Concept
History
Overview
History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some theorists categorize history as a social science, while others see it as part of the humanities or consider it a hybrid discipline. Similar debates surround the purpose of history—for example, whether its main aim is theoretical, to uncover the truth, or practical, to learn lessons from the past. In a more general sense, the term history refers not to an academic field but to the past itself, times in the past, or to individual texts about the past.
Historical research relies on primary and secondary sources to reconstruct past events and validate interpretations. Source criticism is used to evaluate these sources, assessing their authenticity, content, and reliability. Historians strive to integrate the perspectives of several sources to develop a coherent narrative. Different schools of thought, such as positivism, the Annales school, Marxism, and postmodernism, have distinct methodological approaches.
History is a broad discipline encompassing many branches. Some focus on specific time periods, such as ancient history, while others concentrate on particular geographic regions, such as the history of Africa. Thematic categorizations include political history, military history, social history, and economic history. Branches associated with specific research methods and sources include quantitative history, comparative history, and oral history.
History emerged as a field of inquiry in antiquity to replace myth-infused narratives, with influential early traditions originating in Greece, China, and later in the Islamic world. Historical writing evolved throughout the ages and became increasingly professional, particularly during the 19th century, when a rigorous methodology and various academic institutions were established. History is related to many fields, including historiography, philosophy, education, politics, and archaeology.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where History is discussed.
History, in this case, is regarded as a course of events of such a nature that the specific occurrences may be brought by an external observer into an orderly sequence of conditions and results. On the other hand, history has been conceived as a course of events, which not only exhibits an orderly sequence from an objective point of view, but which is also _subjectively experienced_ as a nexus by the individuals…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; the book is about it; opens on it
Truth is eternal; it does not fall within the sphere of the transient, and has no history. But if it has a history, and as this history is only the representation of a succession of past forms of knowledge, the truth is not to be found in it, for the truth cannot be what has passed away. It might be said that all this argument would affect not only the other sciences, but in like degree the Christian religion, and…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; the book is about it; author linked in the graph; opens on it
If it were wholly gone and done with, there would be only one reasonable attitude toward it. Let the dead bury their dead. But knowledge of the past is the key to understanding the present. History deals with the past, but this past is the history of the present. An intelligent study of the discovery, explorations, colonization of America, of the pioneer movement westward, of immigration, etc., should be a study of…
John Dewey, Democracy and Education
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; opens on it
If history be regarded as just the record of the past, it is hard to see any grounds for claiming that it should play any large rôle in the curriculum of elementary education. The past is the past, and the dead may be safely left to bury its dead.
John Dewey, The school and society
a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
The narrative is a mere imitation of history, with the excesses before remembered, choosing for subjects commonly wars and love, rarely state, and sometimes pleasure or mirth. Representative is as a visible history, and is an image of actions as if they were present, as history is of actions in nature as they are (that is) past. Allusive, or parabolical, is a narration applied only to express some special purpose or…
Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Philosophers who discussed History
- R. H. Tawney
- Georg Simmel
- Francis Bacon
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Gershom Scholem
- René Girard
- Ibn Hazm
- Heraclides Ponticus
- Adam Ferguson
- Anthony Collins (philosopher)
- Thomas Sowell
- Eric Voegelin
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty
- Alcmaeon of Croton
- Oswald Spengler
- Plutarch
- Renaissance
- Philodemus
- Theodor W. Adorno
- Fakhr al-Din al-Razi
- Richard McKeon
- Cornelius Castoriadis
- Alexius Meinong
- Paul Feyerabend
Related ideas
- Eusebius
- Empiricism
- Belief
- Greco-Roman world
- The End of History and the Last Man
- Jesus
- Fossil
- Distribution of wealth
- Instrumental and intrinsic value
- Francis Fukuyama
- Geology
- Genetics
- Outline of ancient India
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Post-classical history
- Auguste Comte
- Historiography
- Hinduism
- Herodotus
- Homer
- Philosophy
- Western philosophy
- Historicism
- History of science
Opposing perspectives
- Hypothesis
- Social science
- Humanities
- Ideology
- History painting
- Platonism
- World History Encyclopedia
- Ethics
- Genealogy (philosophy)
- Burton L. Mack
- Sacred waters
Place in the tradition
Part of Anarchism.