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History

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: British History

   History is the study of human affairs through time. When used as the
   name of a field of study, history refers to the study and
   interpretation of past humans, families and societies as preserved
   primarily through written sources. History is thus usually
   distinguished from prehistory by the widespread adoption of writing in
   the area under study. Knowledge of history is often said to encompass
   both knowledge of past events and historical thinking skills.

   Traditionally, the study of history has been considered a part of the
   humanities. However, in modern academia, history is increasingly
   classified as a social science, with subfields chronology and
   historiography.

Classifications

   Because history is such a broad subject, organization is vital. While
   several writers, such as H.G. Wells and Will and Ariel Durant, have
   written universal histories, most historians specialize.

   There are several different ways of classifying:
     * Topical (by subject or topic)
     * Chronological (by date)
     * Geographical (by region)
     * National (by nation)
     * Ethnic (by ethnic group)

History and prehistory

   Traditionally, the study of history was limited to the written and
   spoken word. However, the rise of academic professionalism and the
   creation of new scientific fields in the 19th and 20th centuries
   brought a flood of new information that challenged this notion.
   Archaeology, anthropology and other social sciences were providing new
   information and even theories about human history. Some traditional
   historians questioned whether these new studies were really history,
   since they were not limited to the written word. A new term,
   prehistory, was coined, to encompass the results of these new fields
   where they yielded information about times before the existence of
   written records.

   In the 20th century, the division between history and prehistory became
   problematic. Criticism arose because of history's implicit exclusion of
   certain civilizations, such as those of Sub-Saharan Africa and
   pre-Columbian America. Additionally, prehistorians such as Vere Gordon
   Childe and historical archaeologists like James Deetz began using
   archaeology to explain important events in areas that were
   traditionally in the field of history. Historians began looking beyond
   traditional political history narratives with new approaches such as
   economic, social and cultural history, all of which relied on various
   sources of evidence. In recent decades, strict barriers between history
   and prehistory may be decreasing.

   There are differing views for the definition of when history begins.
   Some believe history began in the 34th century BC, with cuneiform
   writing. Cuneiforms were written on clay tablets, on which symbols were
   drawn with a blunt reed called a stylus. The impressions left by the
   stylus were wedge shaped, thus giving rise to the name cuneiform
   ("wedge shaped").

   The Sumerian script was adapted for the writing of the Akkadian,
   Elamite, Hittite (and Luwian), Hurrian (and Urartian) languages, and it
   inspired the Old Persian and Ugaritic national alphabets.

   For others history has become a "general" term meaning the study of
   "everything" that is known about the human past (but even this barrier
   is being challenged by new fields such as Big History).

   Sources that can give light on the past, such as oral tradition,
   linguistics, and genetics, have become accepted by many mainstream
   historians. Nevertheless, archaeologists distinguish between history
   and prehistory based on the appearance of written documents within the
   region in question. This distinction remains critical for
   archaeologists because the availability of a written record generates
   very different interpretative problems and potentials.

Etymology

   The term history entered the English language in 1390 with the meaning
   of "relation of incidents, story" via the Old French histos, from the
   Latin historia "narrative, account." This itself was derived from the
   Ancient Greek ἱστορία, historía, meaning "a learning or knowing by
   inquiry, history, record, narrative," from the verb ἱστορεῖν,
   historeîn, "to inquire."

   This, in turn, was derived from ἵστωρ, hístōr ("wise man," "witness,"
   or "judge"). Early attestations of ἵστωρ are from the Homeric Hymns,
   Heraclitus, the Athenian ephebes' oath, and from Boiotic inscriptions
   (in a legal sense, either "judge" or "witness," or similar). The
   spirant is problematic, and not present in cognate Greek eídomai ("to
   appear").

   ἵστωρ is ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European *wid-tor-, from the
   root *weid- ("to know, to see"), also present in the English word wit,
   the Latin words vision and video, the Sanskrit word veda, and the
   Slavic word videti and vedati, as well as others. (The asterisk before
   a word indicates that it is a hypothetical construction, not an
   attested form.) 'ἱστορία, historía, is an Ionic derivation of the word,
   which with Ionic science and philosophy were spread first in Classical
   Greece and ultimately over all of Hellenism.

   In Middle English, the meaning was "story" in general. The restriction
   to the meaning "record of past events" in the sense of Herodotus arises
   in the late 15th century. In German, French, and indeed, most languages
   of the world other than English, this distinction was never made, and
   the same word is used to mean both "history" and "story". A sense of
   "systematic account" without a reference to time in particular was
   current in the 16th century, but is now obsolete. The adjective
   historical is attested from 1561, and historic from 1669. Historian in
   the sense of a "researcher of history" in a higher sense than that of
   an annalist or chronicler, who merely record events as they occur, is
   attested from 1531.

