Survey of Ancient and Modern Historians and Their Methods
This week we begin our discussion of famous historians. Please post your thought questions for class discussion here. Listen to the pod casts on the Ancient and Medieval Historians channel, http://podcasting.gcsu.edu/4DCGI/Podcasting/Channel/44.xml. This was originally the Historian's fallacies channel. I will be bringing some text materials to load onto your ipods using the notes function. Please bring your iPod to class starting this evening every week.
posted by Dr. Deborah Vess @ 9:35 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
I found the both presentations to be very interesting. Our view of history has changed a great deal over the past several thousand years. Also the historian's craft has been continually refined and is probably still in the refining process. Though our work in history today might be less subjective than those of antiquity (most of the time but not always) we cannot escape the human element of it. As people with an unending quest for the 'truth' of the matter, this fact can be maddening. I feel that the we must treat history like an art that requires a high degree of skill and training. There are methods for piecing together information about the past, but history is not a science. That is the view that I have researched this week as I studied Hegel. Like many others, he has tried to combine disciplines and pass it off as history. Unfortunately this thinking may best be labeled as psychology or sociology. This brought up several questions in my mind. Is there one method we should all use for studying and researching history? And do we need to understand human behavior, nature, and cultural patterns to make significant historical claims?
I'm not sure if ive been studying Hegel too much lately or if this was actually the case but I felt that Dr. Fischer was quite Hegelian in some of his comments. Specifically when discussing freedom as an idea moving throughout U.S. history. If i understood him correctly, he described the ideas of liberty and freedom as continually going through a process of refinement. He claimed that there would be competing definitions of with a period of 'unrest', resulting in a better idea of the terms. Im just interested in what everyone else thought because this idea appeared very Hegelian to me. Not only was he discussing Hegel's main interest (the idea of freedom), but his observation sounded very much like Hegel's dialectic. The idea of freedom or liberty (hypothesis). Two competing views (antithesis), and an improvement of the situation (synthesis). Just something I picked up on but like i said maybe its just me.
Colin, you have some interesting points about the Fischer presentation. I am glad you were making some connections. I do wonder, though, whether Fischer would see the march of freedom as an inexoriable example of progress. It is hard to say, especially given his remarks on Iraq. Thanks for getting this discussion going. I also found it interesting how he commented on the use of ancient symbols by more modern cultures, or blending of various symbols by America. I wondered what everyone thought about this. Does the fact that Iraq under Hussein used a Sumerian symbol really represent continuity? Can one and the same symbol mean wildly different things in various contexts?
I am nto sure I understand the point about origins vs. history. Could you explain more what you meant here, Ansley?
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