Theory of Knowledge

   More About History

Hi Everyone!

     I know Jordyn wrote a post on the history of history a couple weeks ago, but I thought I'd share my take on it. Here is a little refresher; lately in our Theory of Knowledge class, we have been studying history and how it is perceived. History is a term that is easily misunderstood because people think they understand what it refers to, but in fact they don't. Our focus with this unit is studying how something from the past becomes history because in fact not everything in the past is history. The past is a term used to indicate all the events which occurred before a given point in time - everything that has ever happened to everyone, everywhere at any time before now. The present nor the future is included in being the past. In contrast, history is written in the present about the past, using evidence left behind by the past. In conclusion, history is something made by the historian; which is unfair because they choose what becomes a part of history and what does not.

     If you read a history book written in the United States from the 1950s, on the origins of the Cold War then you would get a direct answer on which country was to blame with extensive evidence to back it up. If you read a book from the late 1960s then you would have a grand possibility of getting a very different view of the situation. In the future, the story would be retold over and over again differently each time. The whole point is that our retelling of the past changes every time. History is what the historian makes it, even if there is a wide array of evidence to prove something right or wrong - history is what the historian chooses to make it. The majority of the time, historians choose not to use the evidence that is there because they are so keen on trying to prove a hypothesis they have personally developed - they are willing to consider evidence that contradicts what they believe. They may not do it all the time because they feel they must answer the question, but they cease looking for the answer that fits well in with their theory.

   So, to answer the question, "What is history?", according to E. H. Carr, "...it is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the past and the present."

This is a portrait of E. H. Carr, the author of "What is History".

- Felicinda J.