Richard Evans In Defense Of History

458 Words1 Page

The assigned reading was “In Defense of History” written by Richard J. Evans and was published by W. W. Norton & Company. Evans’ book is not just a defense of the subject of history (as the title claims); it is also a defense for the careers of all historians. The book is a counter against the postmodernist view of history. Evans’ book shows postmodernists that objectivity exists in historical books through the search by authors to find the ultimate truth in history and also shows the absurdity of postmodernism. The postmodernist view on history is that those who believe in the trend “deny that there is any such thing as historical truth or objectivity” (pg. 3). This trend, if true, would make all self-proclaimed objective history inaccurate and would halt the search for truth throughout the scientific history. Evans writes about the postmodernist view saying that …show more content…

173). Historians are not searching to raise their bias through the past; they are merely looking to tell the origin stories of our world. History, at its heart, is the search for objectivity and verified facts through primary sources. The theory that claims that our recorded history is filtered through opinions and contemporary ideas, could not be further from the truth. The relationship between the ways we think about history and our own understandings of the contemporary world definitely shape our thoughts, but to say that all historians have changed their perspective on history is innacurate. Evans’ book “In Defense of History” shows that those who claim that objectivity is non-existent in writings by former historians are preposterous in their idea and that the search for facts and truth in former works by historians are objective when taking into account the primary sources and not subjecting their work to personal bias and contemporary

Show More
Related

  • World History as a Way of Thinking by Eric Lane Martin

    1250 Words  | 3 Pages

    In his short article “World History as a Way of Thinking” Eric Lane Martin, “…argue[s] that the most important things the field of world history has to offer the researcher, teacher, student, and general public are the conceptual tools required for understanding complex global processes and problems.” Anyone who follows the evening news or shops at Wal-mart, has encountered the processes and problems Martin speaks of. Our modern society puts pressure on a variety of citizens to grapple with and attempt to understand issues on a scale that moves beyond the local and national. History has long been a tool utilized by scholars, politicians and citizens to help them put current day happenings into context. That context has allowed for a deeper understanding of the present day. In an era when the issues cross national and regional boundaries the need for a different scale of history has become apparent. World history has emerged as a relatively new discipline within academia that is attempting to provide the context for large-scale processes and problems. As the field has grown a variety of authors, some historians, some from other fields, have attempted to write a history of the world. With such a daunting task how can we define success? How can we analyze the history that provides a true global perspective on processes and problems we face? By taking Martin’s two key characteristics of world history, one, it is defined by the kinds of questions it asks and two, it is defined by the problem-solving techniques it uses, we can analyze texts purporting to be world history and access their utility in providing context for the global processes and problems we face today.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Third Person Narratives of Two Novels

    1375 Words  | 3 Pages

    "The Truth Hurts: Andrew Vachss Takes A Stab At History." Bookslut. N.p., June 2005. Web. 04 Mar. 2014.

    Read More

  • The Landscape of History

    1626 Words  | 4 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Great Cat Massacre

    1710 Words  | 4 Pages

    History is a discipline based on textual accounts of the past however it became necessary to look closer. A group of French historians watched as countless historians drew the same conclusions from the same experiences time after time, divorcing themselves from the “new social scientist adventuring among the economies and societies of the present.” The Annales school is interested in a science of humanity, human activities. “The function of the historian is not to declare that such a thought is objectively right or wrong but to state, or to suggest, what circumstances, in a particular time, made it thinkable.” The scholars of the Annales school used non-historians as much

    Read More

  • The Degradation of Women in American Scholar

    568 Words  | 2 Pages

    Books, to the scholar, should only be used as a link to gathering information about the past.  For these books do not give a definite factual account of the past; they provide information for man to form his own opinions.  These books were written by men who already had formulated ideas in their heads spawned by other books.  Man must look to these books for inspiration in creating his own thoughts.  He must use all the possible resources available to get every side and every opinion out there.  When man creates his own thoughts, using every source to aid h...

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis of "Historiography in the Twentieth Century" by Georg G. Iggers

    1705 Words  | 4 Pages

    Iggers, G. G. (1997). Historiography in the twentieth century: from scientific objectivity to the postmodern challenge. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.

