A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society (review)

Abstract

In What Is History? (1961), E. H. Carr noted that historians often invoke some version of the metaphoric injunction, "Let the facts speak for themselves." But, Carr observed, no fact can speak for itself; the historian, or some other interpreter, must speak for it--must decide first of all that it is a fact, then record it or communicate it to others, connecting it to other facts, judging its significance, and so forth. But what is a fact to begin with? And is a historian's fact necessarily also a fact to an economist, a musician, or an astronomer?