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| 05 April 2063: Getting closer all the time.... (SOURCE: https://wall.alphacoders.com/big.php?i=498337] |
One of
the tasks with which any historian must grapple in constructing a narrative of
the past is determination what source materials are available and how reliable
are the facts they provide. Many different factors must be considered,
including the proximity of the source to the event, whether it constitutes a
“primary source” providing contemporary first-hand knowledge unfaded by the
passage of time and unmediated by subsequent accounts and influences, or,
alternatively, whether the evidence is to be considered “secondary,” providing
a more distant perspective based on assessment of such primary sources. In both
cases – primary as well as secondary – one must consider in what ways the
recording of the account may have been motivated by an agenda – unconscious or
acknowledged – which determined inclusion or emphasis of certain facts and
deemphasis or even exclusion of other facts which may, objectively, be critical
in creating an accurate reconstruction of the events as they happened.
