40 replies to this topic

[General_Zhaoyun]

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History

History

History studies the past in human terms. For the science of locating events in time, unrelated to humans, see chronology.

History is systematically collected information about the past. When used as the name of a field of study, history refers to the study and interpretation of the record of humans, families, and societies. Knowledge of history is often said to encompass both knowledge of past events and historical thinking skills.

Traditionally, the study of history has been considered a part of the humanities. However, in modern academia, history is increasingly classified as a social science, especially when chronology is the focus.


Classifications



Because history is such a broad subject, organization is crucial. While several writers, such as H.G. Wells and Will and Ariel Durant, have written universal histories, most historians specialize.

There are several different ways of classifying historical information:

* Chronological (by date)
* Geographical (by region)
* National (by nation)
* Ethnic (by ethnic group)
* Topical (by subject or topic)

Some people have criticized historical study, saying that it tends to be too narrowly focused on political events, armed conflicts, and famous people and that deeper and more significant changes in terms of ideas, technology, family life and culture warrant more attention. Recent developments in the practice of history have sought to address this.


Historical records

Historians obtain information about the past from various kinds of sources, including written or printed records, coins or other artifacts, buildings and monuments, and interviews (oral history). For modern history, primary sources may include photographs, motion pictures, and audio and video recordings. Different approaches may be more common in the study of some periods than in others, and perspectives of history (historiography) vary widely.

Historical records have been maintained for a variety of reasons, including administrative (such as censuses, tax records, commercial records), political (glorification or criticism of leaders and notable figures), religious, artistic, sporting (notably the Olympics), genealogical, personal (letters), and entertainment.


History and prehistory

Traditionally the study of history was limited to the written and spoken word. However with the rise of academic professionalism and the creation of new scientific fields in the 19th and 20th centuries came a flood of new information that challenged this notion — archaeology, anthropology and other social sciences were providing new information and even theories about human history. Some traditional historians questioned whether these new studies were really history, since they were not limited to the written word. A new term, prehistory, was coined, to encompass the results of these new fields where they yielded information about times prior to the existence of written records.

In the twentieth century the artificial division between history and prehistory was proving problematic. Historians were looking beyond traditional political history narratives with new approaches such as economic, social and cultural history, all of which relied on various sources of evidence. Additionally, "prehistorians" such as Vere Gordon Childe were using archaeology to explain important events in areas that were traditionally in the field of history. The distinction was also criticized because of its implicit exclusion of certain civilizations, such as those of Sub-Saharan Africa and pre-Columbian America from the historical record. In recent decades the barriers between history and prehistory have thus largely disappeared.

Today there is no generally accepted definition for when history begins. In general history is today seen as the study of everything that is known about the human past (but even this barrier is being challenged by new fields such as Big History). Sources that can give light on this past such as oral history, linguistics, and genetics, have all become accepted by mainstream historians.


Etymology


The term history entered the English language in 1390 with the meaning of "relation of incidents, story" via the Old French historie, from the Latin historia "narrative, account." This itself was derived from the Ancient Greek ἱστορία, historía, meaning "a learning or knowing by inquiry, history, record, narrative," from the verb ἱστορεῖν, historeîn, "to inquire."

This, in turn, was derived from ἵστωρ, hístōr ("wise man," "witness," or "judge"). Early attestations of ἵστωρ are from the Homeric Hymns, Heraclitus, the Athenian ephebes' oath, and from Boiotic inscriptions (in a legal sense, either "judge" or "witness," or similar). The spirant is problematic, and not present in cognate Greek eídomai ("to appear").

ἵστωρ is ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European *wid-tor-, from the root *weid- ("to know, to see"), also present in the English word wit, the Latin words vision and video, the Sanskrit word veda, and the Slavic word videti and vedati, as well as others. (The asterisk before a word indicates that it is a hypothetical construction, not an attested form.) 'ἱστορία, historía, is an Ionic derivation of the word, which with Ionic science and philosophy were spread first in Classical Greece and ultimately over all of Hellenism.

In Middle English, the meaning was "story" in general. The restriction to the meaning "record of past events" in the sense of Herodotus arises in the late 15th century. In German, French, and indeed, most languages of the world other than English, this distinction was never made, and the same word is used to mean both "history" and "story". A sense of "systematic account" without a reference to time in particular was current in the 16th century, but is now obsolete. The adjective historical is attested from 1561, and historic from 1669. Historian in the sense of a "researcher of history" in a higher sense than that of an annalist or chronicler, who merely record events as they occur, is attested from 1531.
[edit]

Historiography


Historiography has a number of related meanings. It can refer to the history of historical study, its methodology and practices (the history of history). It can also refer to a specific a body of historical writing (for example, "medieval historiography during the 1960s" means "medieval history written during the 1960s"). Historiography can also be taken to mean historical theory or the study of historical writing and memory. As a meta-level analysis of descriptions of the past, this third conception can relate to the first two in that the analysis usually focuses on the narratives, interpretations, worldview, use of evidence, or method of presentation of other historians.
[edit]

Historical methods



The historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and other evidence to research and then to write history.

