Historical method

The historical method or the methodology of history (or historical sciences) includes the set of techniques, methods and procedures used by historians to investigate past events., and write or rewrite the story. These procedures may involve resorting to secondary sources, primary sources, material evidence such as that derived from archeology and other auxiliary disciplines of history such as archiving. The historian's skill lies in identifying these sources, evaluating their authority in relation to others, and combining the information appropriately to construct an accurate and reliable view of events, past situations, or ancient concepts. As a result, historians obtain a set of writings (or historiographic production) about a topic or historical period through historiography.

The question of the nature of the historical method and, even, its own reflection as a scientific method, is discussed by epistemology (philosophy of science, methodology of social sciences) and the philosophy of history and, in a certain sense, by historiology (or theory of history).

Features

The main guidelines commonly used by historians in their work are:

• First, the definition of the topic and its delimitation, questions (erothetics) are formulated and a work plan is defined. Based on this comes the heuristic (localization and compilation of documentary sources, which are the raw material of the work of the historian).
• Secondly, the analysis or criticism of these sources (distinguishing two forms of criticism, which refer to work with documentary sources: external criticism and internal criticism).
• Ultimately, historiographic synthesis (which is the final product of historiography).

Once this process is finished, publication remains, an unavoidable step for the historiographic community to share and subject its work to scientific debate and falsification and to disseminate it among the public so that its knowledge can serve the purposes of history.

Historical research has experienced changes in the tools used, with the arrival of information and communication technologies, especially web 2.0, establishing what is known as Digital History, a new way of using technological tools without change the methodological essence of the research (problem->search->criticism->synthesis->dissemination)

Source criticism

There are six main ways to ask a documentary source to judge it, that is, to do your criticism, source criticism:

1. Datation (location in time) When did the source occur?
2. Location in space Where did it occur?
3. Author Who produced it?
4. Analysis of provenance From what pre-existing material did it occur?
5. Integrity In what original form did it occur?
6. Credibility What is the probative value of your content?

The first four are known as major criticism (historical criticism or historical critical method); the fifth, minor criticism (textual or ecdotic criticism); Both the major and the minor (the first five questions) are called external criticism. The sixth and last is called internal criticism.

The function of external criticism is essentially negative, in the sense that it simply avoids the use of false sources; while the essentially positive function corresponds to the internal critic, whose mission is to propose how to use authenticated sources.

External criticism: authenticity and provenance

Major criticism or high criticism

The Major criticism (en:higher criticism) is also called High criticism (pt:High criticism), Historical criticism, Radical criticism (fr:Critique radicale), or Critical-historical method or historical-critical (from:Historisch-kritische Methode).

Determining the authorship and date of a source usually involves one or more of the following processes:

• (a) Analysis of the contents of the source supporting document,
• (b) compared to the content of other sources,
• (c) Analysis of the physical properties of the source supporting document.

Content analysis includes examination of anachronisms in language, datable references, and coherence with a cultural setting. Comparison with other writings may include studies of paleography, the study of handwriting style (graphology), the study of stylometry (determination of authorship by comparison of the known literary style of one or more authors - stylistics -), or something as simple as the existence of quotes (sometimes textual - intertextuality -, sometimes indirect references) from that source in another source, either from the same author in another of his works, or from another author, whether contemporary or from another time. The physical properties of the document can be the properties of the paper, the ink (such as consistency), in its case the seal, as well as the results of more complex analyzes (chemical or radioactive, such as carbon-14 dating).

Minor criticism, low criticism or textual criticism

The minor criticism or low criticism is more frequently known as textual criticism, and refers to the precise determination of a text in cases in which the documents available are copies rather than the original. Approaches to textual criticism may include eclecticism, stemmatics, and cladistics. The essence of “eclecticism” is to adopt as the original the document that most easily explains the derivation of alternative documents. Stemmatics is the attempt to construct a family tree of existing manuscripts to help determine their correct reading. Cladistics makes use of statistical analyzes for a similar purpose.

