Objectivity persists as one of the significant problems confronting historians concerning historical writing. In particular, neutrality dictates that historians' writing should be primarily based on solid facts. In this sense, they should not be influenced by biases and prejudice. Neutrality also means that the investigators must be wholly disassociated with the research subjects. With this kind of objectivity, researchers investigating similar topics should be able to arrive at similar conclusions. However, unlike scientists studying contemporary society, social scientists do not have the pleasure of directly observing the subject of their research. Instead, they grapple with thousands of secondary data.
Therefore, it is essentially bidding on this basis that Edward Carr attacks the idea of historians’ objectivity. Particularly, Carr argues that facts cannot exist independent of interpretations. His position is that the facts that historians collect are not self-explaining ( Irfanullah, 2018) . Instead, investigators must be able to interpret them. In this regard, historians cannot avoid bias and subjectivity. Even before the question of interpretation, Carr argues that historians are subjective from the onset. According to him, historians choose what they want to use as data from many sources of information ( Irfanullah, 2018) . On this ground alone, objectivity becomes illusory. Besides, it follows that the choice of varied sources as per one’s interest implies varying conclusions. Therefore, according to Edward Carr, objectivity amongst historians is not only unrealistic but also unattainable.
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For every practical reason, I must agree with Edward Carr that researchers' data must be put in an interpretive context to draw some meaningful inference. For this reason, two researchers on the same topic could end up at varying conclusions because of personal biases in the interpretation of facts. Indeed, disassociating researchers from the subject matter of their research can be impossible. Therefore, I take the position that objectivity is not possible in research.
Reference
Irfanullah, E. (2018). What is History? A Critical Appraisal of Edward Hallet Carr's" The Historian and His Facts."
