experiences. Hence, it can be said to be a subjective or personal kind of knowledge. Finally,
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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
interpreted and put into a context. While scientific and artistic knowledge are both strong forms of
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knowledge, in which the knower has a high degree of confidence about his conclusions, they
contain aspects which weaken each other when the are cross-bred like in history. The compromise
between the objective and subjective forces of history, hence, implies the specific problems of
historical conclusions.
Admittedly, all knowledge could be regarded as a combination of subjectivity and objectivity,
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since all information needs to pass our subjective minds to become knowledge. However, to let
this limit the distinction would not be very fruitful. As I see it, the specific conditions of historical
knowledge can be pointed out using a biological analogy: People with blood group A have B-
antibodies, and people with bloodgroup B have A-antibodies. If we let A represent scientific
knowledge and B represent artistic knowledge, then history is represented by bloodgroup AB,
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(which does not have any antibodies). In case of a blood transfusion, people of blood group AB
can thus receive blood from both A and B without any major problems. However, if AB blood is
given to any of A or B, the latters’s antibodies would strike out the AB blood. That is, translating
this to knowledge matters, problems occur when history is outside its natural body – for instance,
analysed as an objective scientific report, without taking into consideration the creative aspects of
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history – but the influence of scientific and artistic knowledge on history is profitable as long as
one is aware of the specific problems of history. However, the above model is of course simplified
and used to emphasise the differences between the kinds of knowledge. In fact, the similarities
might even outnumber the differences. After all, all knowledge is based upon observation of the
world, and in a larger perspective ultimately treat the same questions.
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Now, with the walls raised, we can go on to the roofing. Flaubert once commented that ‘writing
history was like drinking an ocean and pissing a cupful’2 – a comment that seems to hold some
Essay 2
10 Diploma Programme Theory of Knowledge Teacher Support Material: Assessment Exemplars, November 2002
truth. The condensation from an endless amount of information into something useful, the essence,
must involve a selection. The problem is thus that history has to be the historian’s choice, based on
his or her interpretations. Consequently, doubts can be raised as to whether the selection and
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interpretation processes reflect the object of study, reality, satisfactorily. Asking a Palestinian Arab
historian and an Israeli Jewish historian about the history of Palestine/Israel would perhaps result
in slightly different answers. Furthermore, some historians even argue that history is created the
moment it is written. This is a view that acknowledges the subjective influences in history, and
emphasises the artist’s influence on the historian’s work. The view of others, that the historian’s
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task is to uncover the traces of history through documents, accounts and other evidence, seemingly
has the scientific rigour as the dominant influence on the historian. Either way, the historian has to
take an active part, thus creating insecurities concerning the conclusions.
Yet another problem that the historian faces, is the aspect of time connected to his interpretations.
Historians, like everyone else, are affected by the time in which they live, with its specific society,
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ideas and attitudes. Whereas facts do not change particularly over time – a bracelet from the
Bronze Age is still a bracelet, even if it looks a little older today – our interpretation of these facts
certainly change. And, as Håkan Arvidsson has argued, since facts are, ultimately, just our way of
breaking up indissoluble contexts, they mean nothing until they are put back in a reconstructed
context. “And at the construction of these contexts,” he argues, “the historian is inexorably trapped
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by the spirit of the time”.3
Thus, the historian’s conclusions, in this view, have their validity limited to a specific time. When
the interpretations no longer are valid, the conclusions derived from them can no longer be
justified. But does this imply that historical knowledge is useless, since it is only temporary? No,
certainly not. After all, history does not only depict past times, it is also a mirror of our own
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society; in the light of history, we can re-evaluate contemporary phenomena. And even if a
historical conclusion cannot promise to hold truth for all foreseeable future, it must still have a
value for the moment.
However, the spirit of the time is not the only factor influencing the historian’s ‘artistic self’ and
his interpretations. A current example of how historians with different backgrounds can come to
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different conclusions from the same facts is the Wallenberg-investigation. Raoul Wallenberg was a
Swedish diplomat who saved ten thousands of Hungarian Jews in World War II, before he was
arrested by the Red Army in 1944 and never returned. More, than 50 years after his disappearance,
many historians have studied his destiny without been able to come to a satisfactory conclusion.
Recently, there has been a Swedish-Russian expert group, going over newly released documents in
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Russian archives, and though they were working together, in their final reports in January 2001,
the Swedish and the Russian researchers had come to different conclusions. The Swedish side had
as one of their two hypotheses that Wallenberg was alive after July 1947, the date when some
documents maintain that he died, and kept in isolation as long as maybe even to 1989 – a
hypothesis which the Russian side dismisses. This is peculiar, considering the fact that both sides
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had access to the same material, and begs the question what the reason is for the difference.
Ideology? Culture? Nationalism? Personal interests? All of the above are variables with the
potential to influence the force of imagination, and affect historical conclusions. Surely, one reason
for the difference, in this case, is because the historians do not have enough information and are
forced to speculate. Admittedly, the more information, the closer is the gap between different
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interpretations, but the point should still be clear. Information and historical facts always have to
be interpreted and put in a context, and in this process insecurities do exist.
So which conclusions can be drawn from the discussion above? To say that a historian can never
be confident about his or her conclusions would mean that the subject of history is reduced to no
more than an advanced form of guesswork, and that would be, despite the problems of history, an
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exaggeration. On the other hand, saying that the historian can be fully confident, combining the
forces of the scientist and the artist would, to my mind, be to disregard the implications of the
problem of objectivity and reliability of history itself. The hardly exciting answer is, hence, that
Essay 2
the answer is somewhere in the middle. When all criteria are met, adequate facts have been
presented, critically interpreted and put in a proper context, the historian can to a large extent be
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confident about his or her conclusions. However, due to the nature of the subject, a historian can
never, be fully confident. The architect, returning to the opening analogy, can only hope that his
house will sustain the tests to which it is going to be exposed.
1571 words