useful to bear in mind Carr's observation that, "The historian is not required to have the special skills which enable the expert to determine the origin and period of a fragment of pottery or marble, to decipher and obscure inscription or to make the elaborate astronomical calculations necessary to establish a precise date. These so-called basic facts which are the same for all historians commonly belong to the category of the raw materials of the historian than of history itself" (Carr, 2008, p.9).

This demonstrates as Carr explains, that there is still a selective quality of the historian which can overwhelm these "facts" and which.