Internal criticism: historical reliability

Considering the evidence that few documents are accepted as completely reliable, Louis Gottschalk establishes as a general rule: "for each particular document the process of establishing credibility must be carried out separately, independently of the overall credibility of the author" #3. 4;. An author who is generally considered reliable will be able to establish a background of probability for the examination of each of his texts, but each piece of evidence must be individually subjected to criticism.

Eyewitness testimony

The testimony of eyewitnesses, such as the author of the source in question, must be evaluated through verifications such as the following (the similarity with the expressions related to the concepts of witness and testimony in a legal context is obvious):

• Can your statement have a real meaning different from your literal sense? Do they use words in different ways than those that are usual today? Do they use irony or other resources to say things different from those they seem to say?
• How did the author observe the fact that he claims to be a witness? What sense did your observation depend on? Was it such a good thing? Did it have adequate capacity for such observation, or was it mediated by language difficulties, with its degree of necessary technical knowledge -legal or military, for example-? Was he free to testify or was he intimidated?
• How did the witness build his testimony and what was his ability to do it?
• As to his ability to report, was it partial? Did he have adequate time, place and tools to do so?

• Was the written record of your observation immediate, or was it long to do so?
• What was the author's intention to present his testimony? Who does that record for? Does that audience distort you when you present your testimony?
• Are there other indications to suspect some intention that distorts veracity? Was it indifferent on the topic observed, which probably presumes the absence of intention to distort his testimony? Is his testimony even against himself? What would be self-incrimination in law, and is often considered to be indication that he probably does not intend to distort, or on the contrary, is there an unnecessary apology?excusetio non petita, accusatio manifest). Is the information collected incidental or casual? (so these data would not intend to distort)

• Does it re-alize its statements in a way that they seem inherently improbable: for example, contrary to human nature, or in conflict with what we know?
• Note that some types of information are easier to observe and report on them than others.
• Are there internal contradictions in the document?

Louis Gottschalk adds an additional consideration: "Even when the fact in question may not be well known to the researcher who is criticizing a source, certain types of statements are just as incidental and likely to contain such a degree of error or falsehood, which can be determined as unlikely. If an ancient inscription on a road tells us that such a proconsul built it under the principality of Augustus, it may be doubted until further corroboration whether it was really such a proconsul who built the road, but it would be more difficult to doubt that the road was built during the Principality of Augustus. If a newspaper advertisement informs readers that "Coffee A and B can be purchased at all reputable stores at the unusual price of fifty cents per pound," Everything that advertising says can be questioned until further corroboration, everything except that there is a brand of coffee on the market called "A and B".

Garraghan indicates that most information comes from "indirect witnesses", people who were not present at the scene, but who have heard about the events from someone else. Sometimes testimonies can be used hearsay, but in those cases, where the witnesses are a secondary source, they should not be fully trusted, but must be verified:

• (1) on which primary source the declaration is based
• 2) if the secondary source accurately reproduces the primary source
• 3) if not, in which details it reproduces more accurately to the primary source

The verification of these issues can provide the historian with the totality or essence of the main source, in cases where secondary sources are the only means of knowing a fact. In such cases, the secondary source is the original source for the historian, in the sense of being the "origin" of knowledge about it, always having to apply the same precautions as to a primary source in regarding its reliability.

Oral tradition

Gilbert Garraghan maintains that oral tradition can be accepted if it meets these two "general conditions" or six "particular conditions":

• General conditions.

• Tradition must be supported by an uninterrupted series of witnesses, ranging from the first and immediate observer of the fact, through living witnesses to whom the testimony was transmitted, to the first one who wrote it.
• There must be several parallel and independent series of witnesses testifying on the facts in question.

• Special conditions.
• Tradition must report an important public act, which is necessarily known directly by a large number of people.

