R.G. Collingwood approaches history from a unique perspective and suggests in doing so the nature and value of history and how it proceeds. He sets out to develop a philosophy of history and to link this new branch of philosophy with the old traditional doctrines. He points out first that history is a special form of thought, like theology or natural science. He gives a definition of history as a kind of research, belonging generically in the sciences, or the forms of thought whereby we ask questions and try to answer them. All science begins from ignorance, from asking what we do not know rather than recounting what we do. He says that the object of history, the matter being studied, is the actions of human beings that have been done in the past. The inquiry of history proceeds by the interpretation of evidence. The purpose of history finally is more difficult to ascertain, but Collingwood suggests that the purpose is for human self-knowledge, for history teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.
One of the primary types of history that Collingwood decries in this book is what he calls the "scissors-and-paste" method of historiography, an approach which consists in excerpting required material from writers whose work cannot be checked because the eyewitnesses who wrote it are no longer alive:
It is not a wholly uncritical method, because judgment can and must be exercised as to whether this or that statement, made by this or that authority, is true. But it cannot be used at all without the assurance that this or that authority is on the whole a good historian. (p. 33)
The method of "scissors-and-paste" is to know what we want to know about, to go in search of statements about it, and then to excerpt and incorporate what is found. Collingwood says that this is not history at all because it does not satisfy the necessary conditions of science. However, he also says that until recently it was the only kind ...