Objectivity Question By Peter Novick Summary

Peter Novick:
His Noble Dream of Defining the “Objectivity Question” Among Historians
A plaguing question for modern historians, distancing oneself from the source material and becoming “objective” in a subjective world has been a struggle for decades now. While many historians, try as they might, attempt to provide a well-rounded, even-handed account of history through their eyes albeit in the proper historical context, those such as Peter Novick believe many of their efforts to have been in vain. Historian Peter Novick tackles the question of objectivity in his book, That Noble Dream: the “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession, by providing a rather lengthy, somewhat confusing, and exasperated attempt to define objectivity …show more content…
Quoting Leopold von Ranke, Novick establishes the guidelines for historians to judge the past “as it essentially was”, developing the ideal that the primary function of historians was to gather source-based evidence and let it provide its own interpretation. However, Novick also briefly outlines the primary paradigm that had been used in the American historical profession, using Francis Bacon as his sole reason stating that Bacon’s approach was “rigidly empirical” in which observations were to be considered sacred. Novick continues on, elaborating that probable hypothesis were simply dismissed as “phantoms” of the scientific kind that dared “go beyond what could directly be observed.” It was Bacon’s framework Novick argues, that becomes the foundation of the American historical profession. That Noble Dream attacks a series of problems that Novick believes to be at the root of the prior dysfunctional methods of American history, primarily the degree of “ideal homogeneity” amongst historians. Novick proclaims that it was the influence of well-to-do donors exerting themselves through university trustees; the exodus of the profession by the more “activist” practitioners into more policy-oriented social-science disciplines; and the demographic makeup of the AHA, whereas “there was no professional historians of recent immigration background, none of working-class origin, and hardly and who were protestant.” Novick argues against the conservative reaction regarding the evolution of the AHA, as they promoted “national history”, most of which was xenophobic, racist, and