Historian & their Facts
Carr says that “the facts speak only when” the ______ calls on them.
Who is the historian?
Carr argues that the development of the individual and society is inseparable. What does he mean when he says that the historian is both the product of history and of history’s process?
Who is someone whose outlook and interpretations are shaped by their social and historical context, even as their work helps shape how history itself is understood?
Does Carr argue that we should define historical phenomena / societies in relation to an absolute standard, or in their relation to one another?
What is their relation to one another.
What is the name of a historical theory that believes that it is the leaders of countries or important figures are the ones that cause all the movement in history?
What is the Great man Theory
How many degrees has Proctor received from Tufts?
What is 3
Carr compares historical facts to fish swimming in a vast ocean rather than lying on a fishmonger’s slab. What point is he making with this metaphor?
What is Carr’s idea that historians select and interpret facts rather than simply collecting them; that the facts we “catch” depend on what we’re looking for and how we approach the past?
What is the “Bad King John” Theory - give an example?
What is a historical discussion emphasizing the character and actions of individual leaders versus broader social, economic, and cultural forces.
What does Carr say about how historians should pass moral judgements on individuals vs. institutions?
What is "The historian should pass moral judgement on the institution, but not on the individuals who created it” (Carr 101).
According to Carr, a historian must avoid treating causes as single and isolated, but instead see them as part of a larger _____ _____.
What is a causal chain or causal pattern?
This is the dorm that Proctor called home in his freshman year at Tufts.
Carr describes the relationship between the historian and facts as one of constant interaction, calling it a dialogue between these two entities.
What are the past and present
What are the myths of Robinson Crusoe and Kirilov in Dostoyevsky’s The Devils?
What is to show that the idea of a person existing wholly apart from society is an illusion, E. H. Carr cites these two myths – one about a castaway who rebuilds community, and another about a man who proves his freedom only through death.
Can you list out 3 of the 5 fundamental differences between history and sciences that Carr explores? (Pg 79)
1. History deals exclusively with the unique, science with the general
2. History teaches no lessons
3. History is unable to predict
4. History is necessarily subjective since man is observing himself
5.History involves issues of religion and morality
How does Carr use the example of “Cleopatra’s Nose” to explain causation vs accident in history?
What is to explain how small or accidental details in history might trigger a chain of events that could have a much broader historical impact.
What is Professor Proctor’s favorite Professional Football Team?
What is The Jets
What did Sir George Clark think about the concept of an “ultimate history?”
What is, he believed that historians could one day produce “ultimate history,” but this later Cambridge historian thought such objectivity impossible because all history passes through human minds.
Carr compared the individual and society to these two interdependent biological entities.
What are the cell and the organism.
Who is Henri Poincaré, and how did he influence Carr?
Who is a French mathematician’s. His work, La Science et l’Hypothèse (1902) helped overturn belief in immutable scientific laws, influencing Carr’s analogy between science and historical reasoning
Carr discusses that the absolute freedom of the individual, like the absolute determinism of the historian, is an illusion.” How does this summarize his middle ground between human agency and historical structure?
What is individuals make choices and shape history, but always within social, economic, and intellectual conditions that limit and enable their actions; neither free will nor fate alone explains events
What was Professor Proctor's First Job after he gradated from Tufts?
What is a highschool History Teacher
Who made the story of a Gingerbread vendor in 1850 being violently kicked to death by a mob a fact? (pg. 10)
Who is Dr. Kitson Clark
Carr rejects the “Great Man” theory of history, which treats history as the biography of exceptional individuals. According to him, why is this view inadequate for understanding historical change?
What individuals can only make an impact through the conditions and social forces of their time; that great men are products of their societies, not isolated creators of history?
What is learning through generalization?
What is when history (like science) builds understanding through this process of drawing patterns from experience.
EX: When Carr recalls learning at the Paris Peace Conference not to throw secret papers into the trash.
Carr argues that historians must avoid the accident theory of history. What does he mean by this, and why does he reject the idea that major historical events can be explained by chance or coincidence?
What is Carr’s belief that history is shaped by underlying social and economic forces rather than random accidents, meaning that focusing on “chance” ignores the deeper patterns and causes that make events historically intelligible?
This former Tufts professor was Proctor’s mentor and the school’s resident Byzantinist.
Who is George J. Marcopoulos