Editorial: First Web-Based Edition, May 2012
Look to the past, live in the present, and move into the future. It is an ethical code that I put forward for professional historians. Like all codes, it will never settle historiographical debates, but it has a simple point to it that may guide our way. As historians we want to understand the past, but we ought not to endeavour to live in the past. Our critical capabilities as historians tells that, as much as we inherit choices and habit in time gone-by, the living is the now, and the ability to choose what is at hand is the step into the future. Historical insight also tells us that for the sake of a better future we need to put old habits aside; perhaps just retaining a few sets of crusty habits as part of our charming character but a willingness, nevertheless, to always develop new ones over against old practices.