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The perspective of history
Objectivity in History
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In the last few decades the question of can history be objectives has turned into a raging battlefield. According to Chris Lorenz in his article “You Got Your History, I Got Mine” he says the “The idea that history has little to do with the past, but much to do with the present and with power, has gained a remarkable popularity, so there are good reasons for taking seriously the rising tide of skepticism about the possibility of historical knowledge .” He makes this claim based off of three arguments: The question of truth in history; objections to the possibility of objectivity; and the possibility of writing history in a non-instrumental and non-legitimizing way . The idea of rather or not history has to deal with power, and instead deals with the present and power leads to the question of rather or not historians and history itself can be objective. It is possible for history to be objective in today’s society because history always constructs an identity; it is possible for the same event to have multiple representations from different perspective; and a historians perspective ...
The first framework that would be beneficial when working with this population is the Dual Perspective Framework. The Dual Perspective Framework is a model that charges the social worker with assessing and understanding the client’s world. While doing so, one must take into account the client’s relationship to not only their immediate family and community, but also to the larger societal system while considering and comparing values, attitudes, and behaviors (Prigoff, 2003, p. 80). Another way to explain the Dual Perspective was presented by Dr. Nimmagadda as part of the diversity section of this course (2015). The contrasting views are also known as the “Nurturing Environment” versus the “Sustaining Environment.” The “Nurturing Environment” can be identified as the individual’s family or immediate extended family, while the “Sustaining Environment” can be identified as how an individual feels other’s view them in the social environment (Nimmagadda, 2015). An individual can evolve and change according to their experiences and interactions in both environments.
To study history, the facts and information must be passed down. To do so, historians record the information in textbooks and other nonfiction works. Whether or not the historians retell facts or construct their own version of history is debatable. History can be percieved as being “constructed” by the historians due to their bias, elimination of controversy, strive for entertainment, and neglect to update the information.
“One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.”
It’s truly fascinating how there are so many different approaches to history, how so many different types of minds and schools of thought can come together to study the events of the world’s past. There are so many ways to approach what happened in our past, and the groups of historians previously mentioned are only a fraction of the actual number of different ways of researching and thinking that exists as it pertains to the study of history. History is in some ways, always a mystery, and all historians, regardless of schooling, training or biases, seek to accomplish one goal: to understand what occurred before us and why, and to use that knowledge to learn how the world was shaped into the world we live in today.
The larger repercussions of this form of history, is that it misses out on the larger purpose of history. The most important part of history to be told truthfully is the bad part. Imagine our history glazing over Hitler as a crazy guy who acted alone, and forced everybody in Germany to go along with his plan. We need to hear the story that regular people were pulled into his mentality, that random Joe's were converted into Jew-hating murderers.
In the essay Haunted America, Patricia Nelson Limerick ponders whether or not there is any benefit for society to have historical knowledge. Limerick contradicts herself numerous times in her opinion on the usefulness of history. She implies that there are many lessons that can be learned from history. However, Limerick is disappointed in the human race because it fails to learn from the mistakes of others. She therefore wonders, "What do we gain besides a revival and restoration of the misery?" (Limerick, 473). Based on Limerick's examination of people and history, one can conclude that objectively history is useless, however, theoretically, people would be much better off if they learned from the lessons that the past presents.
Second, the historian must place himself within the existing historical debate on the topic at hand, and state (if not so formulaically as is presented here) what he intends to add to or correct about the existing discussion, how he intends to do that (through examining new sources, asking new questions, or shifting the emphasis of pre-existing explanations), and whether he’s going to leave out some parts of the story. This fulfills the qualities of good history by alerting readers to the author’s bias in comparison with the biases of other schools of scholarship on the topic, and shows that the author is confident enough in his arguments to hold them up to other interpreta...
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...
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).
“Historians are a contentious lot. While their arguments are usually conducted in polite language, the disputations are conducted on a number of fronts at once, and the frame of mind of the disputants ranges from a sporting pleasure with making point after point to a savage determination to win the day.” Although a sense of negativity creeps into this notion of Manning’s, a strengthening of world history can also emerge from this back and forth debate. World history will take shape as scholars push each other to clarify and defend ideas, while remaining skeptical and critical readers. This debate is key to avoiding either a stagnation of ideas or a dilution of possible new insights. As Manning asserts, “The exciting debates and the real advances in knowledge come when multiple scholars are working on related topics, testing their assumptions, data, and interpretations against each other’s.” As world history moves forward, as a discipline, historians would do well to keep this in mind. In addition to internal debate, a need to defend world history as a discipline is still necessary. A significant amount of work was done on defining and defending world history in the early to mid 1990’s. Any cursory look at the Journal of World History during this time period highlights this fact. In addition if you look to the May 1995 issue of History and Theory you see a thematic take on world history. As a result of this scholarship the discipline of world history gained momentum in academia, especially at the teaching level. Despite this trend, world history still finds itself defending its ideas. World history has yet to gain support from the elite universities and those that wish to pursue a PhD in world history have limi...
History and time are considered to be cultural formations since a History cannot be detached from the culture in which it is produced and received. It is through culture that a historical sense is achieved and in fact, each culture experiences History in a different way leading us to the current perception of History as not being one, but many histories depending on the cultural groups involved. Historians have fought throughout the centuries on whether such thing as “objective History” can exist but in the end, even materialist historians will admit that the reality of History is so complicated and contradictory that no single version could possibly represent the truth; consequently different interpretations are inevitable.
The issues that are raised in this source by Marc Trachtenberg are is whether or not objectivity is still a relevant idea, and if it is not then is history in fact dying. Keith Jenkins' "What is History?," Carl Becker's "What are Historical Facts?" and Richard Evans' "In Defence of History" will be used to discuss and examine these issues.
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