Practice question · Multiple choice
Two sources diverge exactly where their interests diverge. What follows?
Hints
- The amateur picks the one they like. What does the historian ask?
- Why do they differ there and not elsewhere?
Show the answer
A. The divergence is the finding, you have located the dispute
Why
Contradiction is a finding, not an obstacle. When the disagreement maps onto the interests, you have not lost the event, you have located what was actually at stake in it.
Practise Source Criticism in Practice
The app has 4 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
More questions on Source Criticism in Practice
- Complete the practice.
- Put the questions of source criticism in their working order.
- Sort each situation: strong corroboration or illusory corroboration?
- Four independent chronicles agree on the size of an army. How much does the agreement add?
- Why is purposeless detail often the most trustworthy part of a document?
- Source criticism is the preliminary stage completed before the historical argument begins.
- What makes a historical argument honest?
- Why is admitting what the evidence cannot settle a strength?