Anyone who has studied history has asked the question: "Why should we study history?" ” and asked himself a similar question – although with a very different tone – “Why should I study history?” » To answer these questions, we must first know what history is. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay What is the story? According to Carr (1969), history "is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his [historical] facts, an endless dialogue between the present and the past." History is therefore composed of a historian and historical facts. In order to better understand what history is, we need to know what a historian is and what historical facts are. The Oxford Living Dictionaries defines the word historian as “an expert or student of history, especially that of a particular period, geographic region, or social phenomenon.” The word “historical fact” is not in the dictionary, but the Oxford Living Dictionaries defines the word historical as “of or relating to history; concerning past events” and the word fact as “a thing that is known or proven to be true.” Through these definitions, we can deduce that the word “historical fact” means “a thing from the past that is known or proven to be true.” But is this an accurate definition? Professor Barraclough (quoted in Carr, 1969) said that "the history we read, although based on fact, is, strictly speaking, not factual at all, but a series of accepted judgments." History is not a science. Historical facts are different from scientific facts: they are neither verifiable nor objective. There is no way to recreate the past to prove or disprove its facts. There is no way to separate a person from their preconceptions. So what are historical facts? There are an infinite number of facts about the past, but only a few are considered historical facts. After all, history is not a collection of facts and historians are not collectors of facts. Only when historians agree that a fact about the past is authentic and essential does it become a historical fact. However, a historian's concerns are not with the basic facts – nor with the who, where and when, which are obvious. Rather, it is the what, the how, and the why – which require careful investigation and interpretation of the facts to determine – that concern a historian. It is likely that one will obtain true and accurate basic facts from an original source, but the rest of the facts are unlikely to be objective. Take for example the Battle of Pearl Harbor. It is easy to find a source that provides the following basic facts: The Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941. However, the answers to the questions: “What really happened?” ", "How did this happen? and “Why did this happen?” ”, are decided by the person to whom the question is asked. The Japanese would have justification for their actions, but the Americans would only have condemnation. Hungerford (1878) said that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” (p. 142) and the same can be said of truth. People believe what they want to believe, people perceive what they want to perceive. The task of a historian is to reconstruct the past in their mind and, aware of the bias of the original source, to relive it through their eyes and.