A historian must combine the rigour of the scientist with the imagination of the artist. To

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“A historian must combine the rigour of the scientist with the imagination of the artist.” To

what extent, then, can the historian be confident about his or her conclusions?

Writing history, argues Thurén, can be likened to building a house, with the facts resembling the

building material. “One has to have good building material and construct the building so that it is

strong. But what the house will look like in the end does not only depend on the material, but also

on the architect / historian.”1 This is, to my mind, a good analogy of the view that history, as the

5 subject studied by a historian, is a combination of scientific and artistic – or, in the extension,

objective and subjective – knowledge. Some aspects of the end result are always determined by the

facts available. If there is only timber, it is bound to be a wooden house and if there is yellow

paint, the house will be yellow. But, as we all know, no two architects would build identical

houses of the same building material. And, while a serious historian cannot ignore his facts, he has

10 to use his imagination to form a whole. Likewise, I will employ, when writing this essay, facts,

examples and analogies as building material, and hope that I will manage to assemble it into a

strong house.

First, I am going to lay the foundation and explain what I understand and define as the three types

of knowledge this discussion is mainly concerning. On the one hand, there is knowledge resulting

15 from the scientific method, which strives to be objective and replicable. This knowledge is

exposed to high demands of rigour, since to be regarded as knowledge it needs to be

acknowledged and accepted at least by a majority of the scientific society, and adequate proofs

have to be presented; otherwise it would be just a theory among many. On the other hand, artistic

knowledge does not strive for universality or replicability, since it is based on the individual’s

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20 experiences. Hence, it can be said to be a subjective or personal kind of knowledge. Finally,

between these two poles there is historical knowledge, regarded as a combination of both the

former. Like in the Natural Sciences, the historian gathers information, for instance documents and

accounts, and with the same rigour scrutinises his procedure and criticises his sources. But history

involves humans, and the information and facts of history can only with human imagination be

25 interpreted and put into a context. While scientific and artistic knowledge are both strong forms of

knowledge, in which the knower has a ...

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