Herbert Butterfield

Sir Herbert Butterfield FBA
Herbert Butterfield
Born	(1900-10-07)7 October 1900 Oxenhope, England
Died	20 July 1979(1979-07-20) (aged 78) Sawston, England
Title	Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge (1955–1968) Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge (1959–1961)
Spouse	Pamela Crawshaw ​ (m. 1929)​
Academic background
Alma mater	Peterhouse, Cambridge
Influences	Lord Acton J. B. Bury Leopold von Ranke Harold Temperley[1] G. M. Trevelyan P. C. Vellacott
Academic work
Discipline	History philosophy
Sub-discipline	Diplomatic history historiography history of science intellectual history philosophy of history political history
School or tradition	English school Methodism
Institutions	Peterhouse, Cambridge
Doctoral students	Patrick Cosgrave Sir John Elliott Werner Mosse [de] J. G. A. Pocock Karl W. Schweizer Martin Wight
Notable works	The Whig Interpretation of History (1931) The Origins of Modern Science (1949)
Notable ideas	Whig history
Influenced	A. Rupert Hall Thomas Kuhn[2] J. H. Plumb Karl W. Schweizer

Sir Herbert Butterfield FBA (7 October 1900 – 20 July 1979) was an English historian and philosopher of history, who was Regius Professor of Modern History and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.^[3] He is remembered chiefly for a short volume early in his career entitled The Whig Interpretation of History (1931) and for his Origins of Modern Science (1949). Butterfield turned increasingly to historiography and man's developing view of the past. Butterfield was a devout Christian and reflected at length on Christian influences in historical perspectives.

Butterfield thought that individual personalities were more important than great systems of government or economics in historical study. His Christian beliefs in personal sin, salvation and providence were a great influence in his writings, a fact he freely admitted. At the same time, Butterfield's early works emphasised the limits of a historian's moral conclusions, "If history can do anything it is to remind us that all our judgments are merely relative to time and circumstance".