Historical source and historical fact /part 3/

Furthermore, since the information contained in the various historical sources can not always be immediately included in the turnover for the simple reason that some sources are difficult to submit to decoding from the point of view of the possibilities of the age, all sources can be divided into two types: current and potential historical sources. To the former are all the decoded sources with which the historian works, and to the latter those that actually exist but have not yet been studied.

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Historical facts. As is known, facts form the basis of every science. Such are the historical facts that have the status of artifacts. Historical epistemology does not have a unified view of the nature of historical facts. Representatives of objectivism put a sign of equality between the facts of reality and scientific facts. For them, the notion of historical fact means both the fact of reality and the description of this fact. The stated identity stems from the main motto of objectivism, namely that the historian should describe what he finds in the sources by refraining from any interpretation of testimonies, since such an interpretation tells things more than we find in the sources. The idea here is to protect historical knowledge from any contributions of subjectivism. The reverse position is the so-called subjectivism.

Unlike objectivism in which facts are given as objective in nature, subjectivism advocates the idea that these facts are subjective. In itself, one or another historical testimony can not be accepted as a historical fact, it only happens when the historian acknowledges it as legitimate and includes in its description and explanation of the respective age or period. In this sense, the historian, in fact, constitutes the evidence of the sources as historical facts and that is why these facts are subjective in nature. There is also a third understanding of the nature of historical facts (except subjectivism and objectivism), which distinguishes three types of facts:

Facts of historical reality / historical facts /: they are as far as they are facts of the past or of the material and spiritual activity of the people, they are so invariant in nature. facts of the historical source / historiographical facts /: represent... reflection of the facts of reality by the originator. Like any other reflection, this reflection is subjective. As it did, it also has an invariant character.Science historical facts / facts of knowledge /: the immediate reflection by the historian of the facts of historical reality or his immediate reflection through the facts of the source. These science-historical facts, as far as part of a particular composition, also have an invariant character.