History as Humanistic Studies PDF

- I Teodoro A. Agoncillo When one looks over the catalogues of universities. here and abr&ad, one finds that history as a discipline is classified as a socinl science. In a few universi- ties, however, it is cate...

- I Teodoro A. Agoncillo When one looks over the catalogues of universities. here and abr&ad, one finds that history as a discipline is classified as a socinl science. In a few universi- ties, however, it is cate gorized as both humanities and so ·c~. al scier..ce, and the student is given the dubious privilege of dediding whether the discipline should be included in his humanities or social science require- ments. Among students of history, there has been dis- agreement regarding its nature and stature: some would like to see the discipline al!ghed witt the soci a l sciences, while others believe it properly belongs t o the humanistic st udies, specifically, to the realm of literature. In recent years, social scientists abro ad , specially in the United States, have been insisting tha t history should adopt the methodology of the soc ial scien- ces, for the subject matter of history i s supposed ly like that of the social science. ~iost his torians, how- ever, demur and say t ~a t history has its own me t hodolo- gy distinct from that of the social s ci ence, and that while in ce~taln instances the hi s torian may use the methods of the soc i al scienti s t, nevertheless the his- t orical discipl i ne has a wid er fi eld than that of the agonclllo ---2 social science and has a methodology that fits its range. Recent advances in social science methodology have convinced some historians to adopt the methodology of the social science in historical studies. The hwnan- ist among the historians, however, refUse to give in to the learned disquisitions of the social scientists and insistif with some vehemence that there are wide dif- ferences between history and the social science. While admitting that there are instances when the historian should u~e some approaches and methods of the social scientist, in most cases those approaches would tend to make history a dull and uninspired discipline, accurate maybe but without flesh and blood. History as both composition and discipline has ele- ments of the humanities and the social science. The his- torian a methodology is scientific, that is to say, it is based on the methods known to science. Thus, for example, in examining documents, the historian is not satisified with the presence of pieces of paper with handw~iting on them. He examines the paper to deter- mine whether it belongs to th e period in which it was supposedly used. He examines the ink, the penmanship, the style of writing to determine not only the genuine-  agoncillo ---3 ness of the document~lso its credibility. All these steps in detemnining the genuineness and credi- bility of a document belong to science. Hence the scien- tific part of history deals with the examination of existing documents. 'l 'he rest ---the writing and inter- pretation --- belong to the humanities. In its totali- ty~ history as a speci_es of composition is unquestiona- bly in the category of the humanities. When one looks into the nature of history and the social science, one inevitably sees the wide gulf that separates the two. History, as any student oft he dis- cipline knows, deals with the particular, while the so- eial science deals with the general. This is not to say that history does not indulge in generalizations. It does, but its Use in history is llmitedo History, for example, says that King Richard the Lion-Hearted was crowned King of England. The_i.¥.scientist for his part generalizea and says that all kings were crowned. Sire e history deals v('i th the particular, the historian ,_, does noP investigate facts in order to discover so- -called laws. On the other hand, the social scient- ist, because he deals with the general, attempts to formulate so-called laws or principles out of the  agoncillo ---4 materials examined. So the economist has the law of sup- ply and demand, Gresham's lqw, and other so-called laws which today are taken seriously by students of economics. In history, there are no such or similar laws, although students of historiography are famili ar with such philo- sophers of history as Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toyn- bee who formulated alleged laws of history ana who, on the basis of such "laws", made predictions of the shape of things to come. In the social science, a s in econo- mies, one can predict trends and possibilities, such as the amount of taxes the government can collect in a specified.. tear, the projection being based on e~ist­ ing data ~nd policies. In history, prediction 19 anathe- what ma, for it deals with/had passed and not with what will happen. Again, in economics and sociology, quantifica t ion is used to interpret a specific item of the past as wel l as the present and the future. In history, quantific a- tion is used exclusively to explain certain humber s r e le- vant to a past act or process. Thus, a sociologi st will use quantification to foretell t he voting trend s , fo r example, in a coming election, the basis be i n g the samp- l i n~ of opinions expressed by selected individuals who 0 represent, or so the sociologi s t or hi s l egman thinks,  agoncillo the cross-section of the voters of q definite place or ar ea. The historian, on the other hand, will use the data of the previous election not to predict the trend of the coming election but to explain and inter- pret whAt the results of the past election meant and signify. When he tries to we~r Nostradamus's mantle , the historian ceases to be a hist~rian; he becomes a prophet -- most probably a bad oneo In the social science, it is not necessary to have()1_ lively imagination and to be literary in order to be classified among the greats. One can become a great so- cial scientist without being a great or even a good wri - ter, although to be a gre 8 t social scientist does not necessarily mean not to have a good literary style, for there are scientists who are also good writers. A his- torlan, on the other hand, in order to be recognized as great/must have a literar y style that is at once clear, flowing, and charmingo This is becRuse A historian, to be convincing, must succeed in re-c rea t ing the past or at least approximating the p as t as gleaned fr om relia- ble and credible sourceso ~hus, all great historians were a lso great writers~ Gibbon, Froude, and ~~ caulay in l!:ngland; Ranke and.Momrnsen in Germany; Taine and  ·agoncillo ---6 :Michelet in F'r9.nc e; hot ley,.t'rescott 1 and.l:'arkman in the United St~tes. A study of th e wo rks of these great historisns re- veals that they hove in common not only a ,areat style but a lively imagination. But this imagination is dis- tinguished from the literary ima g ination in that it does ' not interfere with the historisns methodology, which is scientific, but is limited by it. The literary imagina- tion roams freely and m~y even contradict known facts, as in Gulli 1er 1 s travels o r in the Grimm brothers s ex- cursions into fantasy, where qs the historical imagina- tion is circumscribed within the limits set by the facts at hand. Thus, while the literary imagination may des- cribe non-existing situ 3tions anct personalities, the historical imagina tion 1oes no t go beyond what the mqter- 1919 indicate or supgest. fhe historian uses his 1mag1 - n ~t ion to re-capture the past a s closely as his data per- mit him, but in thus using his i rnaeinatlon he inhibits himself from expressine or describing things not even remotely implied by his s o urc en. ~ t 9ny rate, imagina- tion, limited though it i s by the materials already es- t ab lished as authentic and cr edihle, is a very important.''"\ element of his,t;orlcnl writln1. withvol:iti it, any historical. piece, n o mAtte r h ow sccur~te, b e comes a dull cornpilo tion  agoncillo ---7 of data devoid of life and, therefore, unhistorical. Such kind of history writing is unhistorical because it does not reflect the life of history-as-actuality witb its color, vividness, drama, and conflict that characterize life. It is for this reason that learned dissertations, especially ma ster's a nd doctor's theses, are unhistorical. An example of historical ima gina tion at work is Cath- erine Drinker Bowen's passage in her celebrated biogra- phy of the great.tlmerican jurist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in which she said On the evening of her husband's birthday -- March 8, 1881 -- l