The legitimate criticism of the objectivity of historical facts is more concerned with when an occurrence is historical than with when it is a fact. It does not give grounds for doubts as to whether, after all, objectively true statements of fact about the past can actually be established. It is a fact that Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC and it is a fact that Darwin was born in 1802. Although data like this does not form the kernel of history, the simple establishment of facts is an important element in the process of historical research. The untangling of the facts is potentially valuable even if they cannot be explained at the time or placed in a historical context. The fact that the establishment of data is the result of a process of selection and is probably directed by subjective influences does not make the data less true or less objective. The most it can do is to make them less significant or less interesting. Many historians will regard it as of no consequence that Darwin was born in 1802, but what historian would seriously deny that Darwin was, after all, born in 1802?

When historians are interested in facts about the past it is because of their possible historical status, which, in practice, means their historical significance. We must therefore ask whether there are any objective (in the sense of absolute) criteria for the granting of the epithet ‘significant’ to some events and ‘insignificant’ to others.