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The landscape of history summary
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In the first five chapters of The Landscape of History, Gaddis describes many aspects of the field of history, and makes multiple allusions, references, and analogies in order to explain his points further. One point that he makes a special effort to explain is the difference between history and various “social sciences,” such as sociology, psychology, and economics. He asserts that history is more similar to certain “hard sciences,” such as geology, paleontology, and evolutionary biology. In his writing, however, he seems to be extremely critical of the “social sciences,” in favor of his own field, history. Gaddis’ bias is in a way, very ironic, due his frequent mentioning of bias itself. On pages 10, 29, 77, and 78, he brings up the concept
In a comprehensive summary and analyzation of the history of mankind’s record of affairs, Mark T. Gilderhus tackles the many aspects of the overall biography of human existence. Through scrutiny of the goals of past and present historians, a brief explanation of the origins of historiography, a thorough exploration of the philosophies behind history, and a review of the modern approach to past events, Gilderhus sums up the entirety of historical thought in one hundred and twenty-five pages. His superior knowledge is exemplified through his work which effectively conveys the full extent of historiography.
Furthermore, the authors aim to unfold the scientific logic of their analysis of the effects of hidden biases so people will be “better able to achieve the alignment,” between their behavior and intentions (Banaji and Greenwald, 2013) preface
“It [history] is like a river. From any vantage point, a river looks much the same day after day. But actually it is constantly flowing and changing…one day, when the banks are thoroughly weakened and the rains long and heavy, the river floods and bursts its banks, and may take a new course.” (Kay 1948)
All historians have biases and these biases shape the way the write history. Some authors write to promote an ideal while others write to educate the public and authors also differ in what aspects of history they write about. When reading any history text it is important to remember why the author wrote and what was important to them. An author like Jo-Ann Shelton writes history to educate people on the social history of Rome by using letters and inscriptions left from individual people, the authors of the fourth edition of A History of Rome write to educate college students on the political and economic history of Rome while occasionally discussing the culture in a traditional text-book format, and Suetonius wrote history to tell stories about the emperors and therefore discarded information unless it directly pertained to the single man he was focusing on. Jo-Ann Shelton places more emphasis on many different individuals as a way to accurately portray Roman history, the authors of A History of Rome place significantly less emphasis on many individuals but they still discuss different groups of people throughout the Roman Empire and various inscriptions, and Suetonius only discusses the emperors, and those who had an impact on their reign, in depth.
Numerous students who have told me that they did not spend much time learning social studies in their elementary school, so to close some of the gap, I have added a unit on basic geography skills. Once they have completed the geography unit, I begin to compare and contrast the ancient world advances in education, religion, politics, and economics with our world today. As we go through each subtopic, we discuss how those achievements have evolved over time and continue to influence our world today.
History. What is history? History is not just a complete story from the perspective of a man nor women. But it is a replica that tells the story of our communities, cities, countries, and the world. History by definition is the account of change over a period of time. For centuries, people have altered the environment in order to meet their needs. The effect of these changes have brought upon both positive and negative effects on the environment, societies, and regions. Some include the development of irrigation in ancient Egypt, the construction of chinampas by the Aztecs, and the mining of coal in Great Britain. Throughout time, many of the ancient civilizations have gone through inconvenient setbacks while trying to complete their goal. Nevertheless,
...reak down of selection, slanting by the use of emphasis, slanting by the selection of facts, and charged words can be used as guide to spot bias. By using Birk and Birk as a guide it easy to identify and categorize the bias within Jamieson’s essay. Birk and Birk write “If we carefully examine the ways of thoughts and language, we see that any knowledge that comes to us through words has been subjected to the double screening of the principle of selection and the slanting of language…”(227). It is this very principle that reminds us to carefully observe the information that we receive and make an effort to ensure we balance the information that we divulge.
