(1) While there are almost as many definitions of history as there are historians, modern practice most closely conforms to one that sees history as the attempt to recreate and explain the significant events of the past. Caught in the web of its own time and place, each generation of historians determines anew what is significant for it in the past. In this search the evidence found is always incomplete and scattered; it is also frequently partial or partisan. The irony of the historian's craft is that its practitioners always know that their efforts are but contributions to an unending process.

(2) Interest in historical methods has arisen less through external challenge to the validity of history as an intellectual discipline and more from internal quarrels among historians themselves. While history once revered its affinity to literature and philosophy, the emerging social sciences seemed to afford greater opportunities for asking new questions and providing rewarding approaches to an understanding of the past. Social science methodologies had to be adapted to a discipline governed by the primacy of historical sources rather than the imperatives of the contemporary world. (3) During this transfer, traditional historical methods were augmented by additional methodologies designed to interpret the new forms of evidence in the historical study.

Methodolgy is a term that remains inherently ambiguous in the historical profession. (4) There is no agreement whether methodology refers to the concepts peculiar to historical work in general or to the research techniques appropriate to the various branches of historical inquiry. Historians, especially those so blinded by their research interests that they have been accused of "tunnel method," frequently fall victim to the "technicist fallacy." Also common in the natural sciences, the technicist fallacy mistakenly identifies the discipline as a whole with certain parts of its technical implementation. (5) It applies equally to traditional historians who view history as only the external and internal criticism of sources, and to social science historians who equate their activity with specific techniques.

参考答案

1．几乎每个历史学家对史学都有自己的界定，但现代史学家的实践最趋向于认为历史学是试图重现过去的重大史实并对其做出解释。
2．人们之所以关注历史研方法论，主要是因为史学界内部意见不一，其次是因为外界并不认为历史是一门学问。
3．在这种转变中，历史学家研究历史时，那些解释新史料的新方法充实了传统的历史研究方法。
4．所谓方法论是指一般的历史研究中特有概念，还是指历史探究中各个具体领域适用的研究手段，人们对此意见不一。
5．这种谬误同样存在于历史传统派和历史社科派；前者认为历史就是史学界内部和外部人士以各种史料来源的评论，后者认为历史的研究是具体方法的研究。

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