The study of history has always been systematic with historians asking questions, collecting background information, evaluating sources, linking evidence, and presenting a conclusion while maintaining objectivity. The methods of explaining history has largely been a similar process. While the nineteenth century movement focused on altering the study of history through the importance of objectivity and professionalism, it did little to change it completely. New methods may have emerged to become more objective and added new perspectives, but the study of history has always consisted of obtaining information and presenting the findings. The study of history maintained the same methods of processing information and sense of objectivity since the time of the ancient world to the Renaissance and Progressive Era.
The ancient world used similar methods in history that have remained unchanged, which modern historians still use today. Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886), from the late nineteenth century, disputed the methods of early historical studies and insisted on changing the study of history by means of empirical methods involving the use of primary sources to write about the past. The empirical methods, which are based on observation and experiments, are similar to the methods of the Greek scholar Thucydides (460-400 BCE), who wrote about the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides wrote about the war between Sparta and Athens based on his observations by presenting different accounts on the war and by linking the evidences together. He experimented with the contradicting sources, which led him to a conclusion. In addition, the use of contradicting sources helped maintain a sense of objectivity to find the “truth.” While objectivity encouraged Ran...
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...g data and then allowing “the data to dictate to the scholar its meaning.” Positivism is similar to the systematic methods used in the study of history to obtain the truth. While objectivity was one of the goals of positivism, it did not influence the idea entirely, but still applied the interest of scientific knowledge to history.
Since the time of the ancient world to the Renaissance and Progressive Era, the study of history has remained the same. Most of the methods that emerged or used during these times were largely influenced by other ideas and not only objectivity. While objectivity and professionalism may have affected the study of history, it did not challenge or completely alter it. The study of history has always been a systematic approach, and although new methods emerged throughout the past, the same sense of objectivity to finding the “truth” remains.
Ana-Mauríne Lara’s Erzulie’s Skirt positions the female body as the scene where lives are interconnected across history and as a dissertation of the human condition. Her protagonists, Micaela and Miriam, tell a story of love, struggle, and survival that echoes the historical significance of slavery and the Caribbean middle passage across time and space. Divided into several sections based on time and location, one particular period in Lara’s novel connects Micaela and Miriam’s experiences most closely with slavery as a whole. After a voyage across the Mona Strait as an attempt to escape from the conditions in the Dominican Republic, they find themselves captured, trapped in a brothel, and forced into prostitution. Many parallels can be drawn to interpret Lara’s use of the brothel as a metaphor for the slave ships used to travel across the original Middle Passage, including the comparable use of people as commodities, the specific imagery and language Lara uses, the historical narrative presented at the beginning of each section, and the larger themes in which identities were simultaneously stripped by oppression and also preserved within the context of community and spirituality.
[3] But claiming that history is biased is not to imply that it is irrelevant and should stop being written. According to Walter Benjamin, history should stop masking itself as objective and homogeneous and instead focus on the monad: "where thinking suddenly stops in a configuration pregnant with tensions, it gives that configuration a shock" (262). Instead of charting the victor's path, history must examine how colonizer and colonized interact during a specific moment of time.
The Lewinsky Scandal… A perfect example as to why we cannot accept everything at face value before carefully examining it first. Everyone thought President Clinton was behaving himself in the White House, but, as it turns out, he was most definitely not. This can be the same for history. We must carefully consider different aspects of articles so that we do no make the mistake of believing everything we read. In order to fully understand an article, we must understand the author that wrote it. It is necessary to examine prejudices, sources, information left out, and missing background information before accepting an article. This method of critical analysis allows us to better understand the article and therefore history because we are more aware of the authors and their possible mishaps. “The View from the Bottom Rail”, an article in After the Fact, provides an opportunity to examine different aspects of analysis. If we look at it carefully, then we will be able to determine if the thesis was proven effectively.
What more is the point of learning and understanding human history than obtaining the knowledge and structure between what is right and what is wrong? We continuously believe that we as humans have the ability and intellect to learn from the lessons taught in our past in order to enrich our future. In comparison to the time frame that is human history the one hundred year period of time we discussed in the second halve of this semester is nothing but a slight blimp on the map that we have traversed. Yet, throughout our recent readings we can easily assimilate into the idea that although time may pass, and that we may attempt to learn from our history it is simply in human nature to repeat the mistakes that we have
The book written by Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, contains two controversial debates between distinguished speakers of Athens. The two corresponding sides produce convincing arguments which can be taken as if produced as an honest opinion or out of self-interest. The two debates must be analyzed separately in order to conclude which one and which side was speaking out of honest opinion or self-interest, as well as which speakers are similar to each other in their approach to the situation.
