Historical research is tempting. As one thing leads to another, and each thing as interesting as the last, or more so, there is a temptation to run amok finding out a little about everything. There is also the desire to become a specialist, and to find out everything there is to know about a single subject. And this is the peculiar temptation of modern scholarship. An example is the noted scholar, Ignác Goldziher, better known to students of Oriental history as the "Geniza mouse", from the vast amount of time he spent among those interesting discards of the past. This is well for such a scholar, but is it the best way to introduce history to the young mind?"Too often, the work of research still wanders aimlessly with no rational decision about where it is to be applied."
Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft (1953), p. 86.
Tolkien speaks of students (encouraged by their professors), who run about "after the manner of research-mice running off with little bits nibbled out of unexplored sacks to build up a little thesis." These people, he says, get the degrees. The idea is to promote original research and use of sources, but it can lead to a false sense of confidence and a feeling of having exhausted the fountain of history. It can destroy the ability of students to see the big picture, and to regard history as an academic exercise, rather than the fount of the present. In compiling everything found on one subject there is a tendency to ignore the significance of the material, that is what it means in a broader context. The student is content to order and recite his findings without questioning them. He has no plan other than to present the material, and get the degree.
Is research mere compilation, and can research wander aimlessly and still be considered research? This needs to be considered.
The steps in research should be directed towards solving the problem or problems which arise from material in context. The researcher, like every other worker, should have a plan. (Napoleon, the master of strategy, once remarked that there is nothing so rare as a plan.) The terms of a question also imply the answer. False problems, usually set by a teacher, might include such open ended questions as: research the War of 1812. This means the student goes along thinking everything he finds mentioning this war is equally important. In fact, all "facts" are not equally important. The historian must always choose. He chooses, as Collingwood remarks, from an infinite welter of past events, and he must do so based on his own judgments of value. If everything is of equal value then the question of what a general ate for breakfast the morning of the battle is as important as the decisions he made, and the orders he sent. No one thinks this to be true. Our novelists do not detail every step the hero takes as he crosses the desert; our historians may detail what a general is said to have eaten for breakfast if his death before or after the battle is due to poisoning, and so on, especially if it led to some significant historical condensation of incident. Since we must choose what to concentrate on, we must have a criteria by which to choose what is important in our story, and if we are to write history it must be an historical criteria.
Information is not something that simply exists, nor does history, which is a highly structured kind of information about the past. At the root of the word "information" is the Latin forma — informare means to "shape, form an idea of something, or to describe." Information without interpretation does not exist. Information is a kind of perception, as well as an articulation of that perception. No one simply writes the history of an area or event; he writes his history, that is his perception of that event and its significance. Whether the work produced is good history or not depends for the most part what kind of person he (or she) is, and how well they know their business. The criteria of success can only be judged in relation to the task that person has set to accomplish.
A task (and the historian's work, if it is to be of value, is always a task), is objective, that is, it involves judgments of value; but it is never merely objective, it also involves subjective, or personal evaluation. The philosophy of the historian (as of all other knowledge workers) will determine what he can know: this is particularly the case in terms of his conclusions, for that conclusion is the result of decisions concerning what he thinks important and unimportant in the "infinite welter" of the past. To seriously ask a question about the past means that already the researcher has assigned it some importance. Knowing his business means asking the right questions, in the right order. All knowledge exists in relation to a question, but what gives the question value, or makes it important, is the task. This is why knowledge acquisition, and teaching (including writing or speaking for an audience), is a co-ordinate part of the research experience. There is no task where there is no call to make use of the findings. The task, which means the work of solving the problem (that is getting the questions in the right order, and answering them based on the evidence one has uncovered), goes on in the researchers head, as we say. It is not solved in the laboratory or library (however helpful these may be). Thoughts do not happen in people's heads, and you do not even have a thought until it can expressed in some kind of language, for thought and language, which means speaking or writing, always go together.
The historian who is forever "researching" but never producing anything (and I do not mean formal publication, but also teaching, or passing his knowledge along to others in some significant way), is merely entertaining himself with trinkets from the past. The sign of this is that every minor detail appears to such people to be equally significant and interesting. At this rate no problem can ever be solved; in fact the first criteria of research is missing, the question, and such a one can only go on reading and collecting trifles.
This is an Archival Quality Communication 15 Mar 2008
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