Approaches to Historical Writing

There seem to be at least two approaches to writing about history. Using a strictly empirical approach, writing is in virtue of the data collected. Hume contended that experience is the sum of some combination of discreet packets of sense data. The accumulation of such data creates various habits of thinking based on the consistent conjunction of two or more observations. To Hume, this habitual thinking begets relationships between ideas, and the contrary to theses relationships is impossible but the contrary to any single fact is possible. If all such knowledge is necessarily subjective as such, how could we know any objective reality if there was one? To some extent, history is subjective, but historians develop methods for determining the quality of historical evidence. Because of the strictly subjective cause, however, empirical historicism reduces historical writing to a series of autobiographical monographs.

Using a rational approach, one may acquire at least some unique knowledge independent of the available evidence. In this way, we may know an objective reality at least in part. Through such methodical thought, we may formulate means by which we write at least partially objective monographs. As the historian studies physical evidence along side previous historical accounts, she is more able to discover means by which to determine the actuality of the events in question. As she reviews previously written histories, she may extract some of the presuppositions of previous writers, and applying properties of logic, she may deduce a more accurate story. Using all available data, the historian may determine what must be true or false or even relevant. As such, historical evidence is subject to certain criteria as expressed in the following questions.

1. Is it logically necessary that a given assertion is true, false, or relevant?
2. Is it beyond a reasonable doubt that a given assertion is true, false, or relevant?
3. Is it by a preponderance of evidence that a given assertion is true, false, or relevant?

Using either approach, a historian is hard pressed to justify any conclusion, but applying a rationalist method of determining data quality, the historian gains insights that are out of reach in a purely empirical method.