The Historian and the Search for Truth

The historian and the search for truth
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. History, in its broadest sense, is the totality of all past events, although a more realistic definition would limit it to the known past. Of all the fields of serious study and literary effort, history may be the hardest to define precisely, because the attempt to uncover past events and formulate an intelligible account of them necessarily involves the use and influence of many auxiliary disciplines and literary forms. The concern of all serious historians has been to collect and record facts about the human past and often to discover new facts. They have known that the information they have is incomplete, partly incorrect, or biased and requires careful attention. All have tried to discover in the facts patterns of meaning addressed to the enduring questions of human life.
Ever since history started to be written, historians have reflected on the theories and methods with which they approach the past, and the possibilities and limitations of acquiring reliable knowledge about it. From the ancient Greek historian Thucydides to historical scholars of the Enlightenment and the Romantic periods such as Edward Gibbon and Leopold von Ranke, they have maintained in different ways a fundamental distinction between history and myth, objective knowledge about the past and poetic reinventions of it, historical fact and historical fiction.
Telling the Truth about History is a central question; whether it is even possible to achieve objective truth in history. What historians do best is to connect with the past in order to understand present-day problems as well as the potential of the future. Also historian can arrive at a clearer picture of history today than was