Talk:History

Template:WP1.0 who cares...not me

• Talk archive through 2006

External link?

I think this looks like a good resource and will add it in as an external link. Ezyryder11 06:23, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Clarification

I was always taught thinking that history is not the study of the past but the study of the RECORD of the past, since we can't actually go back in time and study the past, but we merely study sources. Should something be changed in relation to this? LordRobert 06:25, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

The black man

"As an academic field, history is the study of a black man in the ghetto past human activities when he shoots white people in a drive-by and is generally considered a social science."

What the fook is this?

It looks like vandalism. Did you revert it? Xaxafrad 07:26, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

??

This article describes history in the intro in one aspect of its meaning. Surely the general meaning of the word is more general and not nessesarily just the study of human events but simply the past.

Dear Sir,

With much respect, I strongly disagree with your definition of history. First of all, History is an interpretation of a past event. It is not the past that is studied, but the event in the past. That event can be anything. That anything could be from social acts (Human Activity) to the formation of inanimate objects such as stones.

This takes us to another point. History belongs to the Humanities and not to the social sciences, which by the way came very much later. That Social Science can use History as a tool, fine; but it can not be said that History belongs to the Social Sciences. Back to point one; It belongs to the Humanities just because is the humanity who interprets the events undergone by it. History is not the truth and nothing more than the truth, ever since is an interpretation of an event. For example; the fall of the Roman Empire, to whom it is attributed to? To whose interpretation you read.

Then point three, what is Pre-History? That is when nobody wrote or interpreted it. For that matter we have to rely on other methods of assessment to interpret, like Carbon dating, etc. When we do interpret it becomes history- The History of Dinosaurs, for example.

In Terrorem Fidei Defenso--72.50.18.192 13:38, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Images

Surely the page could benefit from some historical related images on the study of history etc? LordHarris 11:30, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Definition of History

It is not just in relation to humanity, but how do we write it to be more encompassing? Is it the continuum of events occurring in succession leading from the past to the present and even into the future? Or the branch of knowledge whose participants records and researches past events? Or is it even a phenomenon located at a single point in space-time; the fundamental observational entity in relativity theory??? -- Sedonaarizona 22:55, 31 May 2007 (UTC)sidonaarizona

I was just going to get some citations. J. D. Redding 23:55, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

IMO ...

more encompassing? Could use that ...

continuum of events? yes ...

branch of knowledge? yes ... but not limited to your example, IIRC ...

phenomenon in space-time? yes ...

J. D. Redding 23:58, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Bais toward Western Society

fine until this is debated i'm moving that section to a proper place. Ofcourse history in the western world focuses more on the western world and in every other region of the world their own brand of history is taught but history as a whole is not western bais, it may seem that way simply becuase we are in the "western World" its not an issue of bais but rather proximity, importantce, value and identity. -ishmaelblues

Do you have a source for your claims?--BMF81 09:58, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

badly written

This is one of the most important articles in Wikipedia, and yet seems to me to be very badly written. I'm going to attempt an improvement. Comments and corrections are welcome. Rick Norwood 13:15, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

The critical thing is competence. When an article is badly written is mostly because editors lacked a deep knowledge of the academic field they should quote from.--BMF81 14:26, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

If that were true, history textbooks would not be, as a general rule, so badly written. There was a very nice article on the subject in Time magazine some years back. There are, of course, historians who write well. Shelby Foote comes to mind. But a deep knowledge and understanding of your academic field does not guarantee your ability to write clean, professional prose. Rick Norwood 13:01, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Not a science

i'm a historian and history is not a science not even a social science, so i will be removing anything suggesting such. History is one of the humanties or a scholarly art but not a science like sociology or archaeology. i believe however there was a push in the early 20th century late 19th century to make history more like a science, but this movement turned up fruitless. -Ishmaelblues

I too am a historian, not a doctorate ... but do have a degree. History is loosely a science with it's own method, the historical method. Now, I wouldn't put into the article that it is a "science" as commonly understood (ala., not a science like sociology). I would like to know about "the push" that you refer to, though ... as it does not bring to mind anything right now. Do you have a name or publication about that? Anyways ... sincerely, J. D. Redding 14:12, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

On this day...

What does the article have to do with September 3? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Blackangel25 (talk • contribs) 12:06, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I understand what it is now after taking a look at the edit page. Blackangel25 12:18, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

It's an "automatic date" UTC link. J. D. Redding 14:27, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

I REALLY REALLY DONT LIKE YOUR STUPID ANSWERS YOU ARE GIVING ME ITS NOT HELPING ME ONE BIT YA STUPID —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.73.253.202 (talk) 17:02, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Broad "history" vs Scholarly "history"

As in many WP articles on a common word, this article seems to struggle between describing the dictionary definition of history (the sum of past events) and the scholarly view of history as a kind of literature/art-science/epistemology/whatever. For editors with more knowledge of history than I, I have two questions that seem important but unanswered in this and subsequent articles:

1. When/how did modern history begin? As people of the 20th and 21st centuries, we view history through a modernist lense. I can only assume that pre-modernism history is much different that modernist history. And people writing about history in antiquity and the ancient world also had a different paradigm.
2. How does one identify a piece of historic literature? How do historians view the historyness of pre-modern literature? How can one identify (not the historicity) but the extent to which a pre-modern author was trying to write history as a modern perceives it? Eg, how much/what parts of the Aeneid, Bible, and Qur'an are 1 modern history 2 pre-modern history 3 not attempting to be historical literature at all?

