PRELIMS

• Authenticity of historical sources comes up "when the writer or witnesses to the writing cannot be produced."
• Authenticity means the quality of being "principal, genuine" or original as a first condition of truthfulness
• Authenticity implies that a thing has all the elements necessary for it to be regarded as true in relation to what is said about it
• Historians need to check for authenticity because documents can be forged or fabricated for different reasons
• Tests of authenticity include checking the date when the thing was made/created, kind of material, possible author of the document, isographies, paleographies, provenance, semantics, and hermeneutics
• Kinds of falsehood in documents can be intentional or unintentional
• Intentional falsehood is usually harder to detect but causes less trouble
• Unintentional falsehood usually occurs in documents whose originals have disappeared and causes errors of omission, repetition, or addition by their scribes
• Process of Restoring Texts involves diligently collecting copies of the dubious texts, grouping them into "families," comparing the texts to establish comparative age, and presuming the oldest one to be nearest to the original
• Sciences Auxiliary to History include decipherers of hieroglyphics, decipherers of Old Persian and Babylonian cuneiform, biblical criticism, philology, epigraphers, paleographers, archaeologists, numismatics, sphragistics, heraldry and genealogy, bibliographers, lexigraphers, and social scientists
• The historian examines texts/documents to understand and construct a set of particulars which can fit into a theory/hypothesis
• Historical facts are credible particulars derived from historical documents and subject to proof
• Evidence refers to the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid
• A historical fact is a truth that should be publicly available and uncontroversial
• Four tests of credibility include checking who was the author, when the source was written or produced, if the ultimate source of details was able and willing to tell the truth, and if there is independent corroboration of the detail under examination
• Ability to tell the truth depends on the witness's nearness to the event and the three steps in historical testimony: observation, recollection, and recording
• Conditions favorable to truthfulness include when the purpose of the statement is a matter of indifference to the witness, when it is prejudicial to the witness, when it is a matter of common knowledge, and when statements are contrary to a witness's expectations or anticipations
• Hearsay and secondary evidence can be used by historians when primary evidence is not present
• Corroboration is important, and historians generally accept particulars that rest upon the independent testimony of two or more reliable witnesses
• Certitude vs Certainty: the historian's "truths" are derived from analytical evaluations of sources rather than the actual past
• Principle of non-contradiction: "a thing cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same respect."