Historians use sources and knowledge to piece together the history of the human existence while Human scientist study the human behavior as well as the lifestyle we live in. They indeed focus on these areas and provide information to each other. However, a historian will also look to the future and foretell using his or her knowledge of the past. In the same way, a human scientist might look at human behavior today and compare it with the past. For when we look at human science, historians find it as useful term for science with the word ‘human’ as the subject (Smith). This opens the possibilities for the historian to research and thus history can be considered as a ‘Human Science’ (Smith).
The major difference between History and Human science is way in which the scientist uses tools while the historian uses facts and figures. Feyerabend explains that an allegory presented by the human scientist depends on egotism, ideals, and the perspective of other shape of knowledge, and are not enveloped by method, evidence, reason or argument (Anderson 259). There is a big debate to whether social science is actually a science. J.S.Mill believes that while we can justify and discover unpretentious regularities in the physical world, we can also explore the connections between actions thoughts through Mill’s Method on causation (Salmon). This allows us to interpret the change in human behavior over a period of time. Human science can become exact to physical science as human behavior can cause unknowable circumstances (Salmon).
Historians look at both sides of the event gaining an understanding of the causes or factors leading to the event itself. Historians thus must produce questions in order to study the past events (Dunn). In April 199...
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Smith, Roger. "Locating History in the Locating History in the Human Sciences Human Sciences." Insights. Durham University: Insights Institute of Advanced Study , 11 May 2009. Web. 8 Feb. 2014. .
The study of past events have been a common practice of mankind since the verbal telling of stories by our ancestors. William Cronon, in his article “Why the Past Matters,” asserts that the remembrance of the past “keeps us in place.” Our individual memories and experiences shape how we act in our daily lives. In addition to influencing us at an individual level, our collective history binds us together as a society. Without knowing where we have been or what we have experienced, it is nearly impossible to judge progress or know which courses of action to pursue. The goal of the historian is to analyze and explain past events, of which they rarely have firsthand memory of, and apply the gained knowledge to make connections with current and future events.
A beginning group of historians to take a closer look at is the empiricists. The empiricists have a very strictly factual and logical view on history and how to examine it. They believe that past is both “observable and verifiable” and that through adherence to three strict principles, the past can be represented objectively and accurately. (Green, Troup 3) The three aforementioned principles can be summed up as: meticulously examining historical evidence and verifying the evidence with references, making sure the research is completely impartial and free of biases and prejudices, and using an inductive, or observational, method of reasoning. (Green, Troup 3) The empiricists seek to find universal historical truths through objective research and sticking to the facts.
Stumpf, S. E., & Fieser, J. (2008). Philosophy: History and problems. . New York: McGraw-Hill.
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Stumpf, S.E and Fieser, J. Philosophy: History and Readings, New York: Mc Graw Hill, 2008.
In modern days, scientific discourse between ‘normal’ and ‘revolutionary’ scientists has raised questions about what they should or shouldn 't give proper attention and further study. One example of this, is the orthodox narrative of modern human history shared by geologists and archaeologists around the world, which tells us that the first technologically advanced human civilizations started in Mesopotamia around 3,000-5,000 BC. However, a series of evidence brought forth by two science skeptics and scientists suggest that the current narrative of our history could be inaccurate. They argue that it’s possible that a lost, technologically advanced ancient civilization mapped and explored the globe with great accuracy millennia before orthodox human history tells. From this debate arises a question: Should scientists focus exclusively on driving the current paradigm to its limits and not bother challenging it, even if other theories and scientific evidence defy the paradigm?
John Lewis Gaddis, in his book, The Landscape of History, generates a strong argument for the historical method by bringing together the multiple standpoints in viewing history and the sciences. The issue of objective truth in history is addressed throughout Gaddis’s work. In general, historians learn to select the various events that they believe to be valid. Historians must face the fact that there is an “accurate” interpretation of the past ceases to exist because interpretation itself is based on the experience of the historian, in which people cannot observe directly (Gaddis 10). Historians can only view the past in a limited perspective, which generates subjectivity and bias, and claiming a piece of history to be “objective” is simplistic. Seeing the world in a multidimensiona...
Dr. Michael Shermer is a Professor, Founder of skeptic magazine, and a distinguished and brilliant American science writer to say the least. In His book The Moral Arc: How Science Makes Us Better People he sets out to embark on the daunting task of convincing and informing the reader on sciences’ ability to drives the expansion of humanity and the growth of the moral sphere. Although such a broad and general topic could be hard to explain, Shermer does so in a way that is concise, easy to understand, and refreshing for the reader. This novel is riddled with scientific facts, data, and pictures to back up shermers claims about the history of science, humanity and how the two interact with one another.
Science has played a significant role in the development of society. Other world views, such as Hum...
We can see clearly that both these models will yield diverse results. Which model a historian leans toward and how they relate these events will influence our individual interpretations of history. Davidson and Lytle have demonstrated throughout the book is that by using various tools of investigation, we will continue to find different ways of looking at events that have taken place in history. The authors have clearly communicated their opinion that history is what you make of it.
History is a story told over time. It is a way of recreating the past so it can be studied in the present and re-interpreted for future generations. Since humans are the sole beneficiaries of history, it is important for us to know what the purpose of history is and how historians include their own perspective concerning historical events. The purpose and perspective of history is vital in order for individuals to realise how it would be almost impossible for us to live out our lives effectively if we had no knowledge of the past. Also, in order to gain a sound knowledge of the past, we have to understand the political, social and cultural aspects of the times we are studying.
We are all taught essentially the same things in school. We learn of the presidents and what they did and when they did it. But we know, as adults, that we did not get all the facts or even a portion of the correct facts in regards to history. In the essay, "The Historian and His Facts," Edward Hallett Carr shares a bit of insight into the people who record history and write about it. We are given a deeper understanding of historians and just what it is they do and what they know. By doing so Carr gives the reader an opportunity to question much of the history that we are exposed to and taught. The historian Barbara Tuchman says that the most common question asked of historians by the public is whether history serves a purpose and whether we can learn from the lessons of history (Tuchman 608).
In Carr’s article, The Historian and His Facts, and Causation in History, he states that the study and interpretation of history reflects our own position in time and what we can take out of it as a society. It’s all about the viewpoint of the individual researching or telling the event. Carr supports this idea by stating that, everyone draws their own conclusions. This idea of having your own conclusions is the case for writing and recording history as a historian from the beginning of human history. Every historian has a bias or a viewpoint on a historical topic and event. Some historians focus only on one side of the event while, others focus on multiple sides, but pick which one they believe is a bit better. Some historians only focus on the human aspects of an event and reach the conclusion that only humans drive history. On the other end of the spectrum a historian could only focus on the environmental factors of an event and reach the conclusion it was only that, that shaped history. Carr refers to this idea as “Necessarily selective” in which they pick what they want to write...
What is History? We always ask ourselves what history truly means to us and sometimes we all have our own understandings of what history is or considered to be. According to John H. Arnold in History: A Very Short Introduction, he believes that history often refers to the past and to what historians analyze and write about the past. Historiography has been a subject that has been created to study and analyze the process of writing history or the study of that process. Leopold von Ranke is considered to be the father of historiography. Ranke felt that history should be produced in a “scientific” manner and contain factual proven “evidence”. Ranke laid the foundations for analyzing history and made it a custom for historians to begin questioning
Learning about history helps us learn about the humanities own reflection and what’s good or bad about it. This is just like a diary , people and by people I mean historians , just wrote what they saw and what seemed to cause a major change in society and we just happen to be reading it a couple of years later. I believe that historians actually wrote historical truth because it makes sense and it has been scientifically proven