Hey guys! first time posting so sorry for the ramble.
I have a real passion for history, more as a life-long hobby than a profession, and I certainly would have used this subreddit if it existed when I first started studying it many years ago haha. My real real passion, however, tends to be studying the why behind each fact of history as it is presented. Sure, it's fun to know that Alexander the Great died in 323 BC, but why is the date that number, and not some other number? What is the original sources and calculations that gave us that date? Surely, Alexander's grave doesn't come with a sign in Ancient Greek, "died in 323 BC".
Nothing gives me greater joy than sorting through that paper trail, constructing the web of sources and logic that holds up our understanding of history. Maybe I'm just really weird, but to me a single historical statement doesn't stand alone, but instead represents the chain of sources and logic that makes that statement true.
Whenever I read secondary sources before the 18th century, this kind of pleasure is usually satisfied immediately. Historians back then would always point to the exact classical source they got the information from, as well as how that information is being applied, such as "Xenophon says X, but Herodotus says Y, so we can determine its actually Z". Of course, sometimes the cited source no longer exists, like when Josephus cites the Tyrian Annals, but nothing can be done about that.
Whenever I read sources after the 18th century, however, after the dawn of "peer-reviewed" academics, it ends up filling me with frustration. Instead of pointing to the exact primary sources, they almost exclusively point to other secondary sources, or to some eminent modern historian or archaeologist. And 9 times out of 10, those other secondary sources cited are either not publicly available or are not translated into English. The only time primary sources are specifically indicated, I find, are either when that is the focus of the paper, or if the piece of information is known to be in dispute.
I don't care if Joe Blog from Yale University says when Alexander the Great lived. And if he has read the primary sources to know that then he should just give them, instead of taking up space in a bibliography. It's not like historiography is a hard science or advanced mathematics that takes years of training to understand; if one person can understand it, then he should be able to explain it (as opposed to just citing it). Yet, the implication seems to be that if a piece of information is cited from an existing, credible academic work, then that automatically makes it absolute truth.
The real concern is that Joe Blog from Yale University actually hasn't read the primary sources, but instead has acquired his knowledge of Alexander by reading other secondary sources, perpetuating the cycle. Hunting down the sources by following this chain of citations can be extremely tedious (and often, as I mentioned earlier, impossible). When I finally do acquire the primary sources for a piece of information, sometimes I find myself having a slightly different interpretation, which means that the secondary sources that relied on this information may end up being in error.
This revelation that secondary sources can be wrong, then, fuels my frustration further. If I am capable of having a different opinion on a topic where the primary sources are publicly available, then what about the ones that aren't? In an ideal world, any kind of proof should function like Euclidean geometry, where one can visually see the chain of premises connecting from non-provable assumptions to the argument at hand. But Post-Enlightenment historians instead seem to chop off that chain at the very end, and leave behind any other premises hidden under layers of bibliographies, as if a an iron gate in the 18th century reads "you're going to have to trust us on this one".
Academic papers, from what I understand, are not supposed to be absolute truth, but instead are simply putting together enough evidence to prove a given argument. Even in the most credible sources, then, the argument being proved is not necessarily the truth. Alternate interpretations of the sources could lead to different conclusions, especially if new evidence is discovered that changes previous assumptions. If a paper's source is 30 years old, how do you know that a discovery 10 years ago doesn't indirectly change that source's premise? When the full chain of logic and primary sources are not given, it's very hard to tell.
It's also apparent that secondary sources can't be taken for granted because, in spite of the best academic credibility, they often contradict each other. The usual way people address this, I find, is taking the majority opinion (or whichever opinion makes it to Wikipedia). But wouldn't it be much better to simply cut out the middle man, and cite the primary sources and logic directly?
One example where I find this frustration lies is in Mesopotamian History. You can easily find many secondary sources that describes the history of Mesopotamia, relying on the original cuneiform inscriptions, which naturally trumps all classical sources like Africanus or Berosus that come from centuries later. But here's the problem: the classical sources are usually in the public domain, but those cuneiform inscriptions generally aren't. Trying to determine how these secondary sources came up with these names and dates, on inscriptions that are never published, is often akin to pulling teeth.
