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====== History ====== ---- ===== Overview ===== <code> evidence: physical (coins, buildings, paintings) written/oral: PRIMARY SOURCES | | | SECONDARY SOURCES <----- | (written by other historians) | | | | | | | | | | a story of the past ------------------------- </code> ===== Problems of Knowledge ===== * evidence is liable to __forgery__, * "a" story, because history is liable to __bias__: every historian must be writing from some perspective --\\ \\ * e.g. even writing about the Roman Empire, a British historian in1900, during the colonial time, will write differently from a modern American historian;\\ \\ * so historians have a responsibility * to avoid presenting a one-sided view, * to make it clear where they stand. ===== Why We Study History ===== ... either as individuals or as a society: * "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (George Santayana) * For a person, a family or a people to have a sense of identity. * To enjoy the stories, reading them and writing them, like literature -- //cf.// the many historical novels. * "The proper study of mankind is man" (Alexander Pope) -- but how can we know what man is capable of, if we do not know what man has done?
