Warring States Project
Methodology

History aims to discover the truth about the past. Over the years, methods have been worked out which are helpful in getting at historical truth. Some basic principles - objectivity, honesty, preference for the earliest sources - are associated in the West with Leopold von Ranke. They are here combined with other maxims into a handbook for the study of the past, along with warnings about some common errors. All these methodological dos and don'ts look to just one thing: recovering the past, in Ranke's words, "as it really was."

• Method
  • Ranke's Maxims
  • Outline of Procedure
• Difficulties
• The Attack on History
• Two Kinds of History: A Footnote to Postmodernism
• Dating a Text: Two Ways of Arguing
• Errors
• Solipsism: Denying the Past
• The Lisbon Earthquake: Disconnecting Events
• Buckingham Palace: Mistaking Awesome for Ancient
• The Marco Polo Bridge: Trusting Government Documents
• William Tell: Trusting Romantic Legends
• Delusions
• Antiquity Frenzy: Chauvinism vs History
• The Anyway Club: History without Philology
• Ethics
• Getting Started
• Advice to Students (and a few others)

The past cannot successfully be studied in a corner, and the next section of this site is devoted to the concept of History in its widest sense.

17 Jan 2004 / Contact The Project / Exit to Home Page