Carr eh what is history. What is history 8: EH Carr History as Progress • Breadtag Sagas 2022-11-15
Carr eh what is history Rating:
7,2/10
1792
reviews
History is the study of the past, specifically the events, people, and societies that have shaped the world we live in today. It encompasses a wide range of topics, including politics, economics, culture, religion, and more.
One of the key aspects of history is the idea of continuity and change. While certain events and trends may have shaped the past, they also have an impact on the present and future. This means that the study of history allows us to understand not only what has happened, but also how those events have influenced the world we live in today.
History is not just a collection of facts and dates, but rather a way of understanding the world and its complexities. It allows us to see how different societies and cultures have interacted with each other and how they have changed over time. It also helps us to understand the motivations and actions of people in the past and how they have shaped the world we live in today.
History is a multifaceted and complex subject, and there are many different approaches to studying it. Some historians focus on political events and the actions of leaders, while others may be more interested in the everyday lives of ordinary people. Some may focus on specific time periods or regions, while others may take a more global perspective.
Regardless of the approach, the study of history is important because it helps us to understand the world we live in and the forces that have shaped it. It allows us to see how societies and cultures have evolved over time and helps us to make informed decisions about the present and future.
EH Carr’s sense of history
By a priori Carr means for a fact to be accepted it has to be the result of a decision made beforehand by the historian. In Germany, the veteran historian Meinecke, as we have already noted, became impressed towards the end of his life with the role of chance in history. . Science was concerned no longer with some- thing static and timeless, but with a process of change and development. The integration of historical studies may be something for the distant future.
What is History 5: EH Carr Historians & their facts • Breadtag Sagas
He grappled with it as with something intractable and potentially hostile - intractable because it was difficult to understand, potentially hostile because it was difficult to master. Lest anyone think the question meaningless or superfluous, I will take as my text two passages relating respectively to the first and second incarnations of the Cambridge Modern History. My principal objection to the refusal to call history a science is that it justifies and perpetuates the rift between the so-called 'two cultures'. The Peloponnesian War and the Second World War were very different, and both were unique. Through history we identify with who we are, where we come from and what defines us as a person. Gradgrind in Ward Times, 'is Facts.
It is the historian who has decided for his own reasons that Caesar's crossing of that petty stream, the Rubicon, is a fact of history, whereas the crossing of the Rubicon by millions of other people before or since interests nobody at all. In my first lecture, I suggested that the study of history was difficult to reconcile with the traditional empiricist theory of knowledge. One often reads the minutes and decisions taken at a meeting one has attended and wonders if it was the same meeting. Conclusion The conclusion reached by both Carr and myself is that history is not science, but that history is capable of striving to be more like science, that is, pursuing historical analysis with more rigour and by attempting to be more objective even if objectivity is unattainable in either science or history. In any case, there is nothing new in all this.
What is History E.H. complianceportal.american.edu
However, I am charmed by Carr because of his agonising and his inability to firmly define his position. . But, while these descriptions would apply with a minimum of change to the relations between the historian and the objects of his observations, I am not satisfied that the essence of these relations is in any real sense comparable with the nature of relations between the physicist and his universe; and though I am in principle concerned to reduce rather than to inflate the differences which separate the approach of the historian from that of the scientist, it will not help to attempt to spirit these differences away by relying on imperfect analogies. He was a product of his age. The first characteristic of the historian's approach to the problem of cause is that he will commonly assign several to the same event.
Study the historian before you begin to study the facts. Our picture has been preselected and predetermined for us, not so much by accident as by people who were consciously or unconsciously imbued with a particular view and thought the facts which supported that view worth preserving. It is no doubt important to know that the great battle was fought in 1066 and not in 1065 or 1067, and that it was fought at Hastings and not at Eastbourne or Brighton. He goes on to say that the fact that Caesar crossed the Rubicon a petty stream is a fact of history is for the same reason, whereas the crossing of the Rubicon by millions of other people before or since interests nobody at all. None of this means anything until she historian has got to work on it and deciphered it.
In his 1967 book British historian In a review in 1963 in Historische Zeitschrift, geistvoll-ironischer ironically spirited criticism of conservative, liberal and positivist historians. But no sane historian pre- tends to do anything so fantastic as to embrace 'the whole of experience'; he cannot embrace more than a minute fraction of the facts even of his chosen sector or aspect of history. There is no dispute that a great battle was fought in that year and not in Eastbourne or Brighton. Carr-The Aberystwyth Years, 1936—1947" pp. Acton in his correspondence with Creighton declared that 'the inflexibility of the moral code is the secret of the authority, the dignity, and the utility of History', and claimed to make history 'an arbiter of controversy, a guide of the wanderer, the upholder of that moral standard which the powers of earth and of religion itself tend constantly to depress'" - a view based on Acton's almost mystical belief in the objectivity and supremacy of historical facts, which apparently requires and entitles the historian, in the name of History as a sort of super- historical power, to pass moral judgements on individuals participating in historical events. I should mention that Carr only uses men and masculine pronouns.
While I am sympathetic towards the first option I would argue that causal relationships not only provide genuine understanding but also must be assumed in historiography to make sense of the inferences in the field , in what follows I will follow the second option and attempt to argue that the controversial claims stand their ground, at least when modified a bit. However, this assumption is heavily disputed as it is evident some events are undeniable. Is the object of the historian's inquiry the behaviour of individuals or the action of social forces? This is to me an unconvincing and implausible picture. Of course, facts and documents are essential to the historian. If philosophers, under the impact first of modern physical science, and now of modern social science, are beginning to break out from this cage, and construct some more up-to-date model for the processes of knowledge than the old billiard- ball model of the impact of data on a passive consciousness, this is a good omen for the social sciences and for history in particular. But a still greater danger lurks in the Collingwood hypothesis. The Oxford Shorter English Dictionary, a useful but tendentious work of the empirical school, clearly marks the separateness of the two processes by defining a fact as 'a datum of experience as distinct from conclusions'.
After what I have already said, I need not labour the first point. Although it was not officially a part of the History of Soviet Russia series, Carr regarded it as completing it. Does this make it into a historical fact? In the same way, when I read in a modern history of the Middle Ages that the people of the Middle Ages were deeply concerned with religion, I wonder how we know this, and whether it is true. To learn about the present in the light of the past means also to learn about the past in the light of the present. Carr continues to give examples.
The abstract standard or value, divorced from society and divorced from history, is as much an illusion as the abstract individual. At Stalybridge Wakes in 1850, a vendor of gingerbread, as the result of some petty dispute, was deliberately kicked to death by an angry mob. The answer is obvious: The claim is a normative one. He asserts that facts only become historical facts when they are selected by the historian. Most historians assume that Russia is part of Europe; some passionately deny it. But the ideology generated by this long and fruitful period is still a dominant force in western Europe and throughout the English- speaking countries.
