Practice question · Multiple choice
Why is admitting what the evidence cannot settle a strength?
Hints
- What is the alternative to admitting the gap?
- Fluency is cheap. What does it cost the reader?
Show the answer
C. Most of the past is unrecoverable, and saying so is honest
Why
The alternative is filling the gap with fluency, which is how a discipline that always has an answer earns exactly the trust it deserves. Saying "we cannot know" is a finding, and it is often the hardest one to publish.
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?
- Two sources diverge exactly where their interests diverge. What follows?
- 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?