The Search for Ideas in Historical Investigation

Abstract

There has been over the last several decades an active campaign for the use of systematic methods in historical research, particularly for the verification of contentions by the most rigorous means that our information and our analytical tools, quantitative ones when possible, can provide. It is probably correct to say that by now this battle is largely won, in principle at least. Few historians still object to formal arrangement of the evidence or to counting, even if many of them do not do things quite this way themselves. Methods that a generation ago were regarded as outrageous and on the lunatic fringe of scholarship are no longer controversial. It is true that a few diehards in the profession still protest against these innovations. On the other hand, some at the opposite end of the methodological spectrum contend that we have not gone far enough—that historical projects have not maintained acceptable technical standards and that ventures of historians into formal methods have been elementary and intellectually sloppy (Kousser, 1977). It is proper that these questions should be raised and no doubt there is room for improvement. Yet at least scholars have become aware of the value of systematic research and have begun to discuss in constructive fashion what needs to be done to make it more effective.