Sir Herbert Butterfield FBA (7 October 1900 – 20 July 1979) was Regius Professor of History and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.

Sir Herbert Butterfield FBA (7 October 1900 – 20 July 1979) was Regius Professor of History and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. As a British historian and philosopher of history, he is remembered chiefly for a short volume early in his career entitled The Whig Interpretation of History (1931) and for his Origins of Modern Science (1949). Butterfield turned increasingly to historiography and man's developing view of the past

The Whig Interpretation of History. Herbert Butterfield (1900-1979) .

The Whig Interpretation of History. It is part and parcel of the whig interpretation of history that it studies the past with reference to the present; and though there may be a sense in which this is unobjectionable if its implications are carefully considered, and there may be a sense in which it is inescapable, it has often been an obstruction to historical understanding because it has been.

Herbert Butterfield (1900-1979) was a British historian and philosopher of history, who also wrote Christianity and .

Herbert Butterfield (1900-1979) was a British historian and philosopher of history, who also wrote Christianity and History and The Origins of History.

Butterfield defines the Whig view of history as the theory that we study the past for the sake of the present (p. 24. While whig history is itself mostly a thing of the past, the fallacy of the A profound book, and one joined to the virtue of being well written. 24). Butterfield argues that historians distort the truth of history when they use sweeping historical generalizations to justify their moral values or imply that history has any one, all-encompassing purpose or meaning. To me, this book does for history what Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions did for science.

Butterfield, Herbert, Sir, 1900-. Books for People with Print Disabilities. Internet Archive Books. Uploaded by loader-DanaB on July 9, 2010. SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata).

Butterfield's 1931 book The Whig Interpretation of History became a classic for history students, and is still read today

Butterfield's 1931 book The Whig Interpretation of History became a classic for history students, and is still read today. He had in mind especially the historians of his own country, but his criticism of the retroactive creation of a line of progression toward the glorious present can be, and has subsequently been, applied more generally. They were of course struggling, but not for that. Butterfield argued that the historian must seek the ability to see events as they were perceived by those who lived through them. Butterfield wrote that "Whiggishness" is too handy a "rule of thumb.

Butterfield presents a monumental thesis on our interpretation of history- especially for Americans. It's a fascinating discussion of how history is written by the winners- the protestant, liberal, democratic winners.

Herbert Butterfield's The Whig Interpretation of History has recently been the focus of much attention. In 1931 Herbert Butterfield, precisely as old as the century, published a short book entitled The whig interpretation of history

Herbert Butterfield's The Whig Interpretation of History has recently been the focus of much attention. 2 Among other attacks, Butterfield has been taken to task for arguing that anachronism results from insufficient immersion in the documentary record. In 1931 Herbert Butterfield, precisely as old as the century, published a short book entitled The whig interpretation of history. It made him famous, and for the next forty years or so he stood forth as one of the leading voices in the profession.

Thus given a new lease on life, The Whig Interpretation of History became.

Eighty years have passed since a young Cambridge don named Herbert Butterfield published in 1931 a slender volume entitled The Whig Interpretation of History. What exactly this curious phrase meant was not immediately clear, since it had never before appeared in print. The book might have vanished almost unnoticed had it not been reprinted in 1950, after Butterfield published a bestselling volume, Christianity and History, which attracted enormous attention. Thus given a new lease on life, The Whig Interpretation of History became required reading for most history graduate students for the next quarter century, and not a few undergraduates as well.

The British historian Herbert Butterfield, in his small but influential book The Whig Interpretation of History (1931) (whose title actually coined the phrase!) criticised many traditional assumptions of the Whig history that had seemed to see liberal parliamentary democracy as the best form o. .

The British historian Herbert Butterfield, in his small but influential book The Whig Interpretation of History (1931) (whose title actually coined the phrase!) criticised many traditional assumptions of the Whig history that had seemed to see liberal parliamentary democracy as the best form of government which all peoples should hope to adopt and seek to perfect. Whig History for Butterfield, was a flawed history of progressive "liberal and democratic" heroes who had won concessions in the teeth of opposition from a variety of conservative and absolutist forces and individuals.