A STUDY OF THE THEORY OF APPRAISAL FOR SELECTION By ...

the conduct of society, but to explain its meaning. It relates
past events to the social, political and cultural context in
which those events existed in order to provide meaning to the
members of present day society. Its focus can be on the dominant
ethos of society, or the powerless fringe. In either case, the
responsibility of the historian's emphasis on context results in
an explicit attempt to relate the event studied to issues in the
broader society.
During the nineteenth century, the increasingly accepted
standard for the writing of history was the German model of a
rigorously objective scientific study, which intended to produce
an accurate representation of the past events of the world.
Reflecting the positivist attitudes of the confident age of
progress, history was written during this time in an attempt to
identify large scale laws of nature that could be applied to
society. Historians in the first half of the twentieth century
responded to resulting charges of historicism by retreating from
grand purposes to understand and influence society. Instead,
history was seen to have no relevance to modern society, and was
studied in its own terms and for its own sake.
The modern understanding of the purpose of history writing
has been transformed with the rise of our awareness of the
subjective interaction between the observer and the observed,
which renders the entire process value-charged.13 The logic of
13 Classic discussions of the value-laden process of history
writing can be found in the following publications: E.H. Carr,
What is History? (New York: Vintage Books, 1961); Robin G.
16