What's The Difference Between History and The Past?
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- Опубликовано: 27 авг 2024
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Are History & The Past Two Different Things?
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What’s the difference between the past and History? On first glance, one might say they’re the same, but is that really true? In reality, it would be impossible to account for every single thing that occurs in the past, so historians pick and choose what they feel is most important and organize it into a narrative. History is an inherently interpretive process; it’s more like an artwork, and historians more like artists, than we give each credit. But what does that mean when you take into account inherent biases, subjective interpretation or even incorrect information? And what about historical fiction, like Downton Abbey, where the historical context is accurate but the characters fictional? Is Downton Abbey just as relevant of a historical text as say, an AP History book? Watch the episode to find out!
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I find it interesting that exactly the same happens on the individual level. In psychology it is generally accepted that our own memory is reconstructive. What we remember is not an accurate and completely truthful account of the things that happened to us, but a creative reconstruction heavily influened by our emotions in the present, meaning making processes, social influences and so forth. Great channel btw - I've just discovered you and I'm totally hooked!
The past isn't tomorrow
The past is not today
Yet the past holds on tightly
There is no getting away
History has it's eyes on you
HOW did I only just find this channel? (Well, it's finals week so maybe my masterful powers of procrastination are good for something.) No matter the reason, thank you for existing, PBS Idea Channel.
In the archaeological field, we say that archaeology is a random record of the past, while history is highly curated at each separation. Primary sources are curated to emphasize what that source considers important; secondary sources can add or subtract to further distill what they want their audience to take away. The world of ancient Greece we get from literature (whether it's Homer or Herodotus) is vastly different from that which we get from archaeology. One example of this discrepancy is the widespread existence of herms. These small, phallic pillars would have been as common as mailboxes, likely as wards against the evil eye, but precisely because of their omnipresence they were rarely if ever recorded. The authors of history assumed that our "minimal departure" would be the same as theirs, and left out what they considered normal, while we scratch our heads at why every house had a rectangular slab of rock with a penis sticking out of it. Historical fiction, on the other hand, assumes that the past's minimal departure is the same as the present. Perhaps they are equally not the true past, but in opposite respects.
Interesting - so history in an ideal world is always the next phase commenting (even debasing) on the previous - Daisy Chain (distorted but "truthful")
Id say the dark red sea is the product of Greeks putting red n blue under same
heading (for whatever obscure reason)
It's good to be back! How was everyone's last two weeks? Read anything interesting? :D
+PBS Idea Channel
Lets hope you actually discuss this topic rather than just list out its basic points and end the video.
+Livia a Yep. Gooooood to be back.
PBS Idea Channel Sorry man, I took the opportunity to get to you quick. I still love the channel, just seems to be a little lacking lately.
Can you do a video on the extreme differences of marvel and DC even thou there the same stories
+PBS Idea Channel I just read "The Female Man" by Joanna Russ
Great scifi novel!!! ;)
Perhaps the reason behind Homer's "Wine Dark Sea" is that wine wouldn't have been seen in a transparent vessel until a millenium later. Looking down into an opaque vessel full of wine would probably appear nearly as dark as an inkwell.
I'm a classical history PhD. This was a very good video. Props!
I just wrote a midterm exam essay about this! Specifically about Hayden White and his influence on Borges with respect to the short story "La Lotería en Babilonia". The relevant part of everything I covered in the test is that according to (my interpretation of) White and Borges we never have direct access to the past. We can only dig up scraps from old rubble and primary sources and then infer relations and connections to create a narrative, and then that narrative itself is up to the interpretation of the hearer because language is subjective and informed by personal experiences. However it isn't bad that we create a historical narrative because that narrative is what gives the past meaning and significance that we can refer to and learn from.
As you might guess from my username, I've got a long response to this one. Before I get too complicated though, I just have to say, this was absolutely fantastic! Really thought provoking! And I'm quite happy that you didn't resort to that standard postmodern/poststructuralist stuff about _how can we ever know anything_. Obviously, no one in their right mind should question any number of things we would label _facts_. Yet, there are serious problems with History (with a capital H) in which you are correct in alluding to.
In illuminating the problem of interpretation, you are nailing the head of the pin on that one. Historians typically talk about contextualizing narrative (aka interpretation). There is so much in the field where people are working with the same facts and coming up with different conclusions. I would argue that this is fundamentally different from fiction though:
History relies on *verifiability*, whereas fiction is anything but that. History (with a capital H) comes with footnotes, bibliographies, historiographic discussion, critical analysis, and the full weight of peer review. Evidence is a requirement, and it is heavily checked. At no point in a movie may you question something and simply inspect the reference. That kind of stuff is just not part of the medium. I review movies for their historical content, and they often cannot even follow the things that they make explicit reference to. Yet historians cannot desert the truth so readily. There are so many layers of scholarly checks to make sure one is publishing proper material.
That is not to say that there isn't a fundamental problem with historiography and interpretation epistemologically. How can we have such disparate understandings of standard narratives such as between Orthodoxy, Revisionism, and Post-Revisionism? When considering the basis of the field, when do narrative techniques override truth value? At what point can we say that applying the ideas of today are effecting our understanding of the past? When is a historian being inadequately critical of their sources? These are not problems of fiction though. When working with evidence, then you are indeed working with a completely different level of truth-telling from fiction. Yes, fiction is narrative based, just as history, but history maintains verifiability, whereas fiction does not. It's the scholarship that makes history different, not the narrative elements.
Another interesting angle that you could take on this subject is through Derrida's attack on historians' reliance on the written word. Afterall, history only begins with writing. Everything beforehand? Ah, well that's just *pre-history* (said sarcastically). But in truth, that is how the field is formulated. Of course, there is plenty where evidence is insufficient, but what about where there is alternative methods? We rely on the Chicago Manual of Style for citation methods, but there is no way listed in any edition (including Kate Turabian) that explains how to use artifactual evidence. What makes a written sentence on some artifact more significant than the object itself? History can be done without written evidence, but the field is extraordinarily opposed to the notion. Derrida, of course, used this to say that no History can be written without that inherent bias built in (though I see that as a bit of an exaggeration). This is the direction I thought the video would go, given the title/thumbnail, but I am quite happy with what you guys produced anyways.
Seriously, this is kind of my stock and trade on RUclips! If you want to talk further on this subject, I can drone on for hours. Maybe we should talk some time. This show has been fairly inspirational to my own.
+Cynical Historian Great response! Can you explain how history can be formed without written evidence though? How could we overcome the problem of human oblivion? It seems like the written word would far outlast our individual existence, our forgetfulness and mismemory, the ephemerality of speech, etc, thus being a more "accurate" (or at least more permanent) representation of the past.