Butler, Chris. "The Flow of History." Welcome -. N.p., 1 Jan. 2007. Web. 19 May 2014. .
The study of past events have been a common practice of mankind since the verbal telling of stories by our ancestors. William Cronon, in his article “Why the Past Matters,” asserts that the remembrance of the past “keeps us in place.” Our individual memories and experiences shape how we act in our daily lives. In addition to influencing us at an individual level, our collective history binds us together as a society. Without knowing where we have been or what we have experienced, it is nearly impossible to judge progress or know which courses of action to pursue. The goal of the historian is to analyze and explain past events, of which they rarely have firsthand memory of, and apply the gained knowledge to make connections with current and future events.
In The Houses of History, many different schools of historical thought are presented and light in shed on what exactly it means to be those different types of historians. Not all historians think the same way or approach history from the same perspective, but some similar groups of thought have converged together and have formed the various types of historians that will be presented, such as empiricists, psychohistorians, oral historians, and gender historians. All of these groups can approach the same event or concept and look at them in an entirely different way simply due to the way the historical approach they are accustomed to views things.
The patterns of living that the world witnesses today are greatly influenced by history. This is because of the fact that history plays an immense role in forming one’s future; the abundant interactions socially, economically, politically, result in repercussions that can hardly be unraveled. However, this does not in anyway mean that one cannot trace today’s state of affairs back to its roots. Tracing today’s occurrences back to their origin is possible due to the fact that the agents’ (nations) origins are known.
Through examining these texts, it is evident that the advantages historians have when drawing on evidence such as this is that they can easily reveal certain social and cultural values of the society from which the authors came from, just as easily as it shows social and cultural values of the society of which it was written about. The limitations for historians when collecting written evidence is that some key features of the complex civilizations written about were often left out or could be easily misinterpreted or
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 two Greeks Herodotus and Thucydides started the practice of reporting truth and personal knowledge of historical events above prose and poetry (vis-à-vis Homer), as well as removing much of the theological-centric content. The Roman historians that came after improved on this practice, particularly Tacitus, who used the better developed record-keeping of the times to write more concise, accurate histories with personal knowledge of the movers and shakers of the realm, both the senate and of the emperors. Tacitus’ style of history writing more closely resembles the ideal of what a historian should be, in quality, accuracy and freedom of personal idealism or slant.
Positivists believe that as a science, sociology can be objective and value-free. Disinterested scientific observers shouldn't and don't necessarily introduce bias into the research process. ... ... middle of paper ... ... our different types of suicide, and that most suicides can fall into one of those categories.
Knowledge is gained through a myriad of personal experiences through a variety of ways that shapes a person’s understanding. The knowledge we obtain is the culmination of our experiences as we learn what our brain interprets from our senses. Knowledge is the transmission of information that shapes a person’s understanding on a particular topic using a way of knowing. The language used by others to formulate our own ideas and thoughts produce knowledge. The knowledge obtained can either be objective and subjective. The two areas of knowledge, history and arts, are both typically at fault for being inaccurate or bias. The role of history is to study, interpret and analyse the events of the past and relay these findings through language. Language communicates thoughts and ideas through a verbal or written broadcast, thus allowing knowledge to be conveyed. The arts are a broad area of knowledge that communicate knowledge through the manipulation of our sense perceptions that allow us to experience sensations through any of our five senses. The inaccuracies and biases of these areas of knowledge and ways of knowing is due to the pre-set beliefs and values that affect how an artist or a historian chooses to express a particular message to others. Each historian belongs to a school of historiography that holds the belief that an event was due to a specific set of factors and the language used supports this claim. Similarly, artists utilize our sense perceptions to convey a message through a painting. Arts are a broad area of knowledge to i...
To successfully analyses whether History is a science, or more, or less than we must decide on an accurate approach to the term science. Mikael Karlsson stated in a lecture to the University of Genova that...