Primary Sources

[Dan Howard]

When I studied ancient history we were given source analysis exercises every few weeks for two years. Each exercise consisted of three or four passages from various authors. We had to start each analysis with a paragraph on the author himself, explaining things like why he wrote the text, who his patron was, what sources he had access to, and so on. Then we had to analyse the text itself and extract as much useful information as possible from it - taking into account what we knew about the author and any potential biases and prejudices. After months of these exercises I found myself doing it automatically with everything I saw in the media and still do it today. Skepticism is the default scientific position.