Ibn Khaldun laid down the principles for the historical method in his book Muqaddimah. Other historians of note who have advanced the historical methods of study include Leopold von Ranke, Lewis Bernstein Namier, Geoffrey Rudolph Elton, G.M. Trevelyan and A.J.P. Taylor. In the 20th century, historians focused less on epic nationalistic narratives, which often tended to glorify the nation or individuals, to more realistic chronologies. French historians introduced quantitative history, using broad data to track the lives of typical individuals, and were prominent in the establishment of cultural history (cf. histoire des mentalités). American historians, motivated by the civil rights era, focused on formerly overlooked ethnic, racial, and socio-economic groups. In recent years, postmodernists have challenged the validity and need for the study of history on the basis that all history is based on the personal interpretation of sources. In his book In Defence of History, Richard J. Evans, a professor of modern history at Cambridge University, defended the worth of history.


The lessons of history

In addition to being an interesting topic of study in its own right, historians often claim that the study of history teaches valuable lessons with regard to past successes and failures of leaders, military strategy and tactics, economic systems, forms of government, and other recurring themes in the human story. From history we may learn factors that result in the rise and fall of nation-states or civilizations, the strengths and weaknesses of various political, economic, and social systems, and the effects of factors such as trade and technology.

One of the most famous quotations about history and the value of studying history, by Spanish philosopher, George Santayana, reads: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The German Philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel remarked in his Philosophy of History that "What history and experience teach us is this: that people and government never have learned anything from history or acted on principles deduced from it." This was famously paraphrased by the British statesman, Winston Churchill, who said "The one thing we have learned from history is that we don't learn from history."

An alternative view is that the forces of history are too great to be changed by human deliberation, or that, even if people do change the course of history, the movers and shakers of this world are usually too self-involved to stop to look at the big picture.

Yet another view is that history does not repeat itself because of the uniqueness of any given historical event. In this view, the specific combination of factors at any moment in time can never be repeated, and so knowledge about events in the past can not be directly and beneficially applied to the present.

There is no general consensus, even among historians, as to which of these views is true.

[Borjigin Ayurbarwada]

I think history teaches more than just patterns of the past. It can teach people to think critically, eradicate stereotypes, prejudices, and dispel blind faith. In a way I think historical science has more potential than any other field of science in eradicating these biases and superstitions, since they can trace the origin of these stereotypes and superstitions and analyze how they were formed. It is a great tool for social science. However, countries of the world are precisely not doing this by teaching nationalistic history. Nationalistic history does the exact opposite, it enhances idealogical pride, draw boundaries, and view the world subjectively. Even more dangerously, it creates the danger of self fufilling prophecies. Because of this, I grew extremely hostile to nationalistic history in the past few month, which perhaps does more harm than good. And this I do, in a sense, agree with the postmodernists. Because the history that schools teach in all parts of the world is not science, but a form of detrimental literature.
To sum it up, what shouldn't be done is projecting history onto the present. Strictly speaking, history is not part of reality, since it already happened, and will not happen again. Hence using history as a tool to achieve any goal is like using superstitious beliefs to science; superstitious beliefs such as eating infants will give you longevity.
History should only be a unattached phonomenon thats merely observed and utilized. Only then does it truly becomes science.

[TwinkieDP]

History can be a tool thats twisted into propaganda to serve political aims.

[caocao74]

History can be a tool thats twisted into propaganda to serve political aims.

So much like science, economics, et alia ad infinitum....

[Boleslaw I]

"So much like science, economics, et alia ad infinitum.... "

Here is a good post for this subject
http://www.historum....read.php?t=2568

[Peter S]

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History

History

History studies the past in human terms. For the science of locating events in time, unrelated to humans, see chronology.

History is systematically collected information about the past. When used as the name of a field of study, history refers to the study and interpretation of the record of humans, families, and societies. Knowledge of history is often said to encompass both knowledge of past events and historical thinking skills.

Traditionally, the study of history has been considered a part of the humanities. However, in modern academia, history is increasingly classified as a social science, especially when chronology is the focus.
Classifications
Because history is such a broad subject, organization is crucial. While several writers, such as H.G. Wells and Will and Ariel Durant, have written universal histories, most historians specialize.

