Judging Butterfield
In The Invention of Science , David Wootton takes a whack at strawman Herbert Butterfield, as follows: "In 1931 he had published The Whig Interpretation of History... Butterfield argued... it was not the historian's job to praise those people in the past whose values and opinions they agreed with and criticize those with whom they disagreed; only God had the right to sit in judgment" (p. 21) "It should be obvious that he was not right about this: no one, I trust, would want to read an account of slavery written by someone incapable of passing judgment" (p. 21n). This is a silly caricature of what Butterfield thought. Consider the following quotes from The Whig Interpretation of History : "There can be no complaint against the historian who personally and privately has his preferences and antipathies..." "If he deals in moral judgements at all he is trying to take upon himself a new dimension, and he is leaving that realm of histori...