Verification is certainly one of the most important distinctions brought between scholarly history and historical fiction. Driven largely by intent, the seeking of evidence is fundamentally where one begins to uncover the factual nature of what has happened in the past. Similarly, the application of scientific approaches (with interpretations equating to conclusions) to sift out the truth of our past is significant - historical fiction mostly concerns itself not necessarily with the truth of our past but how it feels, the sensation of it. Still, there is only so much evidence we can leave behind, and only so much inference one can make without having been at the event that left that evidence. This, I think, was Mike's point in bringing up Marie-Laure Ryan's Principle of Minimal Departure.
Even where we can clearly see evidence of a different sort of world emerging from historical documents and artifacts, there will always be gaps left in the full narrative of life during those times, gaps in which we will almost always place assumptions based on our current existential world-views. I can imagine most of the events in history - those most note-worthy and significant - naturally become the focus of our attention. If the concept of studying history so as not to repeat it is true, it would do little to study less significant events. And yet it is not the most climactic events that make up the fabric of our daily lives, but the more commonplace moments - moments spent going through daily rituals or boring moments soon forgotten. And while even we ourselves soon forget these moments, they are what create the foundations of our world-view. It is simple enough for most to remember a time when smartphones weren't as central to our (American, at least) culture, or even when cellphones didn't exist. But what about the time before the internet? Or before computers? The further you depart from the world of your commonplace experience, the more energy it takes to imagine the world differently.
I think this is where historical fiction helps a great deal. No, the facts aren't checked as rigorously as in scholarly historical studies. It is by the passion and curiosity of those scholarly historians that such energy is spent creating a factually sound narrative. But for the purposes of dissemination to the masses, historical fiction can at least help create that foundation, the feeling of the time, upon which we might build the image of significant historical events. So long as historical fiction never tries to masquerade as fact, and so long as scholarly history never tries to assume 100% accuracy (though it's certainly a noble goal to strive toward), I think both can work quite harmoniously together.
+Cynical Historian And what's so cynical about it??
+bejonsson This is a huge argument in my profession. Many historians want to use more anthropological techniques, extrapolate events backwards using existing theories, and utilize linguistic/mythological evidence as well as oral traditions. There are some major drawbacks to all of those, as you might guess. Artifactual evidence is something that can draw out new narratives, but it comes with its own scholarly baggage.
you are not a historian lol
In my US history class this semester instead of focusing on learning specific dates and details, for our assignments our professor would either give us or have us create a fictional profile of a person and then analyze how that person would react to various events or subjects in history. Essentially learning history through creating historical fiction, and personally my absolute favorite way I've ever been taught history. Also side note: totally adding Rurouni Kenshin to my anime list.
History, like news, is always written from a point of view. It's important to always seek to have multiple, and even contradictory, factually plausible sources to get a better understanding of what happened.
But still you can't ever have all the facts, the ultimate truth of things, even if you are one of the witnesses of events, because we always tend to filter, focus, omit, things based on your experiences, political views, or even your breakfast that day.
Keeping an healthy dose of critical thinking when you read everything event (be it history, past, or news) related is the best habit to have.
agree
Thanks for your comment! Helps better understand how we can digest the information of the world
In my US Ethnic Writers class, we read Louise Erdrich's novel "The Plague of Doves" which is about a Native American community / town built upon a violent history. The novel has an interesting way of telling the story of the past by giving separate sections to certain narrators, both American and Native Americans. By doing this, Erdrich focuses not on the actual past but the way in which the story is told in the present through each narrator. Same thing goes with basically any story ever told. There is always some sort of bias towards one person's perspective and privileges their narrative to ensure that the story, or the version of their story is the only one being told.
The difference between history and the past? A road map is not a road, it's a visual representation of a road that's small enough to see it all at once. Likewise, history is a representation of the past that's short (and non-violent) enough to live through.
nerd
@@user-hs5sx4yv2k _bows_
I think the main difference between doing history "proper" and doing historical storytelling is the drama, the narrative, the "spin".
We can't remove all subjectivity from history but I feel that doing history properly is indeed trying to remove as much of it as possible, to "witness with eyes unburdened by hatred" or any other emotion. This is one of the reason why people who are serious about history get very angry about revisionism, it is the opposite of what historians are supposed to be doing.
On the other hand most of the historical storytelling is done by doing away with the mundane and intensifying the dramatic, the humorous or the heroic.
While I understand your point here, one of the hard part of doing history is to filter out all of the parts that you compare to historical fiction, to try and get as close to the actual past as we can. That I think is the fundamental difference, the direction of the effort, one side towards injecting drama and filtering out the mundane, the other side trying to filter out the drama to get to the mundane (or at least the factual).
+Jerome Fournier but fundamentally everyone is going to have some kind of bias, everyone has opinions that'll influence what things they deem 'small' or 'unimportant' that get filtered out even if collectively they're very important. we can try to be objective but we're not objective, we're not computers, everything we believe is based on personal experiences. it's much more effective to recognize we have biases and try to get multiple perspectives because two historians who are as objective as possible can analyze the same thing and come to wildly contradictory conclusions.
The role of the historian is to present the past as it happened. The historian has a duty to the records of history and to present the narrative that is present within the evidence. It is not the historian's place to invent a narrative based on any records of lack thereof. The historian is guided by the evidence, which he will be well-acquainted with, which is what ultimately makes him a professional. Geoffrey Elton offers a great insight into the purpose of history.
+eddyez2 I think that while one can make the argument that historians have "a duty to the records of history", the fact remains that we're taking that on basically an honor system. Even when we assume a best-case scenario where all historians are doing their very best to remain dedicated to fact, if such a thing can ever truly be found, the fact remains that one can never fully eradicate all trace of bias. The fact remains that we as individuals are fickle and emotional, and though there may be institutions in place to weed out the bad historians from the "professional" historians, it remains that the act of recording history is inherently testimonial.
Taking someone's word for it might serve well enough, but one can never truly distinguish between absolute fact and truly compelling fiction.
+Robert Steffler true. But that is why history went from a subject of literature to its own discipline. I'm a history major, and one thing that is beaten into us is that, yes, bias cannot be truly avoided, but it must be subdued in order to present the facts, not just conjecture. It's why books and articles must have thorough citations, so that others can go to those sources and validate your argument. I think what I really meant to say was that history has its own narrative independent of the author, and the author must stand out by his analysis of the documents, not his storytelling skill.
The question is, can we truly tell the difference between the "narrative independent of the author" and the "analysis of the documents"? Though there exist ways of "validating [a historian's] argument", we can never be sure that the perspective we're giving ourselves of the past is the "correct" one, if such a perspective exists.
Though one might go to the sources (however rarely that may happen), we have no way of knowing if the sources themselves have provided us with correct information. We may find broken shards of pottery near large population centers and assume they were used for food storage, it is not beyond reason that they may have been used for feces, or ritual purposes, or for things we have no concept nor record of.
At the end of the day, even the best "facts" we have are ultimately educated guesses. I don't pretend to know what Mike and the folks at Idea Channel intended, but it seems that the distinction they were trying to make is that the past remains constant, if unknown, while history is what we *think* the past was like.
