Transcript History - TOK-eisj

History
‘Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the
present controls the past’ – G. Orwell
‘History is more or less bunk’ – H. Ford
‘The only thing we learn from history is that we learn
nothing from history’ G. Hegel.
History (objectives)
• Explain how historians use artifacts to find out what
happened in the past
• Understand that cultural background of the historian may
affect interpretations
• Give one example how historians’ research interests and
interpretations are affected by contemporary ideas
• Understand how knowledge about history can shape personal
and national identities
• Give two examples how historian use Ways of Knowing in
their work
• Compare historical knowledge to knowledge produced in one
other Area of Knowledge
Evidence, events and explanation.
• Historians use evidence
to construct the past, so
it is the study of traces
of the past.
• In the distant past there
is to little evidence.
• The more recent past
can be overwhelmed
with evidence.
Significance
• Usually ‘significant
events are studied’
this brings about the
problem of what a
‘significant’ event is.
• Another important
feature of history is
explaining and
understanding the
past, not just
describing it.
• Using any criteria of your choice,
rate the historical significance of
the following events:
• The publication of Charles
Darwin’s The origin of species in
1859
• Your last math class
• The assassination of Mahatma
Gandhi in 1948
• The 1930 soccer World Cup which
was won by Uruguay
• The birth of Bill Gates in 1955
• Former US president Bill Clinton’s
affair with Monica Lewinsky
• The terrorist attacks on the WTC
and the Pentagon in 2011
Journal entry
• Discuss the roles of language and reason
(logic) in history
What use is it?
• Gives us a sense of identity
• Should our political leaders have god historical
knowledge?
• Are some countries more obsessed with
history than others?
• Anyone trying to make sense of the ME needs
to know its history.
Defense against propaganda
• Governments will try to
put their own ‘spin’ on
history
• History can also be used
to puncture ‘myths’
about the past.
On November 7, 1919, the first image was
snapped of the Soviet leadership
celebrating the second anniversary of the
October Revolution. After Trotsky and his
allies fell from power, a number of figures
were removed from the image, including
Trotsky, originally standing on the left of
Lenin.
Helps us understand human nature
• It reminds us that there are no neat tidy
models to explain human nature.
• History surely teaches us that things can be
changed for the good.
How do we find out about the past?
• Primary sources: Someone or something that
was there at the time.
• Secondary sources: Later constructions of
history often based on the primary sources.
– Julius Caesar’s (100-44 BCE) The conquest of Gaul
– Edward Gibbon’s (1737-94) The decline and fall of
the Roman Empire
• Can you think what the problems of both primary and
secondary sources might be?
• If you were to make a time capsule to be opened in five
thousand years what would you put inside?
Problems of sources
• Selection
• Hindsight
• Bias – Topic choice, confirmation bias, national
bias.
• History is often the history of the elites.
• The winners
• However, it is not correct to deny that certain
events happened. Just because it is sometimes
difficult to find the truth, this does not mean
there is no truth to discover.
What has caused change?
• History is not just describing events, it is
explaining the outcomes of such events as
battles. However, history deals with complex
situations, so it is often difficult to isolate the
cause of any event.
• Some historians argue factors that cause
change such as geographical conditions,
individual motives, chance, social economic
conditions are all important.
Great people
• Another theory is that individuals change,
make history.
• AJP Taylor says that the history of modern
Europe ‘Can be written in terms of 3 titans,
Napoleon, Bismarck and Lenin.
• Certainly Churchill thought he had changed
history.
The history of thought
• RG Collinwood ‘All history is the history of
thought’
• What he meant is that we should be trying to
look into the minds of people to discover why
they acted the way they did.
• i.e empathy
• Of course it is possible that individuals are
shaped not controlled by events.
Marxism
• Marx argued that history is determined by
economic factors.
• As a result he thought it was similar to
evolution.
• He actually came up with a model
• Perhaps history is merely chance?
Causality, determinism, and
existentialism
• The deterministic world-view is one in which
the universe is no more than a chain of events
following one after another according to the
law of cause and effect. There is no such thing
as "free will".
• Existentialists have suggested that people
believe that while no meaning has been
designed in the universe, we each can provide
a meaning for ourselves.[citation needed]
Causality, determinism, and
existentialism
• Though philosophers have pointed out the
difficulties in establishing theories of the
validity of causal relations, there is yet the
plausible example of causation afforded daily
which is our own ability to be the cause of
events. This concept of causation does not
prevent seeing ourselves as moral agents.