Fastfission wrote:
Perhaps I sound a little territorial, here (of course the historian
claims that being a historian is not easy), but I suspect that other
people with other backgrounds will agree a bit on this. I'd rather
have people write an encyclopedia based on secondary accounts than
primary accounts -- the former will prove to be a collection of the
current state of the knowledge (an encyclopedia), the latter will
prove to be a collection of off-beat, missing-the-point, and
thoroughly unaware and uninformed amateurisms.
I suspect you're wrong about this being universal. It may well be true
for history, but in mathematics, for example, citing primary sources is
perfectly reasonable and even desirable. The difference, of course, is
that history, unlike mathematics, requires context and interpretation.
Of course, even in mathematics one should be vary of those primary
sources that have not passed peer review and/or public scrutiny. But
then, the same applies to secondary sources as well. (People _have_
been known to attempt revisionist interpretations of mathematics. Such
kookery is usually much more obvious that historical revisionism, but it
does happen. See various long threads in sci.math for examples.)
--
Ilmari Karonen