Practice question · Put in order
Put the three filters in the order they act on the past.
- What an institution chose to keep
- What physically survived fire, damp, war, and recycling
- What got recorded at the time
Hints
- Something must be recorded before it can be kept.
- Survival is the last of the three filters.
Show the answer
- What got recorded at the time
- What an institution chose to keep
- What physically survived fire, damp, war, and recycling
Why
Recorded, kept, survived, three sieves in series, each tilted toward the same people. What reaches the reading room is not a sample of the past; it is a survivor of a selection process nobody designed and everybody shaped.
Practise The Epistemology of History
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