If you look at the catalogues of universities in Switzerland and abroad, you discover that history is classified as a discipline as a social science. However, at the University of Chicago, it is classified as a humanities and social sciences and the student has the dubious privilege of deciding whether the discipline should be included in his or her requirements in the humanities or social sciences. Sociologists generally think that history is a social science, a point of view questioned by humanists. There has been a disagreement among history students: some consider it a social science, while others classify it with the humanities. In the Philippines, history is considered by the vast majority of students and teachers to be social sciences. Only a small minority believe they belong to the humanities and are therefore part of the realm of literature. I remember Agoncillo, when I judge a judgment on a historical event or a person because he said, “There is a great resemblance between legal and historical evidence. The only difference is that in the legal evidence, it is the judge who decides whether the representation of a witness is acceptable or not… The historian is a prosecutor, defence lawyer and judge all rolled into one, and he is the narrator and interpreter. Despite Agoncilo`s controversial tone and so-called left-wing form, his book History of the Filipino People, first published in 1960, remains a standard teaching book popular in many Philippine universities, as well as many other works by Agoncillos. Gregorio Zaide, Teodoro Agoncillo, Reynaldo Ileto and Renato Constantino are the most eminent Filipino historians of the 20th century that emerged in the post-war period.
However, opponents of Agoncillo argue that Agoncillo`s works still suffer from unequal erudition, notably through its use (or especially non-use) of reliable historical sources, even if his opponents have not been able to offer solid rebuttals. [Citation required] History being a new creation of the past, as seen by historians, it is not objective. The personality of the historian plays an important role in the creation. He shows his passion, his prejudices and his emotions – in short his humanity – and as such, he cannot help but be touched by the events and personalities he creates. It is this subjectivity that characterizes all great historians, a subjectivity that creates discrepancies in interpretation. It is the ignorance of the nature of historical writing that has made learned men say in the past that history is objective and must remain – an impossibility, because the historian, as a man or a woman, cannot flee himself.
