[WikiEN-l] Primary sources

[Ilmari Karonen]

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