Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method

by Carlo Ginzburg

Book Overview

More than twenty years after Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method was first published in English, this extraordinary collection remains a classic. The book brings together essays about Renaissance... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080184388X
• ISBN13: 9780801843884
• Release Date: March 1992
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 231 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.2"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

History vs. Science

I read this book after reading The Cheese and the Worms and found only one essay of interest, the one of the title. There, Ginzburg argues that history cannot be studied profitably from the scientific (meaning Galilean, or mathematical physics) standpoint, there is inadequate empirical basis for it. Rather, the methods of art history and Sherlock Holmes (clues in small exceptional things, like a deformed fingernail) provide better results. I think he may have something here. For the opposite viewpoint, which in my opinion is wrong, see Buchannan's Ubiquity.