Historical Evidence and Argument

✍ Scribed by David Henige

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 340
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Historians know about the past because they examine the evidence. But what exactly is “evidence,” how do historians know what it means—and how can we trust them to get it right? Historian David Henige tackles such questions of historical reliability head-on in his skeptical, unsparing, and acerbically witty Historical Evidence and Argument. “Systematic doubt” is his watchword, and he practices what he preaches through a variety of insightful assessments of historical controversies—for example, over the dating of artifacts and the textual analysis of translated documents. Skepticism, Henige contends, forces us to recognize the limits of our knowledge, but is also a positive force that stimulates new scholarship to counter it.

✦ Table of Contents

CONTENTS......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 12
Declaiming the Endtime......Page 16
Traveling Hopefully......Page 20
The Anxieties of Ambiguity......Page 30
Unraveling Gordian Knots......Page 44
When Too Much Is Not Enough......Page 57
The Many Births of Frank Lloyd Wright......Page 73
Destroying in Order to Save......Page 80
Speaking of History......Page 92
Sensing Incongruity......Page 106
Poisoned Chalices......Page 117
Scotching the Myth-Making Machine......Page 132
Irreconcilable Differences......Page 140
“We’re Changing Everything . . . Again”......Page 149
Rule Life vs. Real Life......Page 163
When Might Makes Wrong......Page 176
Six Hundred Barrels of Plaster of Paris......Page 188
Millions of Moving Parts......Page 201
He Says, She Says......Page 215
Bringing Texts Up to Code......Page 226
Gaining and Providing Access......Page 238
Hearing a White Horse Coming......Page 251
Notes......Page 260
Bibliography......Page 294
Index......Page 332