How the history’s nature is defined?

History is a science. When we elaborate on the term history as science we mainly focus on the fact that science is the structured body of knowledge. It means knowledge is organized in a way that people can have an understanding. While being a science, in some resources history is defined as literature too. When history is called science, many can think of natural science. However, this is not the case in history. In natural sciences, scientists work on some issues deliberately and try to find out a solution. Thus, they experience the process of observation and experiment. On the other hand, even if historians observe and try to do some experiments, this will not result in any useful consequence. Because history deals with the past, neither changes nor adjustments can be made. Consequently, it is understood that history is a special kind of science that involves interference from general principles. Additionally, only through evidences historians may clarify the historical process. Any kind of observations and experiments are not appropriated ways of looking at history. It is noteworthy to mention that history is research in the process. Here comes the question that what is the object of history? As each science has an objective, history also looks for objects. The main object of history to look at is human actions that have taken place in the past. The way historians investigate the past depends on the evidence. When we say evidences there are included all of those historical documents. Historians try to find out proper evidence to answer things that have happened in the past. In essence, historical investigation relies on the interpretation of different kinds of evidences. If we refer to what Collingwood(1980) said we can claim that history exists because humans should have who he is and what differentiates him from other people. Consequently, the reason why history exists is that self-knowledge plays a great role in once’ s life. As a notion history has main peculiarities which define it. The following paragraphs will be discussing them in particular. Firstly, in order to claim something, historians should have appropriate facts and evidences. This is the same feature that history has as other sciences. Historians are only allowed to claim something in case they have proper justifications to show themselves and then to the public opinion. In short, this is the feature of being inferential. Since science is the organized body of knowledge, the need to justify every single claim arises. Hence, historians are required to deliver deductive studies in order to claim any historical happening. Deductive reasoning is used by historians in order to come to a proper conclusion. Moreover, the way history is reasoned and its language plays a great role in making sure that readers get the most accurate mainly objective information in the specific area of history. In spite of the fact that reason and language vary in the form they assist the reader to get knowledge, the essential purpose behind them is to ensure the process of knowledge exchange. To illustrate this point, what is crucial for a reader is to get unbiased truth, however, sometimes inevitably we can encounter the cases in which personal perspective prevents us from seeing the objective history. Notably, here the being inferential peculiarity of history clarifies the situation. If the historian provides necessary reasoning and interference, the objectivity of the facts is ensured. Indeed, claiming the fact that knowledge is inferential has the same meaning by saying the knowledge is organized. Besides, it is sometimes confused that memory is also a certain type of history. Nevertheless, it is clear from the above-mentioned facts that this statement is incorrect. For instance, if I remember something happened yesterday this is a memory statement. However, if I remember about the specific fight and I can provide essential evidences, then it became a historical statement. Secondly, the next point is about the testimony. As mentioned by Collingwood, history is autonomous. By saying that, it is meant that historical evidence and facts should not be under the obligation of someone else. To be a consequence of that, historians should be away from any kind of biased and intervened information. For example, even if someone who has knowledge about the happenings tries to interfere with the situation, historians should not accept that help. They are required to do the research process themselves and find out what is objective knowledge. The reason is not because that person may lie or misdirect the historian. The real reason behind it is not to give up on the historian’s own autonomy over the work. If a historian agrees with the ready-made answer, this ready-made answer is called testimony. And the person who prepares this answer is called testimony. As a result, the historian can be accused of forfeiting. In contrast with this type of testimony, the historian may benefit from the testimony which is clearly grounded on the historical evidence. Only, in that case, historians can be away from forfeiting. Furthermore, one methodology of history is scissors and paste types. Firstly, it is better to explain what we mean by scissors and paste types. In this type of method, historians firstly think of what they want to learn or investigate. As a second attempt, they narrow down their resources to which is appropriate for their investigation. Then, they extract the important parts of others’ given interview, research or opinion. The next step is to reform it into the historian’s desired version. For instance, there can be cases in which the historian sees that the idea delivered by one author does contradict with others. , thus, the historian is able to incorporate or omit one of them. As a consequence of it, this type is merely based on the testimony. According to Collinwood, it is better to call this type of method as scissors and combine. Even though Collingwood goes on saying that this type of history cannot be called as real history since it does not meet the required peculiarities of science, he highlights the fact that many people are using this type now. Collingwood criticizes this type of historians. By this, he tries to say that one should look at the meaning of happenings. However, in the scissors and paste methodology historian tries to make the testimony fit with the content. He emphasizes that only in the 17th century, as a result of science reforms, historians started to establish new 2 movements. Firstly, they tried to make sure the credibility of authorities. For this, they organized the systematic examination of authorities. Secondly, two new movements in the historical method now began. Historians began to view non-literary and literary resources as in the same importance. Hence, they started to utilize coins as historical evidences. The first movement did not totally change the situation with scissors and paste methodology. Indeed, it made some changes in the content of scissors and paste methodology. As a result, the idea of critical history appeared. However, Collingwood notes that it was still considered as the one form of scissors and paste type of methodology. İn this paper initially I started to write about how history is considered to be a kind of science. Many arguments have proven that history is organized knowledge. Secondly, why and how history is conducted were discussed in detail. Since humans need self-recognition, history is a crucial tool in that manner. Notably, historical evidences are the main tool used in the investigation process. Moreover, the paper goes on highlighting the features of history as notions which are the following; being inferential, testimony. In this phase, I have referred to Collingwood. He clearly introduced in his book one history methodology. In the final part of the paper, I tried to compare scissors and paste type of methodology with modern methodology.