Occasionally, the historicity of a certain event in history is itself a field of study, such as the Conquest of the Aztec Empire, and these become a pleasant oasis where I can find my primary sources at last. But woe betide that you try to find the primary sources on the Inca Empire, which is not nearly so obvious. I'm sure such sources exist, but the vast majority of public information falls into this same trap of simply only citing other secondary sources, as I described earlier.
Of course, I can understand there is an issue of logistics. If every historian had to cite every primary source for each piece of information, the article would quickly become very unreadable with all the random tangents of proofs. However, we live in the 21st century. The technology exists where all the tangential proofs and primary citations can be compacted into a single, blue-colored word (or orange in this case, I guess). Thus, readability can be maintained while still cutting out the middle man of secondary sources.
In fact, as it stands the growth of technology will continue to aggravate the problem. This is because a lot of primary sources now are either not digitized or kept in an archaic format, like microfiche or floppy disks. If there comes a time when these obsolete formats are no longer readable, then what do you have left? A rats nest of secondary sources with bibliographies that go nowhere. Imagine, for a moment, if someone like Josephus was enlightened enough to write like a modern academic. Instead of citing Matheno word-for-word, he would just state his own arguments on Egyptian history, and relegate Manetho to a single line in his bibliography. One burning of Alexandria later, and all of Manetho's work would have been completely forgotten.
Alright, I better wrap up this post and boil it down to a single question, so I don't keep rambling and get deleted for violating rules. It basically can be summarizes as follows:
First, I see myself and other scholars citing primary sources all the time, so I'm a little confused by the question. Are you reading pop history books? Those tend to be much less vigilant.
Is there a reason why modern academics don't just cite primary sources, like Pre-Enlightenment historians used to, and completely cut out the middle man of secondary sources? Presumably, it's not just out of laziness
Because history is not just a dialogue with 'primary sources'. It's a dialogue between scholars. A natural result of that is accretion. Say Scholar A in 1897 says, as you wrote, "Xenophon says X, but Herodotus says Y, so we can determine its actually Z". Scholar B in 1993 revists this and argues that, in fact, Xenophon, Herodotus, and Scholar A are all wrong, and the situation is in fact W. Most scholars find this argument compelling. I, writing in 2020, am building on Scholar B's argument, and so cite her - and only her. My paper is not the place to revisit the entire argument between Xenophon and Herodotus. I'm not actually using their writings directly at all. I'm using Scholar B's interpretation of them. That is what history is about - interpretation, not the dry compiling of facts and dates.
Of course secondary sources can be wrong; they are built on argument and interpretation. But so, of course, can primary sources. And remember that the "sources" are not just written texts. Scholar B, in building her argument, surely read Xenophon and Herodotus, but she may also be drawing on archaeology, sociology, anthropology, climatology, whatever. There is much, much more to the work of history than just reading and discussing so-called "primary sources".
Is there any reliable methodology to acquire primary sources, in the event that someone has a curiosity or disagreement with the secondary source in question?
Not if it hasn't been digitized or published, which - because those things take time and money - is the case for the vast majority of things. I can cite MS Ashmole 357, but it hasn't been digitized or made into a facsimile, so unless you go to the British Library and consult it yourself you can't see it. Everyone would like that not to be the case, and it is getting better, but there's not much chance of the huge hoard of cuneiform tablets being digitized en masse any time soon.
If not, then why don't modern academics make primary sources more easily accessible? As opposed to relying so heavily on secondary sources
What would you expect them to do? I can't digitize the whole manuscript myself - even if I had the technology or time to do it, and the money to host it online, it belongs to the BL, not to me. I can't make a facsimile for the same reason, plus I'd need a publisher. I could edit it, but that's a tremendous amount of work for not a lot of payoff - and I'd still need a publisher or to pay to host a website. Everyone would like for there to be more editions, but it's a lot of work, and it doesn't tend to help one's career much. And remember, I'm not writing for a general audience. I'm writing for other academics, who hopefully have enough institutional support to go look at the thing themselves.