This is the Idea Channel I know and love. It seems like recently several episodes have been, while interesting, of such different format, style, and subject that I thought we had lost the Idea Channel that used to make me ponder week after week.
I thought I was the only one that felt this.
+Patrick Hogan same here bro
I see historical fiction as an easy example of the past with as its benefit to pick and devote attention to more specific topics while keeping the scenario easy to understand in other fields. This creates a sort of case study in a secured environment that may not be the actual truth but does make it easier for the consumer to understand similar cases that happened in real life.
I'm surprised that one of the most relevant quote in that regard hasn't come up yet: "History is written by the winners."
You mentioned Ferguson which brings up a very important point: there are always gaps to fill when you try to tell about an event. The migration crisis in Europe is very difficult to grasp for those involved, because there are many gaps to fill. The media uses simple images (the "poor refugee", or the "greedy economic migrant") to tell their stories which leads to wrong information even in our time (where it should be possible thanks to technology to be accurate).
But it's also hard to grasp for non-Europeans, simply because you're not there. It's the same with the Syrian war; the political situation in Russia; or even the political situation in my city (Vienna)! Personally, I don't trust history books too much when they just state "This and that was the climate during this time", when they don't give very good citations for me to check.
+flintmakesmusic History may have been written by the winners, but, more and more nowadays, I would consider the people who shout the loudest and the longest as the 'true' writers of history.
There are so many uneducated or simply unwilling-to-become educated people out there who consume media and assume they are being told truths.
So then you get "news" organizations who blatantly lie or misrepresent the facts. Their viewers who don't know any better (or don't want to know any better) just take it all as truth because it probably fits their personal views of reality.
I guess I'm basically thinking of how rumors or hoaxes start and spread, where people are more willing to believe and spread news than actually fact check it and think about it...
I agree with you about the difficulty of grasping situations that we are not confronted with. However,if we try a little I think we can find some compassion or common ground. America Ferrera said in an interview after visiting Honduras, "Imagine if the best solution that you can think of is to send your child, with a stranger, and your life's saving across hundreds of miles, hoping they make it a country where they don't speak the language, in hopes of a better life." Think how horrible things must be if that's your BEST solution. That's how I can empathize with refugees for whom the best solution is to over crowd a boat that might capsize to leave my country in search of security. I can likewise empathize with those who feel comfort and have a home and now are faced with in influx of people with different customs and language coming to my community making my stores and streets more crowed, possibly driving down wages with cheaper labor and forever changing the complexity of my community. Not having faced either, I can only imagine but, I can imagine.
The main difference, in my opinion, is that "history" tends to focus on the specifics (the date of an important battle, the reign of a despot and how it affected world politics, etc.), while fictional histories focus on the overall culture of a certain timeframe.
+Diana Watson But some historians have a tendency to inflate or connect the affects of people and events on the wider workings of world politics at the time.
While sometimes the connects are weak but real, other times we are looking so far back that the sources and documents we use to make these connections in themselves are not reliable and make their own assumptions.
It all makes history very interesting but hard to truly get to know..
Rindflorist reminds me of a florist in my home town called Reindfleisch Flowers. Reindfleisch means ground meat in german, so it always made me giggle.
I think there are two distinct points on understanding the difference between History and Historical fiction. First, the fundamental motivation is distinct. While more or less succeeded in, History is primarily concerned with recording the Data, preserving facts in as much as any biased observer can. Historical fiction is primarily concerned with Engagement/Entertainment of the reader. Both can, and will, to certain extents do both, but the primacy of one motivation over another completely changes the nature of the resulting works. Rurouni Kenshin is a period drama that incentivizes a person to then go pursue the data of the past through History. History is itself not a pure reflection of the data, but can be compared and contrasted in a way that when done with works of fiction just becomes "better or worse stories." I believe if we had a more robust understanding of the different fields of scholarship within the practice of History, the comparison of History to Historical Fiction would not be as important of a point. If the attempt to record data was given the title History, while the pursuit to understand the meaning behind it and its part in the modern understanding of things were called Historic-Philosophy, we'd have less qualms with the abstraction of what is actually History. Both the Data half and the meaning-oriented half could be debated and be subject to hypothesis and test as well, but we could see more easily the different ways in which it ought to be done, and the different burdens the nature of debating those two subjects require. Just a thought.
As a religious studies major, this reminds me of the debate of mythology versus fiction. Many myths are a tool to understanding deeper concepts through narrative, but for some reason people want to say they are "un-true things".
That is incredibly interesting. I'm unfamiliar, but I feel that a distinction could be the creator's intent. If a myth could be traced back to its creator, anyway, but then isn't the intention of a mythology to explain the unexplainable? So interesting.
The clips of old headlines made me think of the way that media creators -- in this case, journalists -- have biases, and that they are creating history as much as the historians who look back to their creations to reconstruct what happened. What ends up being reconstructed depends on which media survives the test of time. And that depends on the popularity of that media as well as its format and distribution.
Here is a history major's thoughts on the relationship between the past and history.
My perspective is that the past is completely unknowable. You can get into a philosophical debate about whether that includes your own past, but I'm sure everyone has been told about something they did as a child that they 100% are certain never happened, and then were shown a photo or video proving them wrong.
Because of this, history is always an interpretation of the past. An "accurate" history is one that uses trusted sources, and interprets things in ways that don't conflict with other things that are essentially confirmed as true, but as we see constantly, history changes. New evidence is found and our old ideas are completely thrown out. Even things we completely trust as fact could easily not be, simply because we aren't experiencing it ourselves in the moment. That diary entry telling all about the event in incredible detail? Maybe that person was having a bad day and remembered things wrong. That photo of the event? Maybe it was doctored, or maybe it was a recreation done a week later to put in a newspaper.
Thus the past is something we can't actually know about for certain, instead just a goal we try to reach in writing and researching history. As a historian you learn that anything you write must be arguable, that it there is always some doubt to what you're saying and that you need to use evidence to show why your argument is the most logical. What you don't learn is to write anything as undeniable fact, because in a week something could be discovered that proves you completely incorrect.
Says Takani Megumi, shows Kamiya Kaoru.
+Ian Jenkins (KB Video Editor) Aww, it's my fault, too! I should have caught it. We're a team, bruh. :D
+Ian Jenkins (KB Video Editor) that lil slip-up aside i'd just like to say i think you do a DANG AMAZING JOB with the editing, Idea Channel is one of my favorite yt channels to watch in part bc of its clever, fastpaced, relevant (and the A+ contents ofc)!
+PBS Idea Channel It's all in the past. Which doesn't exist apparently.
