<P> Some of Carr's ideas are contentious, particularly his alleged relativism and his rejection of contingency as an important factor in historical analysis . His work provoked a number of responses, notably Geoffrey Elton's The Practice of History . </P> <P> Carr was in the process of revising What is History? for a second edition at the time of his death in 1982 . He had finished a new preface, in which he discussed the pessimism of westerners in the 1980s, which he contrasted with the optimism of the 1960s, and pondered his own status as a "dissident intellectual". </P> <P> Chapter one, "The Historian and his Facts", explores how the historian makes use of historical facts . Carr notes that in the 19th century, western historians held to an empirical, positivist worldview that revolved around a "cult of facts", viewing historical facts as information that simply had to be assembled to produce an objective picture of the past that was entirely accurate and independent of any human opinion . Carr argues that this view is inherently flawed, because historians selectively choose which "facts of the past" get to become "historical facts", or information that the historians have decided is important . As an example, he notes that millions of humans have crossed the Rubicon river in Northeastern Italy, but that historians have only chosen to treat the crossing of the Rubicon by Julius Caesar in 49 BCE as an important "historical fact". Carr contends that historians arbitrarily determine which of the "facts of the past" to turn into "historical facts" according to their own biases and agendas . </P> <P> Carr proceeds to document the rise of non-empirical historians in the 20th century, who like himself argued that it was impossible to write an objective history, because all historical facts were themselves subjective . Although sharing their general view, he criticises the approach adopted by one of these non-empiricists, R.G. Collingwood, for insinuating that any one interpretation of history was as good as any other . He compares the situation facing the historian to the situation of Odysseus facing Scylla and Charybdis, remarking that they can fall into the "untenable theory of history as an objective compilation of facts" or they can fall into "the equally untenable theory of history as the subjective product of the mind of the historian". </P>

Who remarked objectivity is the language of history