The best acceptable definition of history is that it is a record of the past actions of mankind, based on surviving evidence. It is this evidence that the historian employs to chronicle and correlate events, by which he arrives at conclusions which he believes to be valid. Hence, the historian is referred to as an interpreter of the development of mankind.
It should be understood that there is more than one way of treating the past for example, in trying to deal with the revolutions in Nigeria, past and present, the historian may describe the events in narrative order. Or, he may choose to concentrate on analysis of the general causes, comparing their stages of evolution with the patterns of revolution in other countries.
The historian does not seek to attain the same kind of results as the scientist. who can verify his conclusions by repeating his experiment under controlled conditions. Whilst he also attempts to classify the phenomena, the historian is more likely to consider events in terms of their uniqueness.
Added to this is the fact that history is concerned. fundamentally, with the lives and actions of men, and as such, the historian's search for causes is bound to be relatively subjective. as compared to that by the scientist. In essence.
however, historians are agreed and insist that history should be written as scientifically as 1 possible and that the evidence should be analyzed with the same objective attitude employed by the scientist when he examines certain phenomena of nature.
According to the passage, a historian should try to examine a material ____________
A. scientifically B. subjectively C. accurately D. objectively