+plasticbutler But it impacts the future. :P
Well, there's also the idea of Historiography, which is the history of history. In a sense the use of historiography is to see how historians have viewed events throughout time. A very postmodern exercise for modern historians.
did you make this for me cause I have a final about this in a week
lmao
lmao
i have home work about dis
@@laundrybucket1238 ur noice
@@julietbinoy4343 yeah same bruv we're in the same class
As a historian, I've noticed that the 'story' of an event can change
drastically depending on where you're viewing the event from. For
instance I took a whole course on Medieval cities and found it
fascinating how much the reality of religious minorities (mainly Jews,
but also Muslims) shifts depending on if you're looking at the grand
decisions from the King and Queen for a country or the actions of a city
and people in that city. Another example is that the story of the fight
for women's suffrage in the US is a drastically different one if you
look at it in the West, the South, or the Northeast. History is not one
overarching narrative leading to one predetermined conclusion, it's a
bunch of small events that grow into bigger ones (and even that
portrayal is misleading).
This is what I come to PBS Idea Channel for.
Hi Mike, I ran across your RUclips Vidio because I was researching "What is the past," and there you were. My understanding of the past is much like yours. I found your Video to be clear and crisp. And it reaffirms my understanding that the past doesn't exist, at least the way we think it does. However, I don't think many people will find it comforting to accept that conclusion. So strong is the belief that the past exists the way we think it does, and so difficult to understand nothing is the way we think it is. Thank you for your insight
Mike
The important relationship between the History and Historical Fiction is something Mike touched on very briefly in the middle of the video: The perspective and epistemic origin of whoever is organizing the events, the narrator in a sense. From a European perspective Cook and Colombus are legendary explorers, worth celebrating. To the descendants of native people they're can both be seen as antagonists, and undeserving of the praise they've received over the years. The Past has no narrator and you can see this in the disembodied camera-narrator in The People vs OJ. Here, to tell the story authentically without the perceptual bias of a narrator, the camera has to chronicle the events in a way which shows the relationship between events but doesn't narrate them the way a textbook might.
1. Says "Takani Megumi."
2. Shows Kamiya Kaoru.
I'm on to you, Idea Channel video editors.
I think the reason that many people equate history with the past and as interchangeable terms is the way history is taught in primary and secondary schools (with the possible exception of AP courses). Students are forced to remember facts, dates, names, battles, etc. with little analysis. Ergo, most people think that history is just stoically remembering things that will help you win Trivial Pursuit. I have seen many students come into required lower division history courses in college thinking that history is boring and then by the end of the semester their young minds have been blown. I heard someone say once that he liked to call his World History survey courses (akin to history 101 and history 102), Iconoclasm I and Iconoclasm II. Basically, he had to unteach, as it were, everything the students have learned until then in order to teach them history as conceived by academic historians. History, as you say, is not the past; history is how we interpret and write about the past. Therefore, the past can look very different depending on who writes the history, and two historians can look at the exact same evidence and come up with entire differently - yet equally supported - interpretations and arguments. The former is quite obvious when you look at histories that were written in the early 20th centuries and compare them to histories of similar topics written in more recent years.
Obviously, as a historian, I am heavily invested in this topic!
As for your question, the the difference is that for the most part academic history tries to stay as faithful to the evidence as possible, while historical fiction often takes liberties. I am an academic historian, but I also enjoy historical fiction for what it is, entertainment. I think perhaps a more relevant comparison would be between academic history and popular - but not fictional - history. Both have their pros and cons, and both have different audiences, but I think both have a place in society.
+The Serial Hobbyist Girl I think if it hasn't been done, there should be two papers with literally the same sources but vastly different conclusions. It would be an interesting thing to give to students.
I am a student teacher in Germany. At uni they are teaching us exactly what is explained in this video: history is not the past, pupils should be taught how to deal critically with historical sources and be given the "tools" to do so. they should learn that history is made by people and there is no "true" history. it is always restricted to the resources that are available and the topic that a historian is researching on to reconstruct the history.
understanding all this about history is essential and more important than teaching facts that pupils will forget soon anyway. Also, said facts and numbers can be looked up so fast on the internet, it makes more sense to school critical thinking and how to deconstruct historical narratives.
The difference between History and historical Fiction is that History makes a point of pointing out the gaps, at least occaisonally/when we are aware of them.
Oh my god. I've been waiting for so long. Mike finally said "what do y'all think" instead of "what do you think."
My history teacher uses Downton Abbey in class. He pauses it often to explain things and it's really flipping cool, dude.
I think one of the more interesting things this video reminded me of is how most narratives fictional or historical in the US ignore or forget the fact that most of the united states east of the Mississippi river had giant flocks of parrots with yellow and orange heads with a green body. (seriously look them up they were very colorful) The Carolina parakeet lived as far north as New York, and was common enough that it was considered a major pest to farmers. Yet we are never told about them because they were once common enough not to notice until they suddenly realized they were not there anymore.
It is just mind blowing to me to know that the founding fathers would have easily have seen these parrots and probably marked them off as pests to their plantations.
I think a good piece of history is aware of its construction and challenges the reader with its opinion or point of view and takes the time to cite the evidence that led the historian to constructing the work in that particular way or viewpoint.
Whereas a good historical fiction tries harder to convince the reader/viewer to accept its version of the events so that the narrative can flow easier. It doesn't want to disrupt a person's viewing/reading and encourage questions or challenges but instead wants them to ride its story.
I'm just stopping here to say that I absolutely adore the direction that this channel is going in. Keep it up you magnificent people.
I think it's funny that this video is 2 days before the AP History exam. My massive studying of history recently makes this video much more relevant to me.
Very interesting video Mike.
As a historian by profession, I can say with some authority that this is exactly what up and coming historians learn throughout their under graduate and graduate courses. This may be a new distinction for "non-historians" (I use the phrase to simply mean anyone not classically trained as a historian); but for those of us in the profession itself, this distinction is commonplace. As I research and analyze the data of a time period, my own bias still exists; and as such I am actively creating history simply by "doing my job". All good historians are aware of this and do not try to hide it. In fact, a good historian openly acknowledges their own bias in whatever work they are creating.
I really liked your analogy of historians as artists and creators, because it is 100% accurate. I thought I'd give my two cents as someone from "within" the field that is being discussed. Overall, I agree with your ideas. The past and history are not the same thing, and if they are ever explicitly presented as such you can be fairly sure the author is up to no good. Historians are not trying to "trick" you into believing something, we are simply trying to uncover the past and create an interpretation of it that makes sense within the context of any available data and evidence. The past exists whether we know about it or not; history only exists when it is written down.
These videos are always a nice break from studying and paper writing :) Glad to see ya'll back here!
It's interesting that you bring up the whole premise of how one should feel when watching historical shows... the idea that the narrative kind of nudges you to sympathize with a certain side or a certain person in the show. It reminded me of my parents telling me stories of my mother's experiences after moving to Canada from Florida. At some point the subject of Wounded Knee came up between my parents. My mother, growing up in the south, was taught that it was an uprising. My father, growing up in Canada, was taught it was a massacre.
