Scope in history
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This first section is concerned with what history is and is not. I want to make five observations. History is not the same thing as the past, it is both a process and product, it is made by historians, it is both an art and a science and that it is plural.
1. History is not the past. This semantic problem is not helped by the fact that in English we tend to use the words ‘history’ and ‘the past’ interchangeably. One of the most useful things you can do in studying history is to begin to use the words to signify very different things. 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 past is neither the present nor the future. |
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In contrast, history is a narrative text, written in the present about the past, using evidence that the past has left behind. This is important because all history must just be an interpretation of the past and never the ‘same thing’ as the past.
If asked about the difference between ‘history’ and the ‘past’ you would probably introduce the concept of significance. If asked to choose an historical event you will choose something historically important or significant, for example, something that impacted on the lives of lots of people or an event that caused something else important to happen. In contrast, if asked to choose an example of something from the past you might choose your last history lesson because it was of no wider significance and will not make it into the history books of the future.
2. History is both a process and a product.
History is an activity that is done (the process of doing history) and an end result (a product of historical text). History is made (written) as a result of a highly skilled process known as doing history. Historians will have spent many years after their undergraduate degree in history learning the skills of researching and writing history. If the product – a text about the past – is not a result of the highly skilled process, it is not history. This is important because anyone can tell stories about the past that may appear historical, but if their process (methodology) is not historical, then it’s not history.
History is an activity that is done (the process of doing history) and an end result (a product of historical text). History is made (written) as a result of a highly skilled process known as doing history. Historians will have spent many years after their undergraduate degree in history learning the skills of researching and writing history. If the product – a text about the past – is not a result of the highly skilled process, it is not history. This is important because anyone can tell stories about the past that may appear historical, but if their process (methodology) is not historical, then it’s not history.
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3. History is made by historians.
An IB history student is not an historian and neither am I. History is done by historians generally working in a university history department. Many people may do things that look similar and may have similar qualifications – teach history, direct historical documentary films, curate in museums – but these people generally are not historians. This is important because although they may do many useful things with the past – teach children, inform a wider public, preserve documents – their primary purpose is not the same as the historians. As a history teacher, my primary purpose is prepare students for the IB history examination, this is not what historians do. |
TOK - Prescribed Essay Title Discuss the strengths and limitations of quantitative and qualitative data in supporting knowledge claims in the human sciences and at least one other area of knowledge. November 2009 - May 2010 |
4. History is both an art and a (social) science.
This partly explains history’s special position within the TOK programme and a number of its epistemological problems. Historians can use methodologies that resemble those of the most quantitative social sciences – e.g. cliometricians’ computer processed analysis of census data. But they are just as likely to use methods that require qualitative appreciation of things that cannot begin to be measured - e.g. empathetic sensitivity to long-gone attitudes and opinions. Being an historian involves familiarity with a challengingly wide range of skills. This is important because historians may legitimately engage with the past in any number of ways and this will result in a very wide range of different types of history and interpretations.
This partly explains history’s special position within the TOK programme and a number of its epistemological problems. Historians can use methodologies that resemble those of the most quantitative social sciences – e.g. cliometricians’ computer processed analysis of census data. But they are just as likely to use methods that require qualitative appreciation of things that cannot begin to be measured - e.g. empathetic sensitivity to long-gone attitudes and opinions. Being an historian involves familiarity with a challengingly wide range of skills. This is important because historians may legitimately engage with the past in any number of ways and this will result in a very wide range of different types of history and interpretations.
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5. History is plural.
Rather than history we should really be talking about histories. There are many possible interpretations to any event and to any period of history. As I look out of a window I may see a world that reflects by world view as a history graduate. I see a medieval church with Gothic spires alongside a post-war town constructed from the ruins of WWII bombing. In contrast the geographer may draw attention to river basin or an urban pattern that corresponds to a particular land-use model, whilst a biologist may be more interested in the spiders on a web just outside the window. The past is like the view form the window and historians may legitimately focus on any aspect of the view they wish. This is important because although historians are theoretically free to choose what they like, they tend to focus on similar things. |
TOK - Prescribed Essay Title To understand something you need to rely on your own experience and culture. Does this mean that it is impossible to have objective knowledge? November 2008 - May 2009 |
This introduces us to the question of the power behind history. History tends to reflect what the state and its educational institutions want it to reflect. Historical consensus about history (especially national history) is neither natural nor inevitable and therefore it needs to be created and defended.
The official list of TOK scope in history questions.
- Is it possible to have knowledge of the past?
- Is knowledge about the past different from other kinds of knowledge?
- Are all areas of knowledge concerned with knowledge of the past to some extent?
- Why does history enjoy a privileged position as its own dedicated area of knowledge in the TOK curriculum?
- Is all knowledge in some sense historical knowledge?
- Is truth the goal of all historical inquiry?
- Is certainty about the past more difficult to attain than certainty about the present or the future?
- What counts as a fact in history?
Other people on the scope of history...
'Evidence is always partial. Facts are not truth, though they are part of it – information is not knowledge. And history is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past. It’s the record of what’s left on the record. It’s the plan of the positions taken, when we to stop the dance to note them down. It’s what’s left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it – a few stones, scraps of writing, scraps of cloth. It is no more “the past” than a birth certificate is a birth, or a script is a performance, or a map is a journey. It is the multiplication of the evidence of fallible and biased witnesses, combined with incomplete accounts of actions not fully understood by the people who performed them. It’s no more than the best we can do, and often it falls short of that.' Hilary Mantel 2017
'Online, in fact, it’s far easier for me to trace the development of many key ideas from the 1700s than it is from the last half-century. When it comes to the coining of 18th Century words, for example, copies of most paper books have simply sat in libraries ever since publication, waiting to be scanned and released into new digital life. Today, by contrast, much of the key digital data that authors and historians need if they are fully to unpick present intricacies – from the origins of words and ideas to political debates or even revolutions – is either locked away or lost within a few years of its creation.' Tom Chatfield BBC Future 2014
'Evidence is always partial. Facts are not truth, though they are part of it – information is not knowledge. And history is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past. It’s the record of what’s left on the record. It’s the plan of the positions taken, when we to stop the dance to note them down. It’s what’s left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it – a few stones, scraps of writing, scraps of cloth. It is no more “the past” than a birth certificate is a birth, or a script is a performance, or a map is a journey. It is the multiplication of the evidence of fallible and biased witnesses, combined with incomplete accounts of actions not fully understood by the people who performed them. It’s no more than the best we can do, and often it falls short of that.' Hilary Mantel 2017
'Online, in fact, it’s far easier for me to trace the development of many key ideas from the 1700s than it is from the last half-century. When it comes to the coining of 18th Century words, for example, copies of most paper books have simply sat in libraries ever since publication, waiting to be scanned and released into new digital life. Today, by contrast, much of the key digital data that authors and historians need if they are fully to unpick present intricacies – from the origins of words and ideas to political debates or even revolutions – is either locked away or lost within a few years of its creation.' Tom Chatfield BBC Future 2014