Essay on Primary vs. Secondary Sources: Know the Difference for Knowledge Power

Knowledge is power, and it stems from pieces of information. However, there are all kinds of information available, including rumors. The power in knowledge lies in the facts deduced from information acquired. Information originates from somewhere referred to as a source that has to be reliable for scholars to consider accurate. Generally, sources of information are divided into primary and secondary sources. One can determine whether a source is primary or secondary through assessing its proximity, authorship, and timeliness. A secondary source of a particular issue is one that is created at a later time or place and through authors indirectly related to the issue at hand. A primary source, on the other hand, requires that an author is directly involved in the topic of discussion while creation takes place at a place and time of the issue in question. Sources of information should be reliable to serve as evidence for the intended audience.

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In assessing the reliability of sources, and how one can determine their credibility, documents about the Early Modern Economy were useful. Document one talks about merchants boasting and believing that they have adequate knowledge of all possible transformations in the universe. Boasting and believing are words used to describe merchants indicating that the author is giving their opinion on merchants.

Document 2 points out that religious law permits trade tricks whose aim is to make a profit. Analyzes the content of the religious law on trade, but it is not the direct source of the said religious law. In document 3, the author tells of someone's biography and their travels. When we concentrate on the authorship of the biography, it is clear that the author is different from the person whose biography has been written. Document 5 describes the spice trade and explains how the Venetians conquered the spice market in the previous centuries. The act of description and summarization of the spice trade denotes that the time and place of the source was later from when the trade occurred. The four sources, as mentioned earlier, describe, analyze, summarize, and comment upon other sources of information. The manner the sources mentioned above have been structured suggests that they are secondary sources of information. Document 4 is a statement by the monarchs of Spain declaring rewards to Christopher Columbus for his bravery of taking on a risky commanded voyage of exploration. It is a historical legal document binding the monarchs of Spain Fernando and Isabela, in payment of rewards to Mr Columbus. The source of information is direct hence making it a primary source.

When it comes to the general problem associated with reliability determinacy, the five sources have covered it well. The audience of the sources seems to surface well in all the sources. Reading the sources, it is evident that anyone interested in economics, trade, and business, in general, was a target. The authors, in the case of document 4, are members of the Spain monarch, which makes the source credible. The sources are all talking about the early modern economy, which means that they are historical and do not need to be current for them to be reliable, unlike sources from the scientific field which have to be current to accommodate the dynamic environment. Document 4, however, exhibits bias since it concentrates on the author's opinions, which could be far off from the facts, and this could put its credibility in question. In constructing an essay on the early modern economy, the sources could prove useful in providing a wide array of information on the different types and means of trades.

Conclusion

In conclusion, information sources should be reliable since the credibility serves as evidence for the intended audience. Aspects like biasness, audience, purpose, timeliness, and the author can test the reliability of a particular source. Determining the credibility of a source also depends on the type of source it is, for instance, primary or secondary sources. For instance, a specific primary source of the past may not be plausible currently since the information may be obsolete or was intended for another purpose. It is important to use credible sources of information since it makes one's work reliable, which convinces the intended audience.