I think it really drives home the point that even in history, which we rely on to be accurate, there are still major biases that can have a huge influence on how past events are portrayed. I can compare it to what someone said recently about "The Godfather", where they explain that despite the fact that we know that they are the mafia and they do awful things, they are written in a way that the audience sympathizes with them. "History is written by the winners" Is a very true statement, and depending on who is writing it, important information can be downplayed for the sake of saving face and it can have a huge influence on the attitudes people have towards certain subject matter now. For instance, my knowledge of the experiences that the aboriginal communities faced in Canada are very different from my great-aunt, who was taught in a separate generation which did not supply the information that I received, and that really shows when the subject comes up.
I think the study of historiography is just as important as the study of history, as it sheds more light on a subject by seeing how a variety of people reacted to the same subject and how it is recalled by different cultures.
It's the wine-dark sea that reflects the stormy & portentous golden-hour of a violet dawn.
Fascinating topic, and great discussion on it!
I wanted to chime in on two-and-a-half (not completely related) points:
. This construction of history is really similar to our construction of meaning when listening to a piece of music. There's the actual sounds that were happening in the air and reaching our ears, and then there's our understanding of (some of) them into a coherent whole we call a piece of music. We could say that music doesn't exist - even when it's being played - until someone creates it, or utters the judgement "this is music", at least in their own mind.
.. [extra half-point] Ultimately, we're dealing with an epistomological problem here: how is it that we know what we know (in this case, about "The Past" - which in itself would require some mulling over as well), and how do we build upon such knowledge? This might be the big difference between the science of History and historically informed fictions: we cannot do further research on whatever a work of fiction states, in order to better uncover the details of what happened and what were the implications or meanings of what happened, essentially because that work of fiction itself is the only source on what happened. The _way_ we build our knowledge of (past) events and of their meanings and interrelations is fundamentally different in these cases.
This is not to say that Downtown Abbey doesn't participate in our understanding of history. It does, and perhaps in an even more effective way than historical research: suppose we found documents showing beyond any doubt that "upstairs and downstairs" didn't get along that well, how much would it overthrow the "knowledge" DA has built of that period? Very often "The Past" will continue to be what we wish it to be, and historians have a hard time modifying that.
. "In the pursuit of accounting for everything, narrative woud become an unwieldy nonsensical mess." - cf. eighteenth century's _The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman_, by Laurence Sterne. Such a great book, really.
really great comment. I think it's interesting also to consider that while both are narratives where one (history) is a series of events organized into narrative and DA (or historical drama) is and only is narrative - both are made for the purposes of gaining meaning (read understanding). The interpretations of those meanings can vary but ultimately the goal of narrative and arguably the purpose is to give or obtain meaning from ideas, from our experiences of the world, and from our otherwise disconnected collective knowledge of events, of people, of results that have manifested in the present.
As an oral storyteller and folk culture buff, this reminds me how there was once a time when "legend" was practically indistinguishable from "history". For those who don't know or are confused because the media keeps misusing the word, a legend is an oral story that is usually based on history that is told as if it was meant to be believed. To use a familiar modern example, most ghost stories are legends, usually told with the teller's insistence that the events actually happened to someone they knew or had heard of. But the truth is that people once talked about people like King Arthur and Robin Hood as if they actually existed. Other legendary figures like Johnny Appleseed and Davy Crockett actually did exist but the stories told about them may not have actually happened. I had considered in the past that maybe the days of people believing in legends is over. However, with the suggestion that we're still constructing narratives of the past in our studies of history, I wonder if maybe we're still creating legends only we're making them more believable and publishing them in history books so that people see them as more accurate.
+Adam Hoffman I do think you have a good point there, but if we remove the "oral" from the definition of legend (which is unnecessary in the first place I believe), can there still be records/reports that don't fit that definition, therefore making it so broad that it becomes meaningless again?
+Adam Hoffman We still have legends--one of them is called Jesus.
bejonsson
Okay, that is a totally loaded statement and I am not taking the conversation there.
Adam Hoffman That's fair enough, but I don't think I really said anything that controversial? I believe many historians and regular folk (such as myself) recognise that Jesus was an actual figure in history but whether or not he was indeed the son incarnate of God is debatable. Most contemporary views regarding Christianity (and other religions) tend to oppose its claims, and thus Jesus does have a 'legend' status in our times. I'm not trying to stir up an argument; that was simply the point I was trying to make.
+Adam Hoffman Ha, I remember the legend of good ol' George Washington who cut down his father's cherry tree, thusly caught and honored for telling the truth by his father ("I cannot tell a lie..." etc.). Used to teach young students history AND morals. Of course, it was lie itself :-d woah, a lie within a lie.
So, I was just talking about this with my girlfriend, about StarWars. Different than LotR and Harry Potter and A Song of Ice and Fire, Starwars movies barely mention food or recipes. It seems like one of those gaps that we fill in as "they must eat what we do", but, if you think about it, they probably don't. So, my point is that it's interesting how sometimes these gaps are more often than we think they are, and they use our preconceptions of the world to imagine them; and it can be quite dangerous because gaps like that can make history completely different from where you live in the world today.
As an english major and fan of postmodernism, I need that hat.
There was a over the garden wall reference somewhere
+Jose Landim Campos Or perhaps everywhere.
+PBS Idea Channel DUN DUN DUN
An
+PBS Idea Channel I kept waiting for a "rock fact" reference in the script.
+PBS Idea Channel and that's a Rock Fact
I wish I knew about IC 6 months ago and could have posted this more timely! I have a BA in History, which, for the most part, taught me how to take in a lot of information and synthesize it into a coherent paper with a clear perspective. The class that influenced me most though, both in my degree and in life, was called "The Craft of History," which discussed the significant impact of the "current" social climate on a historian's work and how subjective history can be. For a long while, the study of history was the study of dates and events focusing mostly on the wealthy, but as different social movements came and went, the focus of study shifted to the life of the common man, to the role of women, etc. As an object lesson, we read 6 or 7 different essays about the Salem Witch Trials written at different times, and even though everyone has the same data available to them, each essay had a very distinct perspective and explanation for why things happened as they did. That taught me at an important time in life to have a healthy skepticism for anything I read, as everyone has their own personal history that colors their perspective.
With the dawn of the internet and our massive amounts of data being created about people (social media, videos, photos, news articles), I feel like the job of future historians will be taken over by an automated data mining process. We also seem to currently keep a moderated list of all our ideas on Wiki's, something that gives a narrative to even the most mundane facets of our lives. When future generations want to learn about their past, they would need to simply look up their ancestors old facebook page or watch a collection of youtube videos on events. The amount of primary sources we are creating is incredible.
Such a great episode! As a historian, it is good to see this making it into the "real world". I cannot emphasise this enough - when I go to an archive and selectively choose sources, I have to always be wary of my own position, ideas, political and ethical stances and more to make sure that I do not slant my narrative too much.
That said, I am completely aware of the subjective nature of my work, and I go to great lengths to point out the assumptions in my work, as well as the fact that I do not claim to represent reality - instead I present an interpretation of what the sources, primary or secondary, are showing me. Although I have to say that there are still a lot of historians who think that they are uncovering "the truth".