• Tradition must have been widespread belief, at least for a certain period of time.
• During that particular period, it should not have been questioned, even by persons with any interest in denying that belief.
• Tradition must be of a relatively limited duration. [In another part of his work, Garraghan suggests a maximum limit of 150 years, at least in cultures based on oral memory. ]
• During that period, there must be a sufficiently developed critical spirit, as well as the necessary means for critical research.
• Critical-minded people who had considered it false would have questioned it, did not.

Other methods of verification of oral tradition may exist, such as comparison with evidence of archaeological remains.

Fieldwork in West Africa and Eastern Europe has contributed to discussions of the reliability or potential unreliability of oral tradition.

Synthesis: historical reasoning

Once individual pieces of information have been evaluated in their context, hypotheses can be formed and established through historical reasoning.

Argument from the best explanation

C. Behan McCullagh sets out seven conditions for the success of a best explanation argument:

1. The argument must involve, in addition to other arguments that have previously been proved to be true, other facts that describe reality: observable data. From now on we will call the first argument hypothesisand the arguments describing the observable data, Comments (However, we must bear in mind that each of the concepts managed: truth, reality, historical reality - its own history as soon as past-, data, fact, scientific fact, historical fact -usually called event- scientific hypothesis and scientific observation; they have a proper codification in the methodology of science, especially in the sciences of nature, which does not coincide strictly with that of the social sciences -methodology of the social sciences- or with the use given in historiography or even by each historian or historiographic school.
2. The hypothesis must be of greater exposure of scope than any other incompatible hypothesis on the same subject, that is, it must involve a greater variety of observations.
3. The hypothesis must be of greater explanatory power than any other incompatible hypothesis on the same subject, i.e. that the observations it implies must have been made more likely than any other.
4. The hypothesis must be more possible than any other incompatible hypothesis on the same subject, i.e., it involves to some extent a greater variety of accepted truths than any other, and it is implied more strongly than any other, and its denial must be likely to imply a lower number of beliefs, and it implies less force than any other.
5. The hypothesis must be less ad hoc that any other hypothesis incompatible with the same subject, that is, should include a smaller number of new assumptions about the past that are not already implied to some extent by existing beliefs.
6. Disconformity with that hypothesis should be less accepted by existing beliefs than any other hypothesis incompatible with the same subject, i.e., when articulated with accepted truths, it must involve a lower number of observation statements and other statements that are believed to be false.
7. It should be superior to other incompatible hypotheses on the same subject; therefore, if there is little possibility of a hypothesis of incompatibility in the characteristics of 2 to 6, after further investigation, it must overcome them in these aspects.

McCullagh summarizes, "if the scope and force of an explanation is very great, in that it explains a large number and variety of facts, many more than any explanation with which it competes, it is likely to be true.# 34;.

Statistical inference

McCullagh states this type of argument as follows:

1. There is probability (the degree of p ₁ That what an A is a B.
2. It is likely (to the extent p ₂ That this is an A.
3. Therefore (in relation to these premises) is likely (in the measure of p ₁ × p ₂ That this is a B.

McCullagh gives this example:

1. In thousands of cases, the letters V.S.L.M. that appears at the end of a Latin inscription on a tombstone mean Votum Solvit Libens Merito.
2. In this tombstone the letters V.S.L.M. are at the end of a Latin inscription.
3. Therefore, these letters in this tombstone mean Votum Solvit Libens Merito.

It is a syllogism in probabilistic form, making use of a generalization formed by induction from numerous examples (such as the first premise).

The analogy argument

The structure of the argument is as follows:

1. One thing (object, event, or situation) has p properties ₁ ...p _n and p _{- + 1} .
2. Another thing that has p properties ₁ ...p _n .
3. Therefore, the latter also has the property p _{- + 1} .

McCullagh proposes that an argument from analogy is a "disguised statistical syllogism" or, better put, an argument for the best explanation. It is a statistical syllogism when it is 'established by a sufficient number of cases and several instances of generalization', otherwise the argument may be invalid if properties 1 to n are not related to property n + 1, unless property n + 1 is the best explanation of properties 1 through n. Analogy, therefore, is indisputable only when it is used to suggest hypotheses, not as a conclusive argument.