History

From RationalWiki

History ,an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves and soldiers, mostly fools. ^[1] It also refers to accounts of the human past and the academic discipline of researching, usually studying written or archaeological sources, as well as of communicating the results of such research of that past.

Contents 1 Views of history 2 Academic history 3 See also 4 Footnotes 5 References

[edit] Views of history

History has been perceived differently by people in different times and cultures. Ancient societies, such as the Babylonians and the Hellenic Greeks tended to think of history as a circle. As time progressed, events would repeat themselves, although under different circumstances.

By contrast, medieval and renaissance scholars and chroniclers viewed history as a progression through a sequence of different ages, starting with the creation of the world and ending with the second coming of Christ and the judgment of mankind. It was usually believed that there were seven such ages.

[edit] Academic history

The study of history as an academic field dates to the 19th century, when historians developed scientific methods for studying source materials. They also adopted a new objectivist ideal of history that broke with earlier approaches. The new role of the historian was to show history "as it actually happened", and not to pass judgment or impose his own views on the sources. Key figures in this development were the German historians Leopold von Ranke and Theodor Mommsen. A different Anglo-Saxon historical tradition evolved in the early to mid-20th century, based on the works and theories of, among others, E. H. Carr and Geoffrey Elton.

In the early 20th century, the French Annales School, which among others numbered the historians Lucien Febvre, Fernand Braudel and Marc Bloch, was notable by introducing social scientific methods and turning away from the traditional focus on political and diplomatic history.

In recent years, the traditional academic approach history has come under attack from the post-modernist school, inspired by theories especially from literary and cultural studies.

[edit] See also

• Pseudohistory
• Historical revisionism

[edit] Footnotes

• Evans, Richard J.: In Defence of History (London, 1997)
• Iggers, Georg I.: Historiography in the Twentieth Century. From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Hannover, 1997)
• Jenkins, Keith: Re-Thinking History (London, 1991)

[edit] References