Historiography

   Historiography has a number of related meanings. It can refer to the
   history of historical study, its methodology and practices (the history
   of history). It can also refer to a specific body of historical writing
   (for example, "medieval historiography during the 1960s" means
   "medieval history written during the 1960s"). Historiography can also
   be taken to mean historical theory or the study of historical writing
   and memory. As a meta-level analysis of descriptions of the past, this
   third conception can relate to the first two in that the analysis
   usually focuses on the narratives, interpretations, worldview, use of
   evidence, or method of presentation of other historians.

Historical methods

   The historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which
   historians use primary sources and other evidence to research and then
   to write history.

   Ibn Khaldun laid down the principles for the historical method in his
   book Muqaddimah. In short, he warns about the many ways that can induce
   historians into errors. He shared the same methods as modern
   historians, but also the idea of the past as strange and in need of
   interpretation. In respect to universal historiography he was the first
   to lay the foundation of the pragmatic method and make social evolution
   the object of historical research. Humphrey explains that Ibn Khaldun
   was also the first to argue that history was a true science based on
   philosophical principles (Humphreys, R.S., (1985), Muslim
   Historiography, in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, Charles Scribners and
   Sons, New York, vol 6, pp 250-5.) As a historian, Ibn Khaldun said,
   must not trust plain historical information, as it is transmitted, but
   must also know clearly `the principles resulting from custom, the
   fundamental facts of politics, the nature of civilisation' and the `the
   conditions governing human social organisation'; and finally he must
   `evaluate remote or ancient material through comparison with near or
   contemporary material.' The originality of Ibn Khaldun was to see that
   the cultural difference of another age must govern the evaluation of
   relevant historical material, to distinguish the principles according
   to which it might be possible to attempt the evaluation, and lastly, to
   feel the need for experience, in addition to rational principles, in
   order to assess a culture of the past. For all of Ibn Khaldun's ability
   to be on the winning side in the many political vicissitudes that came
   his way, he strikes the reader as scrupulously honest in dealing with
   the past. History, according to him, involves speculation and an
   attempt to get at the truth, `subtle’ explanation of the causes and
   origins of existing things, and a deep knowledge of the how and why of
   events. Historical knowledge, thus, is not the same as factual data
   about the past, but consists `of the principles of human society' which
   are elicited from these data in a complex process of induction and
   deduction.’ Mere piling up of facts is not the object of historical
   study if these facts cannot be determined correctly, there is no basis
   for historical knowledge in the true sense. And, following a long held
   Muslim tradition, and along with most Muslim historians, Ibn Khaldun
   agreed that facts depended on the authorities who had transmitted
   stories about the past, and that these transmitters should be men
   widely recognized for their erudition and probity. Ibn Khaldun advises
   that historians rely on the past for understanding the present, that
   they use their own experience to understand the underlying conditions
   of their society and the principles governing them. In studying the
   past, they must discover the underlying conditions of those times and
   decide whether and how far the apparent principles of their own age are
   applicable. The understanding of the past, thus, becoming the tool by
   which to evaluate the present. Ultimately, once they fully understand
   the laws of human society, they can apply them directly to any new body
   of historical information they confront, which exactly fits in with the
   opening statement made at the start of the essay by De Somogyi (De
   Somogyi, J. ( 1958), ‘The Development of Arab Historiography', in The
   Journal of Semitic Studies, Vol 3).

   Other historians of note who have advanced the historical methods of
   study include Leopold von Ranke, Lewis Bernstein Namier, Geoffrey
   Rudolph Elton, G.M. Trevelyan and A.J.P. Taylor. In the 20th century,
   historians focused less on epic nationalistic narratives, which often
   tended to glorify the nation or individuals, to more realistic
   chronologies. French historians introduced quantitative history, using
   broad data to track the lives of typical individuals, and were
   prominent in the establishment of cultural history (cf. histoire des
   mentalités). American historians, motivated by the civil rights era,
   focused on formerly overlooked ethnic, racial, and socio-economic
   groups. In recent years, postmodernists have challenged the validity
   and need for the study of history on the basis that all history is
   based on the personal interpretation of sources. In his book In Defence
   of History, Richard J. Evans, a professor of modern history at
   Cambridge University, defended the worth of history.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History"
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