R.G. Collingwoods definition of historical knowledge》.pdf

ARTICLE IN PRESS History of European Ideas 33 (2007) 350–371 /locate/histeuroideas R.G. Collingwood’s definition of historical knowledge R.B. Smith1 Department of History, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9SN, UK Available online 8 March 2007 Abstract R.G. Collingwood defined historical knowledge as essentially ‘scientific’, and saw the historian’s task as the ‘re-enactment of past thoughts’. The author argues the need to go beyond Collingwood, first by demonstrating the authenticity of available evidence, and secondly, using Namier as an example, by considering methodology as well as epistemology, and the need to relate past thoughts to their present context. The ‘law of the consumption of time’ encourages historians to focus on landmark events, theories and generalisations, thus breaking from Collingwood’s emphasis on fidelity to past ideas and interpreting the past from the concepts of the present. This conflict can only be reconciled by the study of historiography. r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Collingwood; Namier; Historical knowledge; Scientific knowledge; Historiography; Evidence; Authenticity; Philosophy of history So I reached my third proposition: ‘Historical knowledge is the re-enactment of a past thought incapsulated in a context of present thoughts which, by contradicting it, confine it to a plane different from theirs. R.G. Collingwood, An Autobiography (1939) 1Professor Ralph B. Smith (1939–2000) was Professor of the International History of South East Asia at the Sch