He argues that world history should not be viewed as separate, unconnected cultures of east and west, but rather that they were all connected in multitudes of ways and must be studied as such. Pointing out the inadequate ideal of separating the world into two sections which are not equal in geography, culture, population, or history itself, he instead poses a solution to the world history viewpoint: Studying the world through its interrelations between cultures and geographical locations. Hodgson’s proposed view of large scale history not only makes sense theoretically, but logically as it proves through the pages that the history or the world cannot simply be divided, but must be studied as a whole to be truly
Iggers opens the book by talking about a revolutionary way that the Western world was taught about history. Throughout the book he ascertains the changes that take place throughout historiography and the nature of history itself. He also examines prior historical notions and the way that historiography was altered after World War II. History morphed from previous antiquarian teachings into a deeper, more evaluated approach. Historians gained a more intimate relationship with postmodern ideas and began looking at history in an objective manner using contemporary discipline. Iggers studies the way postmodernism was changed by new social sciences which allowed more detail into cultural influences and the problems surrounding globalization theories. He also explains the birth of microhistory which replaced macrohistory.
Until modern times, history was regarded primarily as a special kind of literature that shared many techniques and effects with fictional narrative. Historians were committed to factual materials and personal truthfulness, but like writers of fiction they wrote detailed narratives of events and vivid character sketches with great attention to language and style. The complex relations between literary art and historiography have been and continue to be a subject of serious debate. (Partner, Nancy F. "History and Historiography." Microsoft® Student 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation,
John Lewis Gaddis, in his book, The Landscape of History, generates a strong argument for the historical method by bringing together the multiple standpoints in viewing history and the sciences. The issue of objective truth in history is addressed throughout Gaddis’s work. In general, historians learn to select the various events that they believe to be valid. Historians must face the fact that there is an “accurate” interpretation of the past ceases to exist because interpretation itself is based on the experience of the historian, in which people cannot observe directly (Gaddis 10). Historians can only view the past in a limited perspective, which generates subjectivity and bias, and claiming a piece of history to be “objective” is simplistic. Seeing the world in a multidimensiona...
The issues that are raised in this source by Marc Trachtenberg are is whether or not objectivity is still a relevant idea, and if it is not then is history in fact dying. Keith Jenkins' "What is History?," Carl Becker's "What are Historical Facts?" and Richard Evans' "In Defence of History" will be used to discuss and examine these issues.
"Incidentally, I despise everything which merely instructs me without increasing or immediately enlivening my activity." These are Goethe's words. With them, as with a heartfelt expression of Ceterum censeo [I judge otherwise], our consideration of the worth and the worthlessness of history may begin. For this work is to set down why, in the spirit of Goethe's saying, we must seriously despise instruction without vitality, knowledge which enervates activity, and history as an expensive surplus of knowledge and a luxury, because we lack what is still most essential to us and because what is superfluous is hostile to what is essential. To be sure, we need history. But we need it in a manner different from the way in which the spoilt idler in the garden of knowledge uses it, no matter how elegantly he may look down on our coarse and graceless needs and distresses. That is, we need it for life and action, not for a comfortable turning away from life and action or merely for glossing over the egotistical life and the cowardly bad act. We wish to use history only insofar as it serves living. But there is a degree of doing history and a valuing of it through which life atrophies and degenerates. To bring this phenomenon to light as a remarkable symptom of our time is every bit as necessary as it may be painful.
Historians use sources and knowledge to piece together the history of the human existence while Human scientist study the human behavior as well as the lifestyle we live in. They indeed focus on these areas and provide information to each other. However, a historian will also look to the future and foretell using his or her knowledge of the past. In the same way, a human scientist might look at human behavior today and compare it with the past. For when we look at human science, historians find it as useful term for science with the word ‘human’ as the subject (Smith). This opens the possibilities for the historian to research and thus history can be considered as a ‘Human Science’ (Smith).
Before the rise of modern science, the majority of people believed that gods or spirits were the cause of natural events such as earthquakes. That is why, we, human beings, have always been curious about the sources of our own behavior, but for centuries our attempts to understand ourselves relied on ways of thinking passed down from generation to generation, often expressed in religious terms. Despite that, writers from earlier periods provided insights towards human behavior and society, the systematic study of society is a relatively new elaboration, beginning back to the late 1700s and early 1800s. A key development was the use of science instead of religion to understand the world. Giddens: The 'Giddens' 2006 book.