What I would add to this discussion, however, is institutional power. When I got to an archive, it quickly becomes apparent what kind of narrative this particular institution wants the historian to tell, especially if it is a national archive. There are methods to deal with this however, such as "reading against the grain" and treating the archive as a text.
In any case, just wanted to say - great episode!
Could you do a whole video on how tenuous and malleable our perception of color is, and how it has changed since ancient times? There was a great Radio Lab about it, how blue was almost always the last color to be named as ancient languages formed, Homer not only called the sea "wine-dark," he called honey "green," how cultures with no word for orange will actually have difficulty seeing the difference between orange and red... There is just so much to dig into, and it goes a long way toward getting across how people in the past really did think differently than we do; beyond just holding different beliefs, they literally took in and processed the world differently.
I think this would be a good place to discuss the narrativity of history and how it's perpetuated through different theoretic lenses. What fascinates me about history is that it's constantly reconstructed rediscovered time and again, not because it never happened or was falsely interpreted before, but because of the demands of the audience(s) receiving it. We get videos and clickbait articles about funny events in history today because we want to feel a connection with our ancestors via crude humor, though you would be hard-pressed to find a historian from the 19th century discussing illuminated manuscripts as platforms for sex jokes. I always have to take a step back and realize that the people who lived through and even constructed the original narratives around a series of events didn't intend a specific interpretation, and yet they do intend a specific meaning because they're molding it from their own needs to convey some sort of moral or contextualize themselves in some conversation at the time that they tell it. We then take those narratives and retell them to convey a postcolonial/Marxist/feminist/etc message, and then even those become sources for ever-changing narratives over time. I don't know if his book has ever been referenced on PBS Idea channel, but Bruce Jackson's "The Story is True" talks a lot about the purpose and meaning of narrative being a thing that evolves through transmission. He talks a bit about the ownership of narrative, and I think the question extends here. Do we own history because we write our own narrative to our own liking and to suit or own needs, or should we honor the people who lived the original events and strip down our narratives to bare bones? In considering narrativity, if narratives must be told to be narratives, are we actually relinquishing history to those who receive it as we are telling it, and so is their interpretation of our telling more important or accurate?
I recently listened a podcast series on the Persian Empire (Hardcore History by Dan Carlin, a good one for history buffs) and he talks about the different ways societies recorded history. A good amount of what we know about the Persians comes from Herodotus and the Greeks, who were rivals of the Persians. In contrast to the dramatic style of the Greeks, the near eastern societies tended to record the past with straight forward recounting of events (like the high school history that put everyone to sleep with dates and names). A good subtext to this is that history is not "written by the winners" necessarily, but is written by the best story teller. Obviously, your story has to survive in order to be told, but it's hard to disregard a truth in this concept. This becomes more clear when you compare the historical narratives a society chooses. Many in the American South choose to believe the "Lost Cause" narrative of the Civil War, which downplays the role of slavery in the conflict, instead making it a war of personal freedom versus tyrannical federalism. Despite some (baffling) confusion, the South did lose the war, but if that attractive narrative takes hold, a very real part of the past could be forgotten.
Thanks for making this awesome series.
Lol at 10:32 "The difference between [Downton Abbey] and [a Derpy Emoji Pillow]? Maybe really they're more alike than we imagine."
Geez I love you guys. I so appreciate how you look at the nuances of things that so many take for granted.
At the risk of being stoned, your point about history being looked at through the eyes of the author is one of my points about the Bible itself. There are so many interpretations, writers, and editors that 'fact' is obscured. Faith is all that it comes down to. This is not meant to be a religious post, just an observation, no matter what your feelings on it.
ABSOLUTELY!... everything! I work with many history majors and I'm getting them all to see this!
I have been visiting and end up living through the past 15 years in a country on the verge of independence, trying to be an external observer I find fascinating the way that different interpretations of History have clashed, thrown as political weapons. Should they finally achieve independence, not only their future as a community will change, but in the blink of an eye, or the past of a generation, their past will be different and will always had been.
It's like that act of Doublethought of the 1984 book by George Orwell, but less conscious and only visible when is conflicted like in this case. We are all doing it all the time.
I think that the biggest difference between historical fiction and History is the nature of the author. History is a community work of art. It might be some people that are more active or important (historians publishing books and researching, polictical actors advancing one interpretation to fulfill their agenda, social and economic factors pushing things...) but in the end is the community who writes History by believing it. Believing is a creative force.
That's what I think, anyway, very interesting stuff. Thank you!
Despite their similarities, history and historical fiction live in different literary conventions. It is poor history to twist facts to suit a narrative but it is compelling historical fiction to do so.
This also reminds me of the notions that we are all just brains and senses and that our perception of history as different from say Star Wars is only down to the social comstructs we've established for them
I have an ancient history essay on historiography discussing the subjective nature of history. this video is amazing! thanks so much
''in the hopes of not dooming ourselves to repeat our mistakes''?
well it's not working at all.
It's interesting to read history books from different times. I'm currently reading a biography of George Washington written in the 1940s. I'd thought when starting that the life of George Washington isn't different today than it was 70 years ago, but the style of writing biography has changed over time. In previous generations, biography was written as heroic tails of great people, as the author notes himself, but today it's often written from a social science perspective. The book I'm reading is a transition from the older style to a more modern style. He often writes in a way that might seem whimsical by today's standards. He always notes if there aren't recorded facts to support something but he's eager to imagine what it would be like. in addition the social standards have changed greatly from the time of George Washington to the time of the biography to today, so I have to keep in mind not to judge the story by today's or even 1940's standards.
Which brings up the question of the rap opera, Hamilton. Is it history? It certainly reflects individuals who lived and events that occurred but we have to consider the narrative and how different if would be if it had been entitled "Burr" or "Jefferson". Also the story telling style is that of late 20th early 21st century, inner- city (African-American) music, Hip-hop layered over the tradition of European opera with American sensibilities as told by a Latin American.
thumbs up for the Rurouni Kenshin reference
+Ssgt Griggs thumbs down for calling Kamiya Karou Takani Megumi ; )
Another interesting way to look at our relationship with the pas is at an individual level. As many Modernists have explored such as Virginia Woolf in 'To the Lighthouse', memories and nostalgia are reinvented every time we reminisce them. They are influenced by our present to an immeasurable extent depending on mood, scenario, how we may have changed as people and the very reason we are remembering them in the past place. This can be seen when studying history just as much as when we take in culture from 'the past'; like you say with Downton Abbey Michael, our present affects the way we think of the past as we think about ourselves differently. "The past is rather produced in the present" (MCMullan on Beckett's Endgame).
Yes. To pretty much all of this. If I may add one additional thought: the past doesn't repeat itself--"history" does. That is, when we say history repeats itself, it happens not because the same trends repeat, but rather we look into these past events through the lens of current events, and so something else in history that might have little "actual" correlation (whatever that means) might be read as being very similar. We have things close to us in mind, and read these close things into past events, and in so doing "repeat" "history."
