But such a record may also contain clues about the way individuals voted, or relationships between different members of the cabinet or committee, which everyone knew at the time and so did not bother to record elsewhere. The records of a government department in the sixteenth century for example, will usually yield unwitting testimony about how it was organised, or how procedures changed across time. Historical research, put simply, involves the rational reconstruction of the way things were in the human past from whatever fragments of evidence may have survived. The professional historian always prefers to inspect the original manuscript, if at all possible. Asking new questions of old familiar sources can often yield new insights.
Historians are omnivorous when it comes to evidence.
Like magpies, they will borrow from any discipline which can contribute useful evidence to help us understand the past a bit better.