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LordofHats wrote:

I still have no reason to accept homocentrism.

No one is saying you have to accept your red herring (which btw puts a very different image in my head than what you intend XD).

That's homo-eroticism you're thinking of

Actually I have this weird image of two dudes in the middle of this circle making out @_@ But yeah maybe we should just use Anthropocentrism instead to avoid any weird mental imagery

Melissia wrote:

Ketara wrote:The origin of the Universe was a past event, not history.

I find that distinction arbitrary and nonsensical. Claiming that human history is the only thing that can be called history is far too homocentrist for me.

Human history is not the only thing that can be called history. Don't be so quick to erect strawmen. Allow me to go into some detail.

Things occur within time and space. Events, if you will. The origin of the Universe is one of those past events. It occurred. Such a thing is not history, any more than me turning on the speakers on my computer, or my cat going to the toilet in my garden is history. If any past event can be considered history, then the actions of everything that has ever happened anyone can be called history. If you choose to believe that everything ever happened is history, then the word history just becomes defined as anything that has ever occurred or happened (or indeed, is occurring or happening).

This is somewhat nonsensical. Me eating a biscuit is not history, it is me eating a biscuit. In the same way, the origin of the Universe is not history, it is the origin of the Universe.
If I say to someone that I am studying history, I am not saying that I am studying every single past event in existence, from a skin cell breaking off my body ten minutes ago, to the continuing progress of a molecule of H2O currently attached to an elderflower in Northern Bavaria. These things are events, and these occurred. That does not make them history.

History is defined by the historian. History is whatever a historian chooses to study. A historian will assemble different 'events' and weave them into a narrative called 'history'. There is no objective assembly of past events that is theoretically any more important or worthy of the title 'history' than any other set of events. The charting of the movements of some electrons is objectively no more important than the rise and fall of Hitler.

Not only this, but 'history', or the past events that we choose to connect tend to be inherently tainted with the perspective of the person assembling them and what it is possible for them to know and think. I can never truly know what went through Tirpitz's mind with regards to the British Navy. I can read his papers, watch a recording of the man, peruse his correspondence and so forth. I can hope that this will let me get close to knowing what he thought. But there is a fundamental disconnect that prevents my account of this 'past event', my 'history', ever being a true accounting of what happened. Mainly the fact that I cannot see into his mind and know his thoughts. I can guess at them, but I can never know for sure. Not only that, but my interpretation of his mind is based upon my own experiences. I will process whatever I find out about him through my own understanding of casuality and culture. I may guess he did one thing for a certain reason, because that's how people today behave. But I have no guarantee that was it, or that he thought like that.

To give a better example for that last point, a man from two hundred years ago writing on the character of another man from three hundred years ago might judge him a sound good man, despite knowing he beat his wife. Because that was still considered appropriate then. Today, the man from three hundred years ago would be considered a misogynistic bastard, when he is refracted through my mind and understanding. My concepts of morality and what I know to be right and wrong (ever changing things), will have affected my perception and judgement of that man from three hundred years ago.

This can apply equally to a history of science. I could attempt to write a history of phlogiston in 1700. Refracted through my mind, it would seem a sensible, logical and scientific thing to do. I would write on the man who discovered it, and how he came to do so. Three hundred years later though, my theory of phlogiston would actually be one of nitrogen. Phlogiston would now be forgotten. When I wrote my history of nitrogen, I would talk of the chap who discovered nitrogen. I would write on his experiments that led up to that. I would write about the dozens of experiments that led forward to that discovery of nitrogen. I might even consider phlogiston in passing, label it as a dead end, and carry on backwards.

Yet, the experiments that supported phlogiston as a theory would be ignored in this new history. The scientists who considered it valid would be ignored. My 'History of Nitrogen', would in actual fact, be a selectively chosen group of past events that I decided comprised of the history of nitrogen. It would not encompass all of the many other events and dead ends, and how they came about. No, it would be a narrative woven by me, with the past events selected being those which refract through my current knowledge (the existence of nitrogen). Yet in three hundred years, when nitrogen is disproven(maybe), my new history of whatever replaces it will do the same thing. It will be an entirely different narrative.


History, is what historians create. It is those facts deemed relevant by a historian, chosen due to their relevance to the historian's current state of knowledge and affairs, and woven together into a narrative (usually a whiggish one). It works the same in histories of natural science, mathematics, politics, and so on.

