Research methods and applications

¶ … authors write, "History as academic historians write it today would be almost unrecognizable to scholars working even fifty years ago, let alone in a past that is a century, two centuries - or twenty centuries - old" (Howell and Prevenier 119). The American Heritage Dictionary defines history as "a narrative of events; a chronological record of events, or the branch of knowledge that records and analyzes past events" (A.H.D. palm). How, then, can one align the definition of history with a statement such as the one cited above?

One way would be to understand that the methods used by historians, to events of the past, are as different as the historians themselves.

Howell and Prevenier explain that this interpretational framework may include Historicism, a process attributed to Leopold von Ranke, or Positivism, as defined by August Comte. A different approach to history is found in the teleological view "expounded by Aristotle" by seeing "the universe as striving towards its own final cause" (Aristotle 2).

History seems to be a moving target. Howell and Prevenier cite multiple ways in which the writing of history has changed thus changing the content of historical writing itself. Does this mean that history exists only as an extension of the writer's viewpoint? Are the academic historians of today re-creating a history that would be unrecognizable to people who lived it as the authors suggest? This research will attempt to further explain the methods of approach listed above as well as clarify the reasoning of Howell and Prevenier in reaching their conclusion.

Ranke writes, "You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell how it really was" (Ranke, AOTS par 1). This is historicism as qualified by the historian to whom its development is attributed. Ranke believed that it was vital to remain objective when re-creating an event. He did not allow interjection of "grand theory about social systems, causality, or purpose" (Howell and Prevenier 88). Historicism, as described, is a strict presentation of facts concerning an event or place etc.

Positivism, in contrast, seeks to engage the relevant view of philosophy and polity "by which all our varied observations of phenomena can be brought into one consistent whole" (Comte par 1). Auguste Comte integrated his form of historicism with socioeconomic conditions to interpret and predict historical trends. He labeled positivism a "regenerating doctrine" which would eventually dominate all races and shape all histories. An interesting aspect of positivism is Comte's belief that women would be the progenitors of this healing doctrine because their "good sense has been left unimpaired by our vicious system of education" (Fordham par 4).

If one will allow, for a moment, that humanity is immersed in linear thinking, the conclusions reached by Howell and Prevenier seem illogical.

If one event leads to the next and so on throughout life and history, how is it that yesterday's historians would be lost? The authors point out that, "even the most neutral-seeming periodizations often embed a kind of linear thinking" (121). If one examines the question more closely one will understand that the teleological view of history is more than linear thinking and not contradictory to Howell and Prevenier's conclusion.

Aristotle's view "is to see the universe as striving towards its own final cause. Just as the acorn is impelled to become the oak, so there is a design..." (Powell 2). A teleological view of history leads one to believe that all things are moving toward a completion of some kind, a natural end. This approach to history is pervasive. As Marx believed his dialectic, so to do present day television viewers believe that humankind will someday explore the galaxy in starships. It is the inevitable progression of history. The conclusion reached does not include a pre-determined ending. The path is not clear. History is influenced by more than a cause and effect relationship of events.

Howell and Prevenier write, "most of these influences have come from historians' encounters with other disciplines" (88). Therefore, history as it is written today encompasses a much broader spectrum of influence than it did fifty years ago. A woman writing about the Civil War and including the role of women in those battles reconstructs history in a different way than a historian citing only the facts in the tradition of historicism. Gadamer "argues that historians' chronological distance from the texts they study renders their readings fundamentally different from any contemporary of the text would have given" (Howell and Prevenier 103). In addition to the basic facts, the authors introduce additional influences on the way we understand history today. The study of linguistics and the hermeneutical approach as it applies to the understanding of historical events greatly enlarge ones concept of context.

A hermeneutical approach is "a reading strategy that emphasized the scholar's empathy with the text, an understanding of the meanings constructed by the text's language" (Howell and Prevenier 102). Linguistics involves the meaning of the words themselves within the context of the time they were written.

As language evolves the meanings of words change. For example, a gay man in the nineteenth century is not the gay man of the twenty-first century because the meaning of the word gay, when taken in the context of time is completely different. The history that is written today is perceived and written by such a diverse group of historians, one might wonder if the kind of history defined by the dictionary has ever actually existed.

Yet, it is an exciting time to understand the world of the past and create the past of the future. Armstrong Custer blazed his way into the history books an avenged hero. A hero whose true battle strategy and action under fire is being revealed by first hand witnesses who were dismissed by historians less than fifty years ago. The history of the battle re-writes itself with the acceptance of this new source. Perception and source become the bread and meat of the past.