Talk:Historical method

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Historical method article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: Index, 1: 3 months

History Top‑importance

	History portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject History, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the subject of History on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.HistoryWikipedia:WikiProject HistoryTemplate:WikiProject Historyhistory articles
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Writing Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Writing, a WikiProject interested in improving Wikipedia's coverage of content related to the fields of rhetoric, composition, technical communication, literacy, and language studies.WritingWikipedia:WikiProject WritingTemplate:WikiProject WritingWriting articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Anthropology: Oral tradition

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Anthropology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Anthropology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AnthropologyWikipedia:WikiProject AnthropologyTemplate:WikiProject AnthropologyAnthropology articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.
	This article is supported by Oral tradition taskforce.

Archives

Index

Archive 1

This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by when more than 5 sections are present.

Archeology

Why is archeology not mentioned? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 00:14, 3 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I came to this page expecting to find information such as what techniques are used to date and place old texts. (Carbon in the medium? Lettering style? Language style? Associated pottery style? Calanders? Astronomical events? Contiguous overlapping journals? Tree rings?) Isn't that something which historians do, figuring out when events occured? (Or is it something separate -- chronology?) Cesiumfrog (talk) 23:38, 3 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Most of those sort of practical techniques are listed under Auxiliary sciences of history (or, if not explicitly listed, can be found by following the links). This article is – rightly, in my opinion – more concerned with the theoretical principles underpinning the interpretation of historical evidence. However, I agree it needs a lot more development. GrindtXX (talk) 11:51, 4 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have put a link to archaeology in the lede. Otherwise, it's mentioned obliquely in the body ("relics" of the past) and again at the bottom among the See Also. If someone wants to do further write-up on the function of archaeology as part of the historical method, that is welcome. --Peter Kirby (talk) 07:58, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't historiography be mentioned sooner than all the way down in the "See also"?

Sadly, I have no formal training as a historian. So I'm posting a question here for anyone who does. As a historical-method layperson, I would ask up front whether historiography and historical method are topics that overlap enough, in terms of their content of ideas, that their encyclopedia articles should mention each other in a more integrated, cross-referenced way, fairly early toward the tops of the articles (even in the ledes, probably)? As I write this, ctrl-f finds that historiography isn't mentioned on the page any earlier than the "See also" section. I bring this up not as a whine whose solution would be "Well, OK, fix it yourself then". I'm not knowledgeable enough to fix it myself in this case, so I'm just raising this question as something to consider for the future development of this article. Maybe someone can beat me to fixing it (someone with a degree in this field). Thanks, — ¾-10 21:41, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ernst Troeltsch

I'm not really into history, but Ernst Troeltsch and his three principles of critical history and seems to be relevant [1]. --TimSC (talk) 15:48, 19 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

tous hesteric Rachid el meziati (talk) 23:32, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Gilbert Garraghan on Oral Tradition

I'm not a historian, but citing Gilbert Garraghan (a Catholic) arguing that oral tradition should be acceptable if it has an unbroken series of witnesses, seems like it could be biased; as unbroken oral traditions is a common Catholic apologetic. Could a professional historian weigh in on whether Garraghan's approach is accepted in secular history, and/or for other religious histories?

Related: If the tradition is oral, how would a historian known that it has an unbroken series of witnesses? This seems like it would have to rely on the oral tradition, and thus be circular. Khilker15 (talk) 21:49, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Supernatural & Religious claims in history

My understanding is that the majority of historians have adopted methodological naturalism. If so, an overview of that that seems relevant to this article. If not, I'd like to see some content specific to how historians evaluate supernatural/paranormal/religious claims in history. ie; can the historical method weigh in on whether any miracles of history are historical facts? If so, what are the criteria? Khilker15 (talk) 21:55, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]