When the full chain of logic and primary sources are not given, it's very hard to tell.
If I'm doing my job well, I will give you the "full chain of logic" for why I've interpreted Ashmole 357 the way I have. But I'm not going to rehearse Scholar B's argument in full (though I may well summarize it). She wrote a whole paper for that. I'm writing about something else.
If a paper's source is 30 years old, how do you know that a discovery 10 years ago doesn't indirectly change that source's premise?
If a major discover between the time of Scholar B's paper and mine has been made, I will (if I'm doing my job right) account for it in my paper. If you're saying "but if I'm just reading Scholar B, how do I know if a major discovery has been made?" then, well, there's no easy answer. Academics know about these things because we attend conferences and read journals and talk to our peers. If you're not in that network, it can be difficult to find out about new findings.
"Is there a reason why modern academics don't just cite primary sources,"
- they cite primary sources, all the time. They also cite sources with opinions and arguments about those primary sources. You may have been mislead by your reading selections -- since you don't cite examples, I can't tell what you're looking at (have you noticed the irony there?). Your impression of an unnamed text does not reflect how academic historians work. When I look at a book from an author I don't know, the first thing I'll do is to look at the footnotes-- that tells me "how much original work is there here". It also tells me a lot about the depth of the authors work - what languages they read, what archives they used.
"Is there any reliable methodology to acquire primary sources, in the event that someone has a curiosity or disagreement with the secondary source in question?"
It's called a "library". When you read the acknowledgements in a work of academic history, there's often a big thank you to librarians at various archives. If you've done archival work, you'll understand just how much you depend on people who've spent years with the documents that you might have weeks or perhaps a month to go through; those thanks are well earned.
Its unusual for serious historical scholarship to be divorced from primary sources. You either have them, or you're explicit about how the sources you're working with get to them, and are prepared to engage arguments about them. Part of the education of an academic historian is to become familiar with the works of other scholars who have studied particular bodies of material most deeply. So if, say, you were working on Medieval English history, you may rely on the works of other scholars who have read Viking material more closely than you have done. Similarly, we can't all be historians of medicine or technology-- we rely on on the work of others who know more than we do to get us up to speed on these subjects; we expect them to be familiar with the primary sources, even if we're not.
If not, then why don't modern academics make primary sources more easily accessible? As opposed to relying so heavily on secondary sources
A few primary sources are easy to use -- digitized, written in familiar languages and mean roughly what a thoughtful lay reader might assume that they mean. Many others are practically impossible for a lay reader to use. To take a few examples: William Caferro is a scholar of the Italian renaissance who's done extensive work with materials in Italian archives, particularly Florence. To make use of these materials requires paleographical skills (the ability to read medieval hands), linguistic skills -- the language isn't modern, and so on. And Italian archives are _easy_ next to, say, the Ottomans, where you have, for example Italian Dragomans recording all sorts of things about Ottoman law and policy in unfamiliar scripts and very specialized language. It takes a long time and a lot of skills to know what you're doing with these materials.
As an example of just what happens when someone who doesn't know much about their subject starts working with primary documents, consider the disaster of Naomi Wolf's "Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalization of Love" - where she read English judicial judgments which note "death recorded" and mistakenly assumed that this meant that these individuals had been executed.
The historian and philologist Anthony Grafton has written a wonderful book about just how historians have come to cite things the way they do and why, its highly recommended:
Grafton, Anthony. "The Footnote: A Curious History". Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1997.
A while ago /u/kingconani elaborated on a fairly contemporary (late 90s) misinterpretation of much more recent primary sources (19th c) which have been widely repeated and will probably continue to be forever, or at least until people stop being interested in vibrators.
It does show how great the risk is.