HISTORICAL SOURCES AND HISTORICAL METHOD

Abstract

The past is a subject matter that attracts the interest of not only historians but also academics in other disciplines as well as many members of the general public. A question thus arises: Is there a “historical method” that generally distinguishes the historians from academics in other disciplines? Most historians would certainly assert that they follow a historical method in their inquiry, though given the expansion of the scope of historical study itself, and the resulting need for various research methods and techniques, history has become increasingly indistinguishable from other social science disciplines. However, the inalienable nature of historical study is that it is source-based, and it is the specific method relating to the use of historical sources that provides historians, as well as academics in other disciplines interested in studying the past human society, with both a useful tool and an intellectual grounding for their scholarly inquiry.