It seems to me that both history 'proper' and historical fiction both involve a great deal of interpretation. Where they differ, I believe, is the role that interpretation plays in each individual field. In history proper, historians are trying to present narrative objectively as much as is possible, taking great care not to exaggerate as well as diminish the importance of certain events, people, or places. Historical fiction is less concerned with history proper and more interested in crafting an engaging narrative irrespective of the objectivity. Sure, it will use history proper as a framework, but it will ultimately skew the narrative in such a way that it becomes a conduit for the present zeitgeist. Maybe too this is because as humans, regardless of the time period, many of our concerns are still the same.
+Cooper de Ruiter Are you telling me there is a difference between fiction and non? WOAAAAAAH!
GayDicks420 Yeah, I thought about that after I posted my comment. I feel like I just ended up explaining your thought, although with more words.
For a history class that I am taking this semester, the first book that we had to read was Michelle Ralph Trouillot's "Silencing the Past" that deals precisely with this issue. Highly recommend it. He talks about how silences are built into historical writings on multiple levels and how the silences are necessary for history to work. For that same history class (a class about revolutions in Latin America and the Caribbean) my professor had us read a fiction book called "The Book of Night Women", about enslaved women leading a rebellion in early 19th century Jamaica. What my professor argues is that fiction can often times be better then conventional historical writing in allowing us to understand history. History is heavily restricted by archives that are inherently built by the people who have access to constructing them so certain voices (particularly when going that far back) like black women are definitely not going to be there. A meticulously researched work of fiction like "The Book of Night Women" can often reconstruct such voices better since they are not restricted by archives and proper academic language and can tap into things considered occult (like African traditional religion) and use more language that is more relevant to the narrative (Jamaican Patois in the case of the book above). I would recommend "The Book of Night Women" though be warned it deals heavily with violence faced by enslaved women. Trouillot also touches on the idea of being "fully historical" and how people write history from within history and cannot escape it ever. I would also like to note however that history as a linear narrative is a decidedly modern enlightenment phenomena and is by no means universal. Note Benjamin Whorf's work on Hopi geography and history where he discovers the decidedly different way in which the Hopi perceive time.
As a historian I've got qualms with you saying 'capturing the truth of the past'
One hypothesis about the "wine dark seas" is that the Greeks actually drank blue wine, due to diluting it with strongly alkaline water.
That was my first assumption, why would someone just assume everyone was colorblind...lol critical thought is not strong among historians XD
I can't help but think about how much more I learned about U.S. History from Hamilton, the hit musical, than from every U.S. History class I've ever taken. Even though the musical made some changes to the truth, have been able to learn about, remember, and understand the truths behind those adjustments because I am more invested in the material presented. I have an emotional investment in the show, and that facilitates a better communication of History.
When talking about history, the thing that always interested me is how people of the past viewed their past.
I would like to add to this video by giving a word to the change in history over time. Historiography is the 'history' of what other historians have published. Historiography helps your 'idea' or argument because over time the perception of history changes. Historiography also allows modern historians to see shifts in the way societies viewed history. To use the videos own terms the narrative can be rewritten by the a historian to prove an influence. Such influences include Marxism(IE Late Victorian Holocaust by Mike Davis), Environmentalism(IE Citizen Coke by Bartow Elmore), gender (i.e., Sexual Revolution in Early America by Richard Godbeer), or a survey of a period. All these different ways of viewing history help connect different narratives that did not exist before. Some historians even use old narratives but input new or recent evidence to support the earlier narrative. History has evolved from the notion of objectivism, which is that humans can objectively depict history. Instead, many schools teach historians how to interpret primary sources of an event, and either creates a new narrative or use new evidence or a modern viewpoint to prove a previous narrative.
- A Historian in training.
history major and sometimes creative writer here. love the show. I think the key difference between history and historical fiction is pure scale. a kind of analogy I've been using in explaining why I love history is that its this massive saga where each and every single character is a fully developed human being. also the things that effect history are so, so, so, so numerous its mind boggling. there's no simple, neat, single narrative to account for it all, because there just can't be.
also, you mention how people will "fill in the gaps" of certain information, typically by going with what they already know, and I don't think that can easily be applied to History proper. take the roman idea of sexuality for example, its not about who you want to have sex with, but rather how you have sex with a person, which is rather different from our own ideas about sexuality. and there's all sorts of other instances of this, where ideas existed that we either have difficulty comprehending, or kind of can't because of our frame of reference.
Wow, no mention of Hamilton. I'm kinda surprised.
I KNOW! Hamilton fits this theme perfectly. The idea that history says as much about the present as it says about back then is the theme imbued within every fiber of Hamilton's makeup. I would argue that the theme fits Hamilton better than Downton Abbey, even.
The main difference between historical past and fictional history is that we have knowledge of events from multiple perspectives take people like Oliver Cromwell if we read Irish history they might say he's a villain for murdering their country men while he English are told he.s a hero for serving the crown. A show like Dowton Abbey is presenting us with the authors view of the characters that live there and were to make our own judgement while a historian is there to present facts. You could say that the propaganda at the time is he only way we may ever see a country's true emotions.
When I first saw the title of this video, I thought of "A Story Told"from the "Count of Monte Cristo Musical", performed by Patrick Stanke, Mathias Edenborn and Mark Seibert on the Concept album released in 2008. Written by Frank Wildhorn.
Mainly the part in the lyrics where it says:
"Because history is a story told by the winners of the fight
You imply a little
Lie a little
Testifying
Try a little"
and then also,
"History’s a story told by the people who survive
Let me sign and then initial
It’s the truth if it’s officially the story"
What you're talking about is called historiography, which I would describe as the inherent postmodernism of history. But it isn't just Downton Abby, even that American History textbook has a postmodern unreliable narrator who is intentionally and unintentionally distorting the narrative. Much of the discourse between historians these days is disagreement over historiography. For example, historian Rudi Matthee was heftily criticised for his recent book about the "decline" of Safavid Iran for following what is known as an orientalist approach, failing to use important recently uncovered sources like the waqf documents and sticking to a "decline" narrative that is somewhat dubious. His work was a response to the historiographical approach taken by Baki Tezcan, which was, in turn, a response to earlier orientalist histories that flattened all three Gunpowder Empires into a simplistic narrative based on the idea that after a great leader died, the empire declined (this is somewhat arguable in the case of the Safavids, but laughable in the case of the Ottomans and Mughals). This video is exactly what the study of history is.
+T.R. Salsman lol wut
Which part do you not get? Maybe I can explain better.
I got it all. What I don't get is why are you calling what he is talking about ''historiography''.
Historiography is the proper academic name for what he's talking about. When historians discuss the postmodernism of history, the term they use is historiography.
:facepalm:
If anyone has ever seen the sea at sunset they would understand 'wine dark'
Can't help but notice that Downton Abbey was next to the postmodern hat (which was used to describe it) while the history textbook sits next to the rock fact plush....