    Read More

  • Fukuyama's The End of History

    1898 Words  | 4 Pages

    Fukuyama, F. (1989). The End of History.The National Interest, Summer. Retrieved February 2, 2014, from http://www.wesjones.com/eoh.htm

    Read More

  • Exploring Prehistory: The Era Before Written Records

    1388 Words  | 3 Pages

    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,

    Read More

  • Who Is Hayden White's The Awakening Of Historical Narrative

    1334 Words  | 3 Pages

    In The New Historicism and The Awakening (2000), New Historicism is first discovered through “a number of influential critics working between 1920 and 1950” (The New Historicism 257). However, in that time frame, it was referred to as “the historical approach” (The New Historicism 257). This approach was based on the connections between history and narratives. What made this approach distinct from other literary criticisms is that critics began to “interpret” connections between the history of a text parallel to the narrative of a given time (or the time a text was based on). As this “new” way or criticism developed, “new” ways of thinking of texts did too. “New” progressive ideologies and discourses like

    Read More

  • World History: How Can a Discipline Remain Relevant?

    1418 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Historians are a contentious lot. While their arguments are usually conducted in polite language, the disputations are conducted on a number of fronts at once, and the frame of mind of the disputants ranges from a sporting pleasure with making point after point to a savage determination to win the day.” Although a sense of negativity creeps into this notion of Manning’s, a strengthening of world history can also emerge from this back and forth debate. World history will take shape as scholars push each other to clarify and defend ideas, while remaining skeptical and critical readers. This debate is key to avoiding either a stagnation of ideas or a dilution of possible new insights. As Manning asserts, “The exciting debates and the real advances in knowledge come when multiple scholars are working on related topics, testing their assumptions, data, and interpretations against each other’s.” As world history moves forward, as a discipline, historians would do well to keep this in mind. In addition to internal debate, a need to defend world history as a discipline is still necessary. A significant amount of work was done on defining and defending world history in the early to mid 1990’s. Any cursory look at the Journal of World History during this time period highlights this fact. In addition if you look to the May 1995 issue of History and Theory you see a thematic take on world history. As a result of this scholarship the discipline of world history gained momentum in academia, especially at the teaching level. Despite this trend, world history still finds itself defending its ideas. World history has yet to gain support from the elite universities and those that wish to pursue a PhD in world history have limi...

    Read More

  • The Use And Abuse Of History

    11067 Words  | 23 Pages

    "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.

    Read More

  • To What Extent Does the Knowledge of Today Qualify as the Knowledge of Tomorrow?

    1152 Words  | 3 Pages

    “That which is accepted as knowledge today is sometimes discarded tomorrow.” The pursuit of any given knowledge may or may not change over time if contradictions are stated and proved. While looking at the pursuit of knowledge, the perception that focalizes on the specific subject can be seen as reliable or unreliable due to bias or reason. Knowledge is also different in different fields of study. The use of reason will define certain things for an eternity, while others are made out of emotion. The time period of the relating to the acquiring of the “modern” knowledge could impact the resolution, appointing the fact that history has its own way of forming new concepts to old ideas. In connection to the history aspect, the perception of ideas during that time period will affect future references to the said concept.

    Read More

  • History is the Bridge that Connects the Past with the Present and Future

    608 Words  | 2 Pages

    What is history? History is the analysis and interpretation of the past. History allows us to study both continuity and change over time. It helps to explain how we have changed throughout time. Part of history is using pieces of evidence to interpret and revisit the past. Examples of evidence include written documents, photographs, buildings, paintings, and artifacts. Is history important? When looking at what the definition of history entails, it is clear to see history is in fact, important.

    Read More

  • Importance Of History Essay

    1255 Words  | 3 Pages

    History is a series of important past events that connect with something. History is what makes people make better decisions. There are many definitions of history and everyone has their own.

    Read More

  • What is history

    674 Words  | 2 Pages

    I define history as important events that have happened in the past, and the ones that are presently happening. At some time or another everything will be considered history. History tells a story, whether it’s written, painted, carved, or sung; a collection of events that someone explains to you that is usually important.

    Read More

More about Richard Evans In Defense Of History

Open Document