Peter Novikck Historiography Summary

Peter Novick creates a narrative looking at the approach that has been used over the course of American history looking at professional historiography. Specifically, he looks at the idea of objectivity and its development in America, as well as the contrast of development of the idea in other places. For Americans, objectivity was the basis of their practice. It began so by the development of a certain cadre of historians taught in Germany and perpetuated by them when they returned to the American system. Leopold von Ranke to them was the definition of what a historian should be, describing him as an objective and impartial figure dislocated from bias. Yet, this opinion of Ranke was decisively wrong. The Ranke taught and read in Germany was very much opinionated in his approach to research, specifically towards his “pantheistic state-worship.”(Novick, 28) The American students effectively made a false idol out of Ranke in order to represent …show more content…
He at one point uses this expression to describe his perspective in the book, “…sportswriter reporting on their performances in the annual history department softball game.”(Novick, 15) It on one hand depicts an expert looking at the details of events, impartially able to quantify and qualify the details. He doesn’t distance himself away from the department by adding any generalizing grammar, but in fact creates a place for himself as one of historians possibly in the department. The plurality of his argument is confusing and muddling. It leaves a reader further incapable of really telling where Novick stands: is he outside looking inward objectively or is he on the inside someway or extant colored by bias and personality? It’s all rather confusing and Novick himself on objectivity states, “not just essentially contested, but essentially confused.”(Novick,