There are several different ways of classifying historical information:

* Chronological (by date)
* Geographical (by region)
* National (by nation)
* Ethnic (by ethnic group)
* Topical (by subject or topic)

Some people have criticized historical study, saying that it tends to be too narrowly focused on political events, armed conflicts, and famous people and that deeper and more significant changes in terms of ideas, technology, family life and culture warrant more attention. Recent developments in the practice of history have sought to address this.
Historical records

Historians obtain information about the past from various kinds of sources, including written or printed records, coins or other artifacts, buildings and monuments, and interviews (oral history). For modern history, primary sources may include photographs, motion pictures, and audio and video recordings. Different approaches may be more common in the study of some periods than in others, and perspectives of history (historiography) vary widely.

Historical records have been maintained for a variety of reasons, including administrative (such as censuses, tax records, commercial records), political (glorification or criticism of leaders and notable figures), religious, artistic, sporting (notably the Olympics), genealogical, personal (letters), and entertainment.
History and prehistory

Traditionally the study of history was limited to the written and spoken word. However with the rise of academic professionalism and the creation of new scientific fields in the 19th and 20th centuries came a flood of new information that challenged this notion — archaeology, anthropology and other social sciences were providing new information and even theories about human history. Some traditional historians questioned whether these new studies were really history, since they were not limited to the written word. A new term, prehistory, was coined, to encompass the results of these new fields where they yielded information about times prior to the existence of written records.

In the twentieth century the artificial division between history and prehistory was proving problematic. Historians were looking beyond traditional political history narratives with new approaches such as economic, social and cultural history, all of which relied on various sources of evidence. Additionally, "prehistorians" such as Vere Gordon Childe were using archaeology to explain important events in areas that were traditionally in the field of history. The distinction was also criticized because of its implicit exclusion of certain civilizations, such as those of Sub-Saharan Africa and pre-Columbian America from the historical record. In recent decades the barriers between history and prehistory have thus largely disappeared.

Today there is no generally accepted definition for when history begins. In general history is today seen as the study of everything that is known about the human past (but even this barrier is being challenged by new fields such as Big History). Sources that can give light on this past such as oral history, linguistics, and genetics, have all become accepted by mainstream historians.
Etymology
The term history entered the English language in 1390 with the meaning of "relation of incidents, story" via the Old French historie, from the Latin historia "narrative, account." This itself was derived from the Ancient Greek ἱστορία, historía, meaning "a learning or knowing by inquiry, history, record, narrative," from the verb ἱστορεῖν, historeîn, "to inquire."

This, in turn, was derived from ἵστωρ, hístōr ("wise man," "witness," or "judge"). Early attestations of ἵστωρ are from the Homeric Hymns, Heraclitus, the Athenian ephebes' oath, and from Boiotic inscriptions (in a legal sense, either "judge" or "witness," or similar). The spirant is problematic, and not present in cognate Greek eídomai ("to appear").

ἵστωρ is ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European *wid-tor-, from the root *weid- ("to know, to see"), also present in the English word wit, the Latin words vision and video, the Sanskrit word veda, and the Slavic word videti and vedati, as well as others. (The asterisk before a word indicates that it is a hypothetical construction, not an attested form.) 'ἱστορία, historía, is an Ionic derivation of the word, which with Ionic science and philosophy were spread first in Classical Greece and ultimately over all of Hellenism.

In Middle English, the meaning was "story" in general. The restriction to the meaning "record of past events" in the sense of Herodotus arises in the late 15th century. In German, French, and indeed, most languages of the world other than English, this distinction was never made, and the same word is used to mean both "history" and "story". A sense of "systematic account" without a reference to time in particular was current in the 16th century, but is now obsolete. The adjective historical is attested from 1561, and historic from 1669. Historian in the sense of a "researcher of history" in a higher sense than that of an annalist or chronicler, who merely record events as they occur, is attested from 1531.
[edit]

Historiography
Historiography has a number of related meanings. It can refer to the history of historical study, its methodology and practices (the history of history). It can also refer to a specific a body of historical writing (for example, "medieval historiography during the 1960s" means "medieval history written during the 1960s"). Historiography can also be taken to mean historical theory or the study of historical writing and memory. As a meta-level analysis of descriptions of the past, this third conception can relate to the first two in that the analysis usually focuses on the narratives, interpretations, worldview, use of evidence, or method of presentation of other historians.
[edit]

Historical methods
The historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and other evidence to research and then to write history.

