Friday, May 2nd, 2014
"In a very real sense the study of history is more concerned with a subject matter more objective and independent than that of natural sciences. Just because historical matter is in the past, is gone... its objective reality is guaranteed." -G.R. Elton
Does history being "objectively guaranteed" mean we have guaranteed knowledge of the past?
I define history as a body of knowledge, of historical evidence and their interpretation, humans use to describe the past, to asses past events in order to plan future actions and decisions. I believe that history is not simply the past events, but more so the interpretation of these events as well. There are many things that happen in the world, that happened in the world, and it is not possible to know everything because there are possibly a lot of evidence that have not been uncovered. The events may happen, but they may pass without being recorded; therefore, that event will be lost because it will not be known later. Some people argue that history is always biased. However, bias does not mean wrong. They still give information about the perspectives and the thoughts that happened in the time.
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