LordofHats wrote:the distinction that history proper is about people

THat's not important. It's pointless and stupid.

Melissia wrote:THat's not important. It's pointless and stupid.

The history of the human species isn't important? Surely it at least holds relevance for us humans. Hence why we created a field to do it... Well Herodotus and Thucydides created it, but w/e

The Molemen of Alpha Centauri probably don't care though... Or maybe they'll be so bored of their own history anything new will be a nice change of pace

Ketara wrote:Things occur within time and space. Events, if you will. The origin of the Universe is one of those past events. It occurred. Such a thing is not history

Why?

Ketara wrote:If any past event can be considered history, then the actions of everything that has ever happened anyone can be called history. If you choose to believe that everything ever happened is history, then the word history just becomes defined as anything that has ever occurred or happened (or indeed, is occurring or happening).

I'm glad you noticed.

Ketara wrote:This is somewhat nonsensical.

Why? Personally I find your incessant attempts to make the distinction to be nonsensical, myself. One can say that his particular part of history isn't important, but that doesn't make it stop being history.

Ketara wrote:In the same way, the origin of the Universe is not history, it is the origin of the Universe.

Why? THere's no reason to make the distinction.

Ketara wrote: If I say to someone that I am studying history, I am not saying that I am studying every single past event in existence

Saying "I'm a historian" is pointless anyway. What KIND of historian are you? It's likle saying "I'm a scientist" to which the proper response is something like "okay, but what discipline?" You can say you're a scholar of human history, for example, and people would get a good idea about what you focus on. Just like one might say "I'm an evolutionary biologist".

Ketara wrote:History is defined by the historian.

History is defined by what actually happened, whether or not we believe it happened is irrelevant. If we get it wrong and find out about it later, we have a duty to correct it so that our view of history fits reality. But that doesn't mean that history itself has changed.

Ketara wrote:Not only this, but 'history', or the past events that we choose to connect

You keep changing which definition you're using.

Ketara wrote:But there is a fundamental disconnect that prevents my account of this 'past event', my 'history', ever being a true accounting of what happened.

I fail to see a reason to care. Of course our interpretations of history are biased by our own viewpoints. But that doesn't actually change history itself.

Ketara wrote:This can apply equally to a history of science. I could attempt to write a history of phlogiston in 1700. Refracted through my mind, it would seem a sensible, logical and scientific thing to do. I would write on the man who discovered it, and how he came to do so. Three hundred years later though, my theory of phlogiston would actually be one of nitrogen. Phlogiston would now be forgotten. When I wrote my history of nitrogen, I would talk of the chap who discovered nitrogen. I would write on his experiments that led up to that. I would write about the dozens of experiments that led forward to that discovery of nitrogen. I might even consider phlogiston in passing, label it as a dead end, and carry on backwards.

I see no relevant points here, certainly nothing that disagrees with my statements.

Ketara wrote:Yet, the experiments that supported phlogiston as a theory would be ignored in this new history.

Not necessarily.

Ketara wrote:History, is what historians create

Historians can't create history, they can only interpret it.

It's like claiming that humanity created physics... well, no. We merely discovered it and are still working to refine our understanding of it.

LordofHats wrote:

Melissia wrote:THat's not important. It's pointless and stupid.

The history of the human species isn't important?

I was talking about the claim that "proper history" is only human history.

Which is, at best, silly.

Historians can't create history, they can only interpret it.

Historian:

a writer of history; chronicler.

Not necessarily.

While you're somewhat right, try finding any reference to Pierre Louis Maupertuis in any material written before 1960. Darwin got all the credit for about a century.

I was talking about the claim that "proper history" is only human history.

Which is, at best, silly.

It's what the word means in its proper context. It's silly to assume it means anything and everything that has ever happened simpyl because you whimsy it to be such, because that's horribly distant from the proper usage of the term but it's what everyone does so *shrugz*

LordofHats wrote:While you're somewhat right, try finding any reference to Pierre Louis Maupertuis in any material written before 1960. Darwin got all the credit for about a century.

Which means that that particular recording of history was flawed and incomplete, not that history itself changed.


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LordofHats wrote:It's what the word means in its proper context

And yet, this "proper context" itself is logically flawed.

Melissia wrote:Which means that that particular recording of history was flawed and incomplete, not that history itself changed.

