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TEN REMINDERS ABOUT HISTORICAL THINKING |
1. Historical study focuses on change over time.
- This applies not only to behaviors, institutions, and systems but also to ideas.
- Notions of "liberty," "equality," "democracy" are not fixed and static; they change over time as well.
2. "History” itself changes over time.
- The body of knowledge about the past that we commonly refer to as "history" undergoes constant reevaluation and revision.
- Recognize the provisional, incremental, tentative nature of historical arguments.
- Historical inquiry is not an exercise to determine final "Truth" but, instead, to formulate rational, plausible,verifiable arguments about earlier experience.
3. Argue from the historical evidence.
- That’s how to build a rational, plausible, verifiable case.
- Begin with experience and move to theory (not the reverse direction).
- Assumptions, theories, and models should develop out the evidence (again, not the reverse).
- Demonstrate; do not simply assert.
4. History focuses on the context of past events.
- Consider people, places, events, and ideas within various (and appropriate) frames of reference.
- In other words, reflect on past events in terms of their specific time, place, environment, culture, technology, social order, economic system, and political structure.
5. Recognize the past-ness of the past.
- Expect to be surprised by the past. Do not anticipate that earlier communities will act and think and feel the way we do about the world.
- History most often presents us with experiences that are different, unexpected, strange, and alien to our world.
- Historical figures, in other words, are not like us.
6. Avoid presentism.
- Do not impose contemporary values, assumptions, and meanings on the people and choices of the past (looking at the past though our eyes and our beliefs).
- Instead, view the past through the eyes of historical figures themselves (attentive to their perceptions, assumptions, meanings, and anxieties).
- Simply because historical figures are different (and make different choices), do not assume that their actions are bizarre or foolish or insane.
- Stick with their points of view even on very difficult questions:- ex.: How could anyone believe human enslavement was a positive good?
- Try to understand the "logic" of such an "inconceivable" position.
7. Recognize the variety of people who "make" history.
- "History" is not simply the story of presidents, generals, and corporate leaders.
- What of the mass of human beings who have long remained without a "voice" in history? Attention to their experience has driven scholarship for over three decades.
- Ask how historical events played out in terms of race, gender, class, region, ethnicity,and culture.
- Broadening our notion of historical “agents” not only introduces us to new actors; it allows us to redefine conventional categories:- Does "political history" only describe those who enjoy the vote and party participation?
- Does "economic history" focus only on the traditional activities of men?
- Read history from the bottom up, not simply from the top down.
8. Recognize the variety of “documents” we can draw on to understand past experience.
- Search for written, oral, quantitative, visual, material, ceremonial, artistic, and memory sources.
- All require critical examination.(Consider, for example, who created the document—and why. What did the document include—and omit? What was the document’s purpose, perspective, and intended audience? How does the document’s information and analysis compare to other pieces of available evidence?)
9. Recognize the limits that operated on historical figures:
- Their constraints:
- A person’s (or group’s) ability to act and change and control their world is limited by a wide range of institutional, structural, and environmental forces.
- Their temporal blinders:- Historical figures do not know what's coming. Don't judge them by their failure to anticipate the future clearly and precisely.
- Do we have such power and insight?
- People usually stumble into the future. Most often, history is the story of unanticipated consequences
- History does not simply involve looking back in time; good history looks back in time WITHOUT anticipating what's coming in the future- Their humanity:
- Avoid idealizing the past. While many historical figures may have been admirable,they were not demi-gods.
- Focus on their complexity and imperfections --- on their strengths and flaws, their rational and irrational qualities, their abilities and limitations.
10. Recognize that lived experience rarely displays a clear and coherent design (or logic or pattern).
- Observers commonly construct these categories through hindsight.
- Observers commonly impose these categories on the past to give it a sense of order and coherence where none may have been apparent to the historical players themselves.
- The past is typically convoluted, paradoxical, ironic, and perplexing. It is not a narrative about how things get “better” over time.
- Be skeptical of the "inevitability" of certain historical outcomes.
- Be skeptical of "designs" in history (its seeming “rise,” “decline,” "progress," or cycles).
- Retain a lively sense of the "contingent" nature of history.
| CONTINUING EDUCATION | ||||||
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