北大医学部复习资料why historian disagree.docx

Most students are usually introduced to the study of history by way of a fat textbook and become quickly immersed in a vast sea of names, dates, events and statistics. The students skills are then tested by examinations that require them to show how much of the data they remember; the more they remember, the higher their grades. From this experience a number of conclusions seem obvious: the study of history is the study of facts about the past; the more factsyou know, the better you are as a student of history. The professional historian is simply one who brings together a very large number of facts. Therefore students often become confused upon discovering that historians often disagree sharply even when they are dealing withe the same event. Their common-sense reaction to this state of affairs is to conclude that one historian is right while the other is wrong. And presumably, historians who are wrong will have their facts wrong. This is seldom the case, however. Historians usually all argue reasonably and persuasively. And, the facts---the names, dates, events, statistics--usually turn out to be correct. Moreover, they often find that contending historians more or less agree on the facts; that is , they use much the same data. They come to different conclusions because they view the past form a different perspective. History, which seemed to be a cut-and -dried matter of memorizing facts, now becomes a matter of choosing one good interpretation form among many. Historical truth becomes a matter of personal preference. This position is hardly satisfying. They cannot help but feel that two diametrically opposed points of view about an event cannot both be right; yet they lack the ability to decide between them. To understand why historians disagree, students must consider a problem they have more or less taken for granted. They must ask themselves what history really is . In its broadest sense, history denotes the whole of the human past. More restricted