David Hackett Fischer is a professor of history at Brandeis University. He is also a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Fischer is especially well known among historians and the lay public in regards to approaching historiography for his work Historians' Fallacies : Toward a Logic of Historical Thought. Brandeis University is a small, private university in Waltham, Massachusetts. ... Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-04-13, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... Historiography is writing about rather than of history. ...

Fischer's Historians' Fallacies : Toward a Logic of Historical Thought

Fischer wrote in Historians' Fallacies : Toward a Logic of Historical Thoughtthat there can be "confusion between the way knowledge in acquired and the validity of that knowledge. An American historian may chauvinistically assert the the United States declared its independence from England in 1976. That statement is true, no matter what the motives of its maker may have been. On the other hand, an English historian may patriotically insist that England delared its independence from the United States in 1776. That assertion is false, and always will be....To say that all knowledge is subjective is liking saying that all things are short. Nothing can be short, unless something is tall. (pages 42-43).

Fischer offer seven rules of historiography which he believes establish a more objective and factual view of history n his work Historians' Fallacies : Toward a Logic of Historical Thought:

1. The burden of proof for a historical claim is always upon the one making the assertion.
2. Historical evidence must be an answer to the question asked and not to any other question.
3. "An historian must not merely provide good evidence, but the best evidence. And the best evidence, all other things being equal, is the evidence which is most nearly immediate to the event itself."
4. "Evidence must always be affirmative." Negative evidence is no evidence at all.
5. The meaning of any historical evidence is dependent upon the context from which it is obtained from.
6. "An empirical statement must not be more precise than its evidence warrants."
7. "All inferences from historical evidence are probabilistic."

(In regards to Fischer's rules see: (David Hackett Fischer, Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (New York: Harper, 1970), p. 62-63).

Fischer's works

• Historians' Fallacies : Toward a Logic of Historical Thought(New York: Harper, 1970) (describing errors of investigation and analysis that historians sometimes make)
• The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History (describing the historical impact of price shifts)
• Albion's Seed
• Washington's Crossing
• Paul Revere's Ride
• Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History

Fischer has also written many books about colonial America Starting in the late 16th century, the English began to colonize North America. ...

External Link

A review of David Beckett Fischer's Historians' Fallacies : Toward a Logic of Historical Thought