Ibn Khaldun laid down the principles for the historical method in his book Muqaddimah. Other historians of note who have advanced the historical methods of study include Leopold von Ranke, Lewis Bernstein Namier, Geoffrey Rudolph Elton, G.M. Trevelyan and A.J.P. Taylor. In the 20th century, historians focused less on epic nationalistic narratives, which often tended to glorify the nation or individuals, to more realistic chronologies. French historians introduced quantitative history, using broad data to track the lives of typical individuals, and were prominent in the establishment of cultural history (cf. histoire des mentalités). American historians, motivated by the civil rights era, focused on formerly overlooked ethnic, racial, and socio-economic groups. In recent years, postmodernists have challenged the validity and need for the study of history on the basis that all history is based on the personal interpretation of sources. In his book In Defence of History, Richard J. Evans, a professor of modern history at Cambridge University, defended the worth of history.
The lessons of history

In addition to being an interesting topic of study in its own right, historians often claim that the study of history teaches valuable lessons with regard to past successes and failures of leaders, military strategy and tactics, economic systems, forms of government, and other recurring themes in the human story. From history we may learn factors that result in the rise and fall of nation-states or civilizations, the strengths and weaknesses of various political, economic, and social systems, and the effects of factors such as trade and technology.

One of the most famous quotations about history and the value of studying history, by Spanish philosopher, George Santayana, reads: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The German Philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel remarked in his Philosophy of History that "What history and experience teach us is this: that people and government never have learned anything from history or acted on principles deduced from it." This was famously paraphrased by the British statesman, Winston Churchill, who said "The one thing we have learned from history is that we don't learn from history."

An alternative view is that the forces of history are too great to be changed by human deliberation, or that, even if people do change the course of history, the movers and shakers of this world are usually too self-involved to stop to look at the big picture.

Yet another view is that history does not repeat itself because of the uniqueness of any given historical event. In this view, the specific combination of factors at any moment in time can never be repeated, and so knowledge about events in the past can not be directly and beneficially applied to the present.

There is no general consensus, even among historians, as to which of these views is true.

With due respect, there is not one, but many histories:

1. Political History: The most well known one. It talks about kings and queens, nobles and lords, empires and dukedoms - ad infinitum.

2. Then a few years ago, some historians, and other clear thinking people, realized that Politucal Histories did not represent the whole picture of the past - in fact, it only tells, and explains a small part of the past: to know and understand the past, we must try to learn as much about the past as possibe: Therefore, Social History was invented. Social History finds out and studies people in the past: blacksmiths and maids, Chinamen and negroes, tax collectors and prostitues - who they were, what they did, and the environment in which they lived and plied their trades.

3. Then there are the specialized histories: Military history, Naval history, Blacksmith Guild's history, Hakka history, Ismaili history etc.

[Boleslaw I]

The youngest and most squabbling type of history is, is... Counterfactual History

[Freddy1]

History

His- story

Some would say Past story.

Its a collection of of stories that describes past events.
History has always been controversal. Because of political agendas- historical revisionism, half truths, complete deliberate omissions, emphasis or de-empahsis of certain facts, straight out lies, etc.
On top that history accounts may not tell the whole story-information was lost or incomplete etc.

[Atlas]

There are two types of history:
1) is the common understanding of the subject, and it is simply everything that has transpires before the present. Stories are drawn from here as are the lessons that some say should be learned.

2) The Discipline of history is a branch of human knowledge that seeks to understand why events occurred in a certain way at a certain times. Historians (for the overwhelming majority) utilize this form of history as they study the past to determine what happened and more importantly why it happened.

[hacj]

Some people said: " History is collections of lying that people can accept and believe"

[Atlas]

Some people said: " History is collections of lying that people can accept and believe"

Perhaps in the past,but systematic methodology and coaberative evidence allows us to ferret out the truth and know the past. Even if on the off chance that the above statement is remotely true (which I truly doubt) I must rely on Plato's Idea that even if it turns out to be a dead end or untrue, we are better for the attempt to learn something then to not learn more about our world, ourselves, and our past.

[MattW]

E H Carr's 'What is History' and A. Marwick's 'The Nature of History' are great books for anwering the Q. of 'what is history?' I would recommened these as a useful introdcution for anyone interested in this topic.

[MattW]

i know this book, it's very intersting!

Which one, Carr or Mariwick? Or both?

[LongMa]

There is what history "should be" and what it "is".

It is usually propoganda by the winning or dominant society/culture. Much of what we read in history is lies, half truths, and extremely bias analysis by "historians" who were anything but objective.

From that we try to find the truth, but the reality is a lot of 'truth' will never be known because often the sources are so few.