Past events didn't change. The history changed because the narrative changed (or rather was amended to account for Darwin not existing in an intellectual vaccum). EDIT: History changes on a fairly regular basis. It gets almost completely revised probably every... 75 years? Depending on the subject.

LordofHats wrote:

Melissia wrote:Which means that that particular recording of history was flawed and incomplete, not that history itself changed.

Past events didn't change.

And therefor the history didn't change.

LordofHats wrote:The history changed\

"Our interpretation of", yes.

History is not the past. The past is the past. There's no need for two words meaning the same thing, even if the mountains of the uneducated (poorly educated rather) insist on such.

There's no need for two words meaning the same thing

There's actually probably half a dozen different words that can mean "history" or "the past", and that's just in English alone...

Mind you, I don't exactly view your definition as very scientifically precise, either.

Melissia wrote:

Ketara wrote:Things occur within time and space. Events, if you will. The origin of the Universe is one of those past events. It occurred. Such a thing is not history

Why?

Because that is not what history is. In the same way that a doughnut is not music. The two are different things. Inquiring as to why they are two different things is best left to the scholars of language, or the divine.

Ketara wrote:If any past event can be considered history, then the actions of everything that has ever happened anyone can be called history. If you choose to believe that everything ever happened is history, then the word history just becomes defined as anything that has ever occurred or happened (or indeed, is occurring or happening).

I'm glad you noticed.

Ketara wrote:This is somewhat nonsensical.

Why? Personally I find your incessant attempts to make the distinction to be nonsensical, myself. One can say that his particular part of history isn't important, but that doesn't make it stop being history.

Melissia wrote:There's actually probably half a dozen different words that can mean "history" or "the past", and that's just in English alone...

I suppose if you want to ignore that relatively few words in any language mean the same things (in spite of regular interchangeable uses), and that history and the past are connected but different concepts.

Ketara wrote:
Because that is not what history is. In the same way that a doughnut is not music. The two are different things. Inquiring as to why they are two different things is best left to the scholars of language, or the divine.

That's a bit obtuse, but history is distinct from past events.

History is, broadly speaking, about analysis; not simple recognition.

I ate a delicious burrito for breakfast, this an event. But why I ate it is history. At least assuming that I'm important enough to merit description.

In the worlds of Prof Theory and Practice: History isn't the past because the past is fact and there's no point debating what year George Washington died.

Right, so when observing all Tadashi's precious statements and comparing him to O'brein, I was just making a joke...

But then he goes on about how history should be forgotten unless it is directly useful...

This is getting creepy.

Welcome to Dakka Dakka. Enjoy your stay (and relish the madness )

ALTER PROBABILITY.

I would draw out world war II so we got more crazy nazi super science.

The rest of this history debate seems to be an argument over whether or not pre-history counts as actual history.

Fantastic.

ketara wrote:Tip:- I actually know what I'm talking about here. Go and pick up Jordanova's 'History in Practice' and get a basic summary of the field you're shoving your foot into before trying to argue it. I know I'm coming off as slightly snarky here(apologies for that I guess), but people arguing loudly and completely incorrectly with each other on something neither knows anything about has always irritated me slightly.

Oh the blessed irony.


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LordofHats wrote:

Melissia wrote:There's actually probably half a dozen different words that can mean "history" or "the past", and that's just in English alone...

I suppose if you want to ignore that relatively few words in any language mean the same things (in spite of regular interchangeable uses), and that history and the past are connected but different concepts.

Technically the number of words with identical definitive meanings is very large. The number of words with identical distinct and singularly isolated meanings is not. There are a great many words that mean "fast". Many of them contain specificities that narrow their proper use, but english is a language where individual words will have many often dissimilar meanings and some of them aren't particularly unique or specific. Ketara is arguing how he wants language to work, not how it actually does. Nor is he using a dictionary despite repetitiously trying to define terms. Its a silly argument at best asinine and damaging at worst.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Technically the number of words with identical definitive meanings is very large. The number of words with identical distinct and singularly isolated meanings is not. There are a great many words that mean "fast". Many of them contain specificities that narrow their proper use, but english is a language where individual words will have many often dissimilar meanings and some of them aren't particularly unique or specific. Ketara is arguing how he wants language to work, not how it actually does. Nor is he using a dictionary despite repetitiously trying to define terms. Its a silly argument at best asinine and damaging at worst.

