Abstract
A critique of Edward Hallett Carr's 'What is History'? (London, 1961), published in Finnish translation in 1963. Carr makes a polemical attack on the Ranke tradition of factually oriented history, advocating, instead, the selection and interpretation of facts. Research in older periods where primary materials are scarce requires precisely this objective, monographic approach. Carr, primarily a modern historian, fails to understand the need. Carr's interpretive emphasis also leaves the way open to deliberate or unconscious distortions of historical materials.