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the current revolution m historical investigation, compares it with the
revolution in science:
In
our century, the natural scientists have made great advances
by throwing aside their old assumptions and striking out on new
and uncharted lines of thought. The same is now beginning to
be true of historians. I think it is quite possible that the study of
history today is entering a period of rapid change and advance
such as characterized the science of physics in the first three
decades of the twentieth century.
The change has come none too soon, for history was not so long
ago faced with a desperate future, its methods seemingly certain and
fixed so that they could be taught to any bright graduate student who
had the necessary
sitzfleisch,
and nothing more exciting to do than "fill
in the gaps" or prepare the definitive edition of one more set of docu–
ments. Unfortunately, the endless filling of gaps and accumulation of
documents seemed to promise less and less in the way of important and
relevant knowledge, and the intelligent historian found that he could
go on filling gaps for longer than he would care to.
Hughes sketches the renewal as a rethinking of the
historismus
of
the German idealists and of nineteenth century positivist history. Taking
Croce and Marc Bloch as typical of each, respectively, Hughes says
that "Croce taught us to see the writing of history as an exercise of crea–
tive thought; the French showed us how we could ground this thought
in the directly perceived evidences of a vanished past." From Croce,
the historian learned to see himself as a thinker and an artist; from Bloch
and the French realists, he came to see himself as a scientist dealing with
the facts.
The modern historian is encouraged by the idealist to use his
imagination, and warned by the positivist to hold fast to the "hard"
data
if
he is to be a scientist instead of a fabulist who plays tricks on the
dead. From the facts he sets limits to his imagination: they serve as a
barrier against what is demonstrably false, what is clearly contrary
to the evidence. But within those limits he is free to range and to specu–
late on the possible and the probable. He may not be able to say, with
certainty, what is true; but he can say what is false. Having rejected the
false and impossible and having established from the evidence the limits
of the possible within which his imagination is free to wander, he sets
to work, half-scientist, half-humanist, a historian.
Now the historian is able to draw upon recent discoveries in other
disciplines. From the sociologist he borrows concepts of class, status, and
