Historian rules
Some Rules for Historians
1. If you teach history as well as write it, be sure you never shortchange<br>your students by shaping your courses to fit with your research interests<br>rather than with their interests. Structure the course so that you have an<br>opportunity to learn from them. No historian ever lived who could not learn<br>something from his students.<br>2. If you write history as well as teach it, do not become obsessed with<br>the fear of making mistakes. It is important, of course, to be accurate;<br>but to err is human and there are much worse things than errors: dogmatism,<br>inhumanity, superficiality among them. It is the function of the historian<br>to open up new perspectives to his readers and his students; to lead them<br>into the wider realms of history.<br>3. Begin to write early in your researches. Only by so doing will you know<br>how to shape and direct your researches. My rule of thumb is to do a third<br>of my research before I begin to write, a third while I am writing, and a<br>third when I have finished (to see if there are any loose ends to be tied<br>up). Excessive research is just as bad (and, in some cases, worse) than too<br>little, since too little may be compensated for by imagination and insight<br>while too much usually produces intellectual constipation.
4. Take as few notes as possible; work directly from original sources. One<br>increases the possibility of errors by taking notes; and what is more<br>dangerous by far, one runs the risk of notaphilia--falling in love with<br>one's notes so that they become the icon, the beloved object to be<br>protected and worshipped and increased without end.
5. By the same token, slight secondary works, especially scholarly<br>monographs, and go always to the sources, If you must use secondary works,<br>go to the sources first, otherwise the secondary works will dull your<br>sensitivity to the sources and the sources are what the name implies - the<br>source of everything. The monographs and secondary works, if they are any<br>good have been written out of them. The sources are literally inexhaustible<br>like some endlessly renewed spring: always fresh and ready to reveal new<br>secrets to anyone who approaches them with the proper questions.
6. Arrange your writing to encourage the maximum amount of free-ranging<br>speculation, what might be called - inspiration.
7. Never write about anything that you do not find of consuming interest,<br>ideally, that you have not fallen in love with. It was once thought that<br>objectivity (often interpreted as not caring) was essential to the writing<br>of good history. The reverse is true; in Hegel's words: "Nothing great is<br>accomplished without passion;" or, as Nietzsche put: "One is only creative<br>in the shadow of love and love's illusions." Controlled and disciplined<br>passion is the only proper mode for the historian.
8. Once you have fallen in love with your subject write about it as swiftly<br>as possible. Passion grows cold or turns readily to dogma. There is,<br>generally speaking, nothing more disheartening than an historian who has<br>devoted his whole life to one narrowly conceived subject. 'It is very<br>largely true that the best work - if one takes into account its length and<br>scope has been done in a remarkably short time.
9. Do not be overly concerned about organization: every subject has a<br>length appropriate to it. Your task is to discover that length, much as a<br>tailor's is (or used to be) to cut the cloth to his client's measure.
10. Learn all you can from the great historians lately in disrepute among<br>academic historians, now coming once more into their own. They have not<br>been superseded by modern "scientific" historians. They are full of<br>insights and of wisdom, of literary graces and delights that will prevent<br>their ever becoming obsolete. Depend upon it, we will become obsolete much<br>sooner.
11. Never hesitate to venture into new fields, i.e., fields that you have<br>not been trained in graduate school. To do so is one of the greatest<br>pleasures and refreshments of scholarly life.
12. Never be merely expedient or fashionable. never write anything<br>primarily for money or professional advancement. Writing, like speech,<br>should partake of the sacramental. Or, more simply, life is too damn short.
13. There is no credit to be earned by writing books, historical or<br>otherwise., unless they are good books. Teaching well is every bit as<br>important (more important, certainly, if the scale has to be tipped one way<br>or the other) as writing well. Teaching well is infinitely more important<br>than writing badly.
14. Moveable type was invented by Guttenberg . It it unwise for the most<br>part, or supererogatory to teach anything that can be read by one s<br>students in books. Reading is a much faster and more efficient way of<br>learning than listening. Moreover, books are usually not as boring as<br>lectures otherwise they would not get published. The exception is boring<br>books written by boring lecturers and published because the lecturers are<br>considered distinguished scholars. Still...