What methods do historians use to gain knowledge?

 

We study world history because what happened in the past is the reason behind the present we have today and the future we will have tomorrow. Historians used primary sources to gain knowledge. Historians interpret from the surviving evidence of the past, rather than just thinking about “What happened in the past”. The object of historical study is different in nature from other areas of knowledge.

 

Each historian has their own point of view and their own ethics which they follow. Historians look for causes that explain why a certain event happened, and help answer their questions to draw a conclusion about the past. The tools used by historians that help answer these questions are primary sources, secondary sources and oral history. Primary sources are things like artifacts or written scripts or drawings drawn by a people who saw historical events happen. Secondary sources are drawn or written by a people who did not see the historical events happen, they are mostly based on the primary sources about the particular event. Oral history is something that does not have written records, these are stories and songs that people have passed down generation to generation. 

 

Sources are sometimes incomplete and unreliable, so historians search for sources which will answer their questions. This process of choosing questions and looking for answers is known as gaining “Knowledge”. Historians will have to distinguish between sources that are trustworthy and reliable and which are not, but it is not as simple as it is said. These sources sometimes have hidden meanings in it which will need to be broken to analyse the source and obtain more reliable answers. Sometimes the conclusions of the historians that were thought to be true might turn out to be false. Historians also had to possess research skills, analytic skills and problem solving skills.