History Unit

History never was nor will my “forte” for a number of reasons. However, when we began observing this complex area of knowledge in ToK I was thrilled because I knew that we’d discuss the reliability of history and it’s “facts,” something I’ve always questioned as well. 

I’ve always looked at history with a skeptical eye. I remember asking my dad, how do the historians know for sure that this is what’s written in the scriptures, how do we know that X was responsible for the massacre, how do we know that this was really what happened? We don’t. Reading Becker’s work really made me start to think of history in a much “deeper” level. His distinction of when, where and what is a historical fact really comes to show how intricate history is.   If I were to discuss these three different ideas that Becker promotes about history, this blog post would exceed the word limit, however the sentence we created in class together beautifully summarizes his piece in terms of historical facts; “The historical fact is not the event itself but is someone’s affirmation/representation of what happened. Therefore, the historical fact is not in the past but in the present located someone’s mind.”

Becker describes how a historical fact is formulated by a generalization of numerous accounts, experiences, opinions and points of views of the same exact event. Every historian will come to develop a fact from all these varying sources that may differ immensely or be identical to someone else’s; “The historian cannot eliminate the personal equation,” as Becker says. Therefore, due to the underlying personal biases existent in history, we can never ultimately guarantee ourselves that what we believe is a ‘historical fact’ is a real account for what had occurred. Theres so much detail that was eliminated or kept to develop an account for a historical event that we can’t really state as a ‘truth.’ For instance, its like our framework assignments. I’m not devaluing any of historian’s work, however it’s undeniable that they use this method when using primary sources to create secondary. They can’t use every single primary document, hence, they must be selective of their sources to construct an over view an event. In fact, we as a class experienced this during the Alpha/Beta discussion as historians. We all had access to the exact same documents and everyone did share similar views of them, however everyone also had different interpretations of the documents. This lead to an 80 minute long discussion to come to a conclusion. Our conclusion may have included the different vocabulary, perhaps with their definitions as well, and cultural values like dragging of feet, stealing of cross, however, many personal accounts were also disregarded by the historians at the conference. Therefore, we know a very broad over view of the event of Alpha/Beta confrontation, and we can’t deny that this provides a good insight of the event, in fact, we managed to settle some “facts,” though everyone interpreted these facts differently due to their bias towards their own values and experiences in relation to the event. Therefore, not everyone interpreted the event exactly the same. Everyone believed in their own accounts of the documents and the discussion to conclude what occured in the Alpha/Beta confrontation. 

Overall, we will never know what precisely happened in history, which drives me crazy. Regardless, historians’ work have and still do provide us with detailed and reliable sources to disclose more about the past every day. Even though I question the importance, I do know that history is an extremely important area of knowledge for it is all of what happens that has brought us to where we are today in September of 2014. We learn from history, in fact we base our future actions off of what has previously occurred whether that be World War I or a personal happening. In conclusion, as a convoluted subject, history is heavily based on emotions - whether that be forming a fact or believing in it. Either way, it’s an essential part of our knowledge that we must, carefully, appreciate.