his or her way of seeing the world:
What they saw was not an illusion, was not determined by selfish motives in any narrow sense, but was there by virtue of a way of seeing which they could no more consciously manipulate than they could choose not to have been born. . . . The ethnocentric bias of the firsthand observers invited an investigation of the cultural situation they spoke from (596).
This is a fascinating insight, not only because it changes the entire focus of any study of research bias from the individual to the culture, but because it also seems to absolve historians of their biases. The latter conclusion is simply not supported by the facts, however. After all, there must be some individuals who become aware of biases and are able to alter the perceptions of an era, because otherwise no cultural biases would ever be revealed and changed or discarded. And if one individual can discard a
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