Thanks for any insight. I realize the historian community probably has multiple perspectives. I hope we can integrate any answers/perspectives into this or a relevant article. --Ephilei 03:30, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Before the birth of modern scholarship, many peoples considered myths to be true. Plato seems to have thought, or at least pretended to think, that the stories in Homer were true. Many Christians today believe that the stories in the Bible are true. Herodotus, the "Father of History", mixed myths, such as the story of the Phoenix, with fact, such as the story of the war with Persia. Thucydides, who picked up the story where Herodotus left off, tried to exclude myth, and actually interview the people involved. But he did not hesitate to make up speeches he had not heard. Xenophon, who picked up where Thucydides left off, attributed much of his history to acts by the gods.

A serious consideration of which old stories were plausible probably began in the late 18th century, with Gibbon, and early 19th century, with Rilke. In Germany, the question of which parts of the Bible are true and which are myth was called the "higher criticism". The Wikipedia article on this subject is amazingly bad, even embarrassing. Rick Norwood 13:49, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

A point about the etymology section...

In the section it's state that in every language there's no distinction between history and story. This is simply false, as in Arabic we use the term "qisa" to refer to story, and "tarikh" to refer to history. Mind you, "tarikh" is taken to be a narrative of the past which is falsifiable by original sources, sightings of events, archaeological evidence, etc. Quisa, on the other hand, might refer to the past but, it most usually involves a moral, and is not scrutinized because, it usually includes some elements of fiction. Just wanted to clear that up. 213.42.21.150 20:22, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The article says "in most languages", not "in every language". Rick Norwood 15:05, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Transfering text from Historical method section to Historiography section

A lot of the information in the Historical method section is the subject of the Historiography article rather then a summary of the information in the Historical methods article. Unless anyone has any objections or other suggestions I’m going to move the information that matches the Historiography article to the Historiography section and put a summary of the Historical methods article in the Historical Method section. --Kaly99 18:39, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

@Kally

The historical method section is a plain description of how production of history has been thought of in different cultures, times and locales.But on the other hand it is devoid of any discussion on history or the theory of history after the 'linguistic turn'. My suggestion would be to keep the historiography section separate and then discuss the status of history after Hayden White and 'Linguistic Turn'by forming a subsection in it. Contribution of important French Theorists and Post-colonial critiques of history can be included under the same rubric. Zero Supplement 04:26, 13 November 2007 (UTC)Zero Supplement

I agree that more postmodernists (and modernists) information needs to be included but at the moment the history of historical method section is concentrating on historians and the development of methods rather than being a description of the historical methods themselves. At the moment the article doesn't have any information about how historical method is used in the study of history, for example, source critism, historical facts, synthesis and context. At the moment the Historiography article contains a description of the history of the production of history, and the historical method article contains a description of historical methods used in the study of history.

Having looked at this article and other subject articles I think it would make the structure more logical and clearer to have a Development of history section, with three or four sub-sections for pre-history, the advent of writing which started the historical record, the development of history in terms of method and possible a separate section for histories development as an acedemic discipline. This would incorporate the information from the pre-history, Historiography and history of method section and allow space in the rest of the article to discuss historical method, different fields of history etc. --Kaly99 (talk) 09:44, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Historiography

I consider myself to be a moderately well-educated person, but the historiography section reads like gibberish to me. Does anyone care to re-write it in plain English that would be accessible to the general audience that a basic article like this is intended to appeal to? Cazort 02:45, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Ok, the recent edits to the top of the page are utterly ridiculous. I think they constitute deliberate obfuscation. Anyone with me on this? This page has gotten absolutely out of control with the pseudo-intellectual drivel people are spewing...people need to reword this in plain english. Cazort 04:37, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I reverted back to an older version which doesn't make as much use of deliberately obfuscated jargon, but it still needs work. =Axlq 05:21, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Cazort (talk) 01:01, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Scientific views

"Main article: Entropy and life

In 1910, American historian Henry Adams printed and distributed to university libraries and history professors the small volume A Letter to American Teachers of History proposing a "theory of history" based on the second law of thermodynamics and the principle of entropy.[11][12] This, essentially, is the use of the arrow of time in history." What is this about? Am I an idiot or is it really a rather nonsensical piece of text almost completley unrelated to the subject? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Krastain (talk • contribs) 14:56, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

questionable article

Could people who watch this page check out Psychohistory? I am not sure if it counts as a pseudoscience or not. Judging from the article it seems to be the invention of one guy, Lloyd deMause (try googling him) and his students/disciples. I am even more concerned about Early infanticidal childrearingSlrubenstein | Talk 14:30, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Radical edit of opening paragraphs

I've just reduced the two long (and longwinded) opening paragraphs of this article to one short paragraph. While what I have left is entirely open to modification and improvement, I thought the changes were entirely needed.

The prior version of the opening of this article was IMO a failed, flawed, and flatulent introduction to a crucial Wikipedia subject. Vague, unreferenced, and over-intellectualized theories and abstract constructs of what history might be, could be, would be, should be, etc. -- these approaches do not respect the needs of ordinary Wikipedia readers seeking plain and simple knowledge and instruction.

I don't think my action calls for a reversion. Instead, I think the opening of this article (and many sections within the article) cry out for help. I invite other editors to reword and make sensible what I removed, if it is of value to them.

And before you auto-revert, please look closely at what I cut. Including: "This is how a temporal schema connecting the past, the present, and the future is foregrounded through the signifier history. The historical temporality is grounded within the idea of autonomous human subjects endowed with historical subjectivity which aids them in the production of events and at once helps them to record and narrate past events as history."

Yeesh, people. Schema me up some foregrounded autonomous temporality, Scotty. There's no intelligent life down here.

cheers,
--Madmagic (talk) 03:31, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
(with 1200+ edits to my credit, including serious contributions in Canadian history)