Sorry I didn't get to replying to you sooner, but the email notifying me of your comment got buried under an avalanche of new emails. Your question is profound and actually there is so little that we can actually know about the past and there are many things to consider when thinking about that. First, if an event wasn't written down, we…
Sorry I didn't get to replying to you sooner, but the email notifying me of your comment got buried under an avalanche of new emails. Your question is profound and actually there is so little that we can actually know about the past and there are many things to consider when thinking about that. First, if an event wasn't written down, we can never know about it. If documents were destroyed somehow we can't know what they contained. In addition, there are many people in the past who would have been unable to write, so their history is unknown. All historians have is the written record which can exist in many forms: letters, diaries, newspapers, official papers, etc. But even those are prone to bias. But I don't think bias is a bad thing; I WANT to know the bias of a person who wrote something. In the end, the job of the historian is to use primary sources to craft a version of the past, which is called an account. Historians don't reproduce the past; all they can do is write an approximation of the past based on the sources they used. And even the historian's account contains bias. I don't know if this response has been of any help, but it's why I think the field of history should be part of the area of study we call the humanities and should never be considered a social science. There is nothing scientific about history. One last comment: some of the best history is contained in the literary genre of historical fiction. Many historians hate historical fiction; I feel differently about it. Of course, in order to produce a really good novel about a time in the past, the writer has to do his/her homework and to be especially careful of committing presentism or anything that could be called ahistorical.
Thank you for the thoughts! That helped clarify things for me so I can comprehend things and make inferences about history.
I love reading historical fiction and when I read, I often check to see what history says about events. HF helps give you a sense of how the characters/people felt at the time and it is entertaining as well.
Do you think we may have we regressed and lost technology from the past or have been reset like a new clean slate by removing history at some point? 17-1800s?
Sorry I didn't get to replying to you sooner, but the email notifying me of your comment got buried under an avalanche of new emails. Your question is profound and actually there is so little that we can actually know about the past and there are many things to consider when thinking about that. First, if an event wasn't written down, we can never know about it. If documents were destroyed somehow we can't know what they contained. In addition, there are many people in the past who would have been unable to write, so their history is unknown. All historians have is the written record which can exist in many forms: letters, diaries, newspapers, official papers, etc. But even those are prone to bias. But I don't think bias is a bad thing; I WANT to know the bias of a person who wrote something. In the end, the job of the historian is to use primary sources to craft a version of the past, which is called an account. Historians don't reproduce the past; all they can do is write an approximation of the past based on the sources they used. And even the historian's account contains bias. I don't know if this response has been of any help, but it's why I think the field of history should be part of the area of study we call the humanities and should never be considered a social science. There is nothing scientific about history. One last comment: some of the best history is contained in the literary genre of historical fiction. Many historians hate historical fiction; I feel differently about it. Of course, in order to produce a really good novel about a time in the past, the writer has to do his/her homework and to be especially careful of committing presentism or anything that could be called ahistorical.
Thank you for the thoughts! That helped clarify things for me so I can comprehend things and make inferences about history.
I love reading historical fiction and when I read, I often check to see what history says about events. HF helps give you a sense of how the characters/people felt at the time and it is entertaining as well.
Do you think we may have we regressed and lost technology from the past or have been reset like a new clean slate by removing history at some point? 17-1800s?