TOK Unit - History

Amongst the wide variety of areas the Theory of Knowledge course covers, History is undeniably one of the most intriguing, in which many knowledge problems arise. History, in essence, has its own very unique set of epistemological problems. Primarily, history is not the past. Confusion tends to arise when these terms, yet somewhat similar, come into play. This semantic problem is based on the fact that we, as individuals, tend to see the past as history or vice versa. However, its not quite like that – it’s more complicated. The past is a term that essentially indicates and focuses on events that occurred before a specific point in time.  So basically, in simpler terms, the past is anything that happened before a given moment-everything that happened any time before now. On the other hand, history is seen as a text (narrative) that uses evidence that the past left behind to study a specific event. In other words, history is merely an interpretation of the past, and not the past itself.

Carl Becker’s “What are historical facts? (whose title is pretty self explanatory) revolves around the origins of what is known as historical facts. First before discussing Becker’s ideas, how does something from the past essentially become part of history? This question, of course, is a matter of debate and everyone can have his or her own thoughts. My idea of how something can become history can be very conflicting. On one hand, I believe that any event that has been researched and examined by historians, that is through historiography, is essentially part of the bigger section known as ‘history’. However another part of me believes in this idea that as long as there are people remaining who have lived through a specific event, it cannot be seen as history but rather as a memory. Nonetheless, getting back to the article, Becker analyzes three universal questions when dealing with history: What, when, and where are historical facts? For Becker, a historical fact is a statement about the event that essentially affirms it occurred. Hence, historical facts can be found in a subject’s mind, making it part of the present.

There cannot be history without historiography. In other words, history, in itself, is plural. Rather than history, it could essentially be known as histories - there are countless interpretations to any event and any period of history. To explain this, I will use an analogy representing the past as a ‘window’. As historians look from this window, they can focus on any aspect they wish to study. However, although historians are practically free to choose what they want to study, it seems as if the majority focuses on similar ideas. Therefore, it almost seems as if history is directly correlated to what institutions, mainly educational, want it to reflect. For instance lets focus on a major historical event, such as the causes of World War I. Being a major historical event, there are a wide variety of historians that study this.  Nevertheless, they all have different interpretations. Some believe the war started due to the national division within Europe while others stuck with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on the 28^th of June 1914. This constant debate of interpretations about a single event is what is known as historiography, and what basically creates history, as we know it.

Word Count : 566