enarver J THE MEANING OF HISTORY, / SOURCES OF HISTORICAL BATA, S HISTORICAL CRITICISMS OVERVIEW Lesson 1 introduces history as a discipline and as a narrative. It discusses the limitation of historical knowledge, history as the subjective process of re-creation, and historical method and historiography. Lesson 2 presents the sources of historical data, the written and non-written sources of history, as well as the differentiation of primary and secondary sources of information or data. Lesson 3 discusses historical criticisms, namely, external and internal criticisms. These are important aspects in ascertaining the authenticity and reliability of primary sources upon which narratives are crafted. READINGS IN PHILIPPINE HISTORYussoKt | THE MEANING OF HISTORY . J HISTORY is derived from the Greek word which means ‘The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, looked upon history as the systematic accounting of asq_ of natural phenomena, that is, taking into consideration the chronological arrange, of the account. This explained that knowledge is derived through conducting a proces, of scientific investigation of past events. The word History is referred usually for accounts of phenomena, especially human affairs in chronological order. There are theories constructed by historian in investigating history: the faetuall history and the speculative history:)F actual history presents readers the plain and basic information is the events that took place (what), the time and date with which the events happened (when), the place with which the events took place, and the people that were involved (who). Speculative history, on the other hand, goes beyond facts because it is concerned about the reasons for which events happened (why), and the way they happened (how). “It tries to speculate on the cause and effect of an event” (Cantal, Cardinal, Espino & Galindo, 2014). History deals with the study of past events. Individuals who write about history are called historians. They seek to uriderstand the present by examining what went before. They undertake arduous historical research to come up with a meaningful and organized rebuilding of the past. But whose past are we talking about? This is the basic question that the historian needs to answer because this sets the purpose and framework of a historical account. Hence, a salient feature of historical writing is the facility to give meaning and impact value to a group of people about their past. The practice of historical writing is called historiography, the traditional method in doing historical research that focus on gathering of documents from different libraries and archives to form a pool of + evidence needed in making a descriptive or analytical narrative. The modern historia writing does not only include examination of documents but also the use of research methods from related areas of study such as archeology and geography. THE LIMITATION OF HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE ‘The incompleteness of records has limited man’s knowledge of history. Most hum! affairs happen without leaving any evidence or records of any kind, no artifacts, ort there are, no further evidence of the human setting in which to place surviving artifa® sion? Although it may have happened, but the past has perished forever with only occa traces. The whole history of the past (called can be known t* historian only through the surviving records ( and most of histo as-reco } “eee vais only a tiny part the whole phenomenon. Even the archacological ropological discovesi pological discoveries are only small parts discovered from the total past: 2 —sngroF!Historians study the records or evidences that survived the time. They tell history from what they understood as a credible part of the record. However, their claims may remain variable as there can be historical records that could be discovered, which may affirm or refute those that they have already presented. This explains the incompleteness” of the “object” that historians study. HISTORY AS THE SUBJECTIVE PROCESS OF RE-CREATION From the incomplete evidence, historians strive to restore the total past of mankind. s and that They do it from the point of view that human beings live in different time their experiences maybe somehow comparable, or that their experiences may have significantly differed contingent on the place and time. For the historian, history becomes only that part of the human past which can be meaningfully reconstructed from the available records and from inferences regarding their setting In short, the historian’s aim is vevésimilitude (the truth, authenticity, plausibility) about a past. Unlike the study of the natural science that has objectively measurable phenomena, the study of history is a subjective process as documents and relics are scattered and do not together comprise the total object that the historian is studying. Some of the natural scientists, such as geologists and paleo-zoologists who study fossils from the traces of a perished past, greatly resemble historians in this regard, but they differ at certain points since historians deal with human testimonies as well as physical traces, HISTORICAL METHOD AND HISTORIOGRAPHY The process of critically examining and analyzing the records and survivals of the past is called Aistorieal|methiod, The imaginative reconstruction of the past from the data derived by that process is called historiography. By means of historical method and historiography (both of which are frequently grouped together simply as historical method), the historian endeavors to reconstruct as much of the past of mankind as he/ she can. Even in this limited effort, however, the historian is handicapped. He/She rarely can tell the story even of a part of the past as it occurred. For the past conceived of as something that “actually occurred” places obvious limits upon the kinds of record and of imagination that the historian may use. These limits distinguish history from fiction, poetry, drama, and fantasy. Historical analysigis also an important element of historical method. In historical analysis, historians: (Q)/seléct the subject to investigate; (2) collect probable sources of information on the subject; (3) examine the sources genuineness, in part of in whole; and (4) extract credible “particulars” from the sources (or parts of sources). The synthesis of the “particulars” thus derived is historiography. Synthesis and analysis cannot be entirely separated since they have a common ground, which is the ability to understand the past through some meaningful, evocative and convincing historical or cross-disciplinary connections between a given historical issue and other historical contexts, periods, or themes READINGS IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY 3