I'm not making a statement on language and its technicalities, and to accuse me of doing so is intellectually dishonest at best. I'm clarifying precisely what 'history' entails, in a professional and academic sense. If you can prove that every past event that has ever occurred is somehow inextricably linked to the term 'history', please go ahead and do so.

and now we have newspeak...

Ketara wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Technically the number of words with identical definitive meanings is very large. The number of words with identical distinct and singularly isolated meanings is not. There are a great many words that mean "fast". Many of them contain specificities that narrow their proper use, but english is a language where individual words will have many often dissimilar meanings and some of them aren't particularly unique or specific. Ketara is arguing how he wants language to work, not how it actually does. Nor is he using a dictionary despite repetitiously trying to define terms. Its a silly argument at best asinine and damaging at worst.

I'm not making a statement on language and its technicalities, and to accuse me of doing so is intellectually dishonest at best. I'm clarifying precisely what 'history' entails, in a professional and academic sense. If you can prove that every past event that has ever occurred is somehow inextricably linked to the term 'history', please go ahead and do so.

No thanks. I'm not interested in joining the debate, just in pointing out that it's ridiculous. You toss around "academic" like it means something, like you're somehow an authority. Point me to your published works or any academic establishment that would treat you as some sort of authority.

ShumaGorath wrote:
No thanks. I'm not interested in joining the debate, just in pointing out that it's ridiculous.

I see. Well, no doubt if you bothered to demonstrate it, I'm sure you would stagger us all with your amazing wit and intellect.

Until then however, I shall be forced to relegate you, your peremptory remarks, and generally inflammatory input to the rubbish bin.

You toss around "academic" like it means something, like you're somehow an authority. Point me to your published works or any academic establishment that would treat you as some sort of authority

Funny thing is, this isn't even my opinion I've been arguing. It's the standard academic (which does mean something, eg. discussed by/considered to be by academics) postmodernist discourse on the matter, as begun by E.H. Carr's 'What is History'.

The responses are easily found. One can examine Elton's (The Regis Professor of Oxford University) work 'The Practice of History', for the initial lashback, and then go on to examine everything from Tosh, to Alan Munslow, to Keith Jenkins, to Jordanova.

And as mentioned, Thomas Kuhn's trailblazing 'Structure of Scientific Revolutions' to see an equivalent postmodernist challenge to Science, which has now stretched to challenging the objectivity of mathematics itself.

'Course, you've read all those? Right? Since you're not challenging me, but them.

I decided to do a search on "are dinosaurs a part of history" to see what it brought me. There were some museums of natural history, among other things, but I think it is safe to say that history can be used as a generic term for past events. I also found this, which made me sad.

I may go start another thread on "what is the coolest extinct species"

[quote=xole I also found this,

'Course, you've read all those? Right? Since you're not challenging me, but them.

No, I was challenging you. You're using their justifications (minus the structure, reasoning, decorum, or apt placement) to hamstring a discussion in a way that they did not.

To paraphrase you, you're arguing a donut. They were arguing "history". You managed to read a smattering of midrange college fair books. That's not an excuse for misplaced appeals to authority.

ShumaGorath wrote:

'Course, you've read all those? Right? Since you're not challenging me, but them.

No, I was challenging you. You're using their justifications (minus the structure, reasoning, decorum, or apt placement) to hamstring a discussion in a way that they did not.

To paraphrase you, you're arguing a donut. They were arguing "history". You managed to read a smattering of midrange college fair books. That's not an excuse for misplaced appeals to authority.

The mildly bizare thing is that you telling me I'm wrong, yet fail to tell me why I'm wrong. You just throw out a mild range of pseudo-intellectual verbal jabs. To the point where I genuinely doubt you have the slightest idea what any of the above mentioned works even say, let alone the intricacies of the postmodernist challenge to history.

You disappoint Shuma, I genuinely thought you were capable of more than that. Either substantiate yourself or pipe down.

To paraphrase you, you're arguing history from the perspective of the field. I'm arguing what I like to think of as history and demand it be true.

Fix'd?

ShumaGorath wrote:You managed to read a smattering of midrange college fair books.

You're calling Geoffry Elton midrange? I mean, he's a little dated now being almost as traditional as traditional can get, but damn.

yet fail to tell me why I'm wrong

The irony is that if you listed no sources you'd be accused of making it up. List the sources, and you're just 'appealing to authority.'

That's why I don't bother listing sources on the interwebz. There's no way to win EDIT: And I don't feel like digging through the bookshelf...