[bowman] fundamental PROCESSES IN HISTORICAL SCIENCE 493 



the correctness of any individual quantity in it when appHed by the 

 user without further test, and leaving as the only certainty in con- 

 nection with the table an average of essential correctness. The 

 user applies the individual quantities in his own operations ordinarily 

 without further test, not as being certainly correct, but as being the 

 result of accredited operation of correct processes, and therefore 

 prima facie correct (4th fundamental principle, Part T, pp. 141-144). 

 To do otherwise would defeat the very purpose of the table and pre- 

 vent his own proper activity; and this is not necessary because such 

 untested use of the individual quantities will reproduce in the user's 

 own operations as a whole an average of essential correctness corre- 

 sponding approximately to that of the table. 



The correct processes of historical science located by actual ex- 

 periment in Part I of this paper are the testing of verbal and recorded 

 utterances by their exemplification of the following five requisites of 

 trustworthiness: (1) Right discernment and clear statement, (2) 

 Serious effort to inform the hearer or reader according to his interest, 

 (3) Exercise of impartiality, (4) Preservation of poise, (5) Exclusion 

 of admittedly unnecessary conclusions. It is by these requisites that 

 the courts seek to judge which witnesses, or which statements by any 

 witness, are trustworthy. Perfect exemplification of the entire five 

 in verbal or recorded utterances leads necessarily to perfectly correct 

 statements; therefore the historian testing his verbal and recorded 

 material by them, in substantially the same manner as the courts test 

 their verbal and documentary evidence, applies 5 processes which 

 are correct in the strictest scientific sense: apart from error by himself 

 in the application, the processes must show without fail what records 

 or statements are trustworthy, because in the processes themselves, 

 apart from incorrect application by the operator, there is no room for 

 error. These 5 fundamental processes of the historian are not exact 

 processes, and cannot make history an exact science, but by them she 

 can attain to the essential correctness, which is all that any branch of 

 science can achieve. In a narrative formulated on the basis of these 

 processes, the historian cannot provide certainty in the individual 

 statements. But neither does mathematics, the exactest science, 

 provide this certainty in a series of results prepared for use by others. 

 In such an historical narrative, which essentially is also a series of 

 results prepared for use by others, the certainty provided by the his- 

 torian is exactly the certainty provided by the mathematician — an 

 average of essential correctness corresponding in height to the exact- 

 ness of the branch of science involved. Where records exemplify the 

 5 requisites, or historical narratives are formulated on the basis of the 

 corresponding 5 correct processes, the individual statements in such 



