Here is the direct link to Kroeber’s piece, along with the rest of Issue 19:
http://kas.berkeley.edu/volumes/volume-19.html

Regards, Rachel

If you are looking for the direct link to the Kroeber’s piece, the article along with the rest of Issue 19 can be reached via the KAS website at:
http://kas.berkeley.edu/volumes/volume-19.html

Regards, Rachel

Stone writes,

“The key issue every historian should tackle, according to Vaughn, is ‘a disclosure of the critical changes in the condition of society.’ It should be noted that the emphasis here is on change, not on static description, and that the nature of change in history is defined neither as recurrent nor periodic, as in the social or natural sciences, but as critical and, therefore, presumably unique. The subject matter of history Vaughn described in the broadest of terms, ranging far into popular, social, and cultural history in a way that would win the approval of the newest of the ‘new’ historians of today: ‘There are institutions, laws, customs, tastes, traditions, beliefs, convictions, magistracies, festivals, pastimes, and ceremonies, and other elements of social organization which are both in thought and in fact distinguishable from the condition of a national unity.’

A few paragraphs later, Stone writes,

“The qualities of a good historian, according to Vaughn, are three: the first is the ‘principle of attraction to the facts’ — in other words, a passionate curiosity about the past, and an infinite capacity for taking pains in delving into musty archives to find them. The second is ‘instincts of expectations more or less definite’ — in other words, a preconceived hunch to be tested against the factual records. This is a position normal enough for the social or natural scientist, but one which was for a century to follow to be anathema to the professional historian [obsessed with just the facts]. The third is the ‘habits of rapid recognition’ — the intuitive gift of picking out the significant detail in a chaotic mass of documentation.”

How, as an anthropologist would you respond to Stone’s characterization of the social and natural sciences as concerned with static description and recurrent or periodic change in contrast to the historian’s focus on critical paths? How, if at all, would you see the virtues of a good anthropologist as different from the three qualities that Stone attributes to the good historian?