“The academic mind can eat away the very basis of its own assurance ... produce contortions when it tries to bend over backward ... allow itself to be dismayed by the picture it has created of relentless historical process.” TryingMindWarProcessHistoryMilitaryProduceBasesHistoricalAcademicAssuranceRelentlessDismayed Author:Herbert Butterfield
“Very strange bridges are used to make the passage from one state of things to another; we may lose sight of them in our surveys of general history, but their discovery is the glory of historical research. History is not the study of origins; rather it is the analysis of all the mediations by which the past was turned into our present.” MayStatesPastUsedLosesStudyStrangeGloryResearchDiscoverySightHistoricalBridgesAnalysisPassagesSurveysMediationHistorical Research Author:Herbert Butterfield
“It is not a sin to introduce a personal bias that can be recognized and discounted. The sin in historical composition is the organization of the story in such a way that bias cannot be recognized.” WayStoriesSinHistoryOrganizationHistoricalIntroducingBiasComposition Author:Herbert Butterfield
“It [the scientific revolution] outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements, within the system of medieval Christendom. . . . It looms so large as the real origin of the modern world and of the modern mentality that our customary periodization of European history has become an anachronism and an encumbrance.” WorldRealScienceChristianityModernRevolutionHistoricalMereInternalsMentalityEpisodesModern WorldMedievalRenaissanceReformationChristendomDisplacementEuropean HistoryAnachronismScientific Revolution Author:Herbert Butterfield
