History is not comprised of a set of value-neutral facts. History is a narrative constructed out of fact and interpretations, and every history has a viewpoint.
Without question, one changes history by deciding to view it differently. If it didn't work that way, we'd only need one history book and we'd be done.
Well actually, history does consist of value-neutral facts, but the sum total of all those facts is far too complicated for any one mind to comprehend. This atom moved there, that atom moved here, and so forth. Even if you scale up to the actions of individual people rather than atoms, we're still far beyond what we could comprehend... and in any case, most of it isn't recorded.
Having acknowledged the limitations of the historian's knowledge, though, the question is what do you do next? A good historian will use the fact that he can't divorce himself from his own viewpoint as a reminder to be extremely cautious. A bad one will use it as an excuse to indulge his particular biases.
I cannot agree. There are so many "facts" that the mere selection of which ones get recorded already puts an overwhelming bias on the stories they tell. History is obsessed with narratives, and there is an ineluctable requirement, when doing history, to create a story where earlier "facts" leads to later "facts" in a hypothesis of cause and effect. The requirement for a pseudo-logical story with internal consistency further cherry-picks the "facts", until you're left with a complete bowdlerization of reality. The truth is, there are enough "facts" that you can very probably tell a whole lot of different stories using the raw material, but people have a very strong disinclination to cognitive dissonance and won't do this. They'll pick one and stick with it, and argue it against other stories in ego-driven battles, until a consensus emerges as a sociological phenomenon, rather than a fact-driven one.
One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. Criminals often think they're justified in the actions they take; in fact, often they must self-justify their own actions in order to sleep at night at all, so they will have their own internally consistent narratives. It's extremely difficult to fight the dominant narrative once it has become accepted.
IMO, the highest value history has is in telling stories about a world which is different from our own, but for which we have somewhat believable evidence actually existed. The degrees to which it is different tell us what varies in human nature, and what stays the same, stays the same. It teaches us to not take the present moment too seriously as some kind of apex or nadir. But I don't think it actually tells us a whole lot about the past, per se.
A good historian will use the fact that he can't divorce himself from his own viewpoint as a reminder to be extremely cautious. A bad one will use it as an excuse to indulge his particular biases.
And a very bad one will pretend that he is being value-neutral and objective, and show no attentiveness to the interpretative nature of his work.
"A good historian will use the fact that he can't divorce himself from his own viewpoint as a reminder to be extremely cautious. A bad one will use it as an excuse to indulge his particular biases."
I'd say this is also true in the broader sense of how a person chooses to live in an inherently muddled world. You can take obstacles and confusion as a call to action and vigilant reflection, or you can use them as an excuse for giving up and accepting mediocrity.
Without question, one changes history by deciding to view it differently. If it didn't work that way, we'd only need one history book and we'd be done.