Gotta say, this was one of the best episodes in a while. 10/10, would watch again.
I was wondering if y'all would ever do anything about theater stuff. I am currently taking a class called "Theater and the creative process" all about this way of making theater called "Moment Work". It was really spearheaded by the Tectonic Theater Company (You would know them from their play The Laramie Project.) Some of the stuff that we are talking about would fit right in with this channel's vibe.
Just thought I should mention that I would really enjoy an episode about theater, the special power of live performance, and the ways that theater deals with "reality" on stage.
Hegel interpreted history differently. Not merely as something to avoid repeating but rather with each era holding a special kind of wisdom that we should find useful today.
valid points and gives a really insightful understanding of history and the past.
how the hell did you make historiography so interesting
Historical texts usually have the burden of having different accounts and narratives for the same events, occasionally leading to some confusion about what actually took place. One account considered something a protest, while another considered the same event a riot, and suddenly we're left to try to reconcile the dissonance, leading to history being formed by opinion ("history books are written by the victors").
Historical fiction (imo) has the benefit of not necessarily having outside opinions. narratives can be told, while having the freedom to not be discredited by other sources, or having conflicting views of events. Essentially, the show has only one creator, whereas history has many.
I think the most interesting example of this is In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, the true crime novel, and also the film Capote, which includes the events of the book and Truman's role in it and what happened to him afterward. When Capote was writing the novel, he was writing it in real time, making it a historical document of the murderers. However, he uses many techniques to make the audience empathize with the murderers and understand - as much as they can - their perspective. He also does not include his own role in the trials, how he footed the bill for their lawyers and how he faithfully visited them through their stay on death row. The (fantastic) film adaptation of Capote's life does this and also makes it seem like this story is the reason why he killed himself, which may or may not be true. Both these things tell the story of what actually happened but also take it a step further. In Cold Blood, by excluding the author's hand in the narrative and exploring the psychology of the murderers, and Capote by including it, focusing on his relationship with the murderers and his personality.
The past is what happend, History is what people precieve from it.
The blue deer thing would probably make more sense in reference to accents. Like in a work that takes place in England in 1502; while reading we assume that they sounded like English people do now whereas they actually very likely did not. We think that since that's just the way it is to us and we don't think that it would've been different
This reminds me of a line from the documentary Derrida, where Derrida says something along the line that we only know 3 things about Aristotle, 1. He was Born, 2. He thought, 3. He died, everything else is anncdotle.
1:38 LITERALLY the book that we used in our Pre WW1 History Class in highschool.
Amazing million dollar show idea for you. A "Last man on earth" style show based on the concept of your current reality is the past of a future-present, and coping with being past, right now.
one thing that might be helpful to think about in this conversation is Foucault's work on re imagining how we consider the past. to paraphrase, Foucault sees the way we view the past is as a worse version that we have progressed past and are currently doing better. he pushes back against this notion, arguing that we should think critically about whether or not progress necessarily means better.
(woops) history as Foucault thinks about it does not have to be entirely accurate, but rather we should think critically about the way things were done and consider why they have changed and what the larger cultural and social effects of those changes might be.
+Noah Siffin What you describe is knows as whiggish history, or whiggish trajectory (that things get easier the close we get to our own time). The historical profession is well past this way of seeing the past and writing about it though.
+The Serial Hobbyist Girl I agree that this is not the primary mode of thinking about history today though I would say that there is still quite a lot of it in academic circles and despite claims of things having been better in our childhoods it remains the primary way of thinking about more distant histories in broader non-academic circles (ie for everyone else). and I would also say that Foucault (who was heavily inspired by nietzsche) was a powerful force in shifting the way academics approach history, keeping in mind he was writing in the 60s and 70s. considering we are talking about the ways in which history is constructed and recounted I would say he's an important thinker on the topic.
What I was missing was the fact that History is written by 'the winners'. While history tries to accurately record the past, it will mostly be from the perspective of the people who were able to do so, aka the winners. This can introduce a bias, making some parties look better and some less. Or even removing things from history. This is a clear difference between past and history. There are important events and people in the past that never made it into history.
I was expecting you to mention Hyden White, my brother is a historian and he wrote his tesis about him and he explains a lot of the stuff you explained here.
+YuKi Mekishiko every historian talks about it, though.
Maybe they talk about it but not everyone agrees. There are a lot of historians that criticase Hyden White because they don't believe history can be seen as an art form or as a subjetive narrative.
"We accept the reality with which we are presented."
As to the question asked in the title (which is a bit of a loaded question in itself depending on your philosophy of time), my view on History is that it is simply a documentation of past events. A complete and totally accurate documentation of the past is impossible, however as alluded to in the example about a history of Elvis. In addition to incompleteness, errors are common and we often have no way to retrieve information from the past other than historical documents or verbal histories which are also incomplete and error riddled. Sometimes artifacts can allow us to gain more information which we can incorporate into a history as well (vikings on North America for instance).
Thus, The Past is the collection of all events prior to this moment and History is how we document those events with all its errors, incompleteness, and fictionalized occurrences. Also, although we often think of History as a narrative, it doesn't have to be. A chronological "this date in history" type of history is just as valid as "world history", except the first feels a bit disjointed and the second generally is presented with a narrative. Both describe the same thing just like the number after one and the number before three both describe the number two.
As far as the difference between doing "actual history" and "making historical fiction", I see historical fiction in a similar light as science fiction. When done well, the setting is believable and that can work well to help tell a story, but doing "actual science" is nothing like "making science fiction". That said, sometimes actual science has come out of making science fiction (the black hole in Interstellar for instance), and I'm betting real historical artifacts have been discovered as a direct result of people trying to make historical fiction. Maybe historical fiction can be accurate enough to portray what life would have actually been like in the past, just like science fiction can accurately portray what life will be like in the future.
I see the difference between historical documents and fictional works generally as multiple accounts from different authors of past events described in historical documents, as important or noteworthy past events would have more witnesses that would want to document said events. And fictional works usually come from one mind or a collaboration of several minds to form one fictional work, regardless of the work being or not being historically accurate in essence.
So this is a topic I've had to devote a lot of time to in my studies of archaeology on a couple of levels. On one level, archaeologists in a way compete with historians, for example some historians like to use the phrase "Archaeology is the study of proving what historians already know", whereas archaeology in and of itself is somewhat dismissive of history as a whole. Now, this is not to say that historians and archaeologists don't work together and certainly not that they don't work together well. Archaeologists use history to inform their studies and interpretations constantly, and the same can be said of historians; you would be hard pressed to find a historian who completely ignores the archaeological record. However by nature, archaeology challenges history by focusing on the interpretation of the material record as opposed to simply accepting what has been written; in large part because of the simple fact that people lie, whether by omission, ignorance or worst of all, intent. This focus on material vs. text has lead to many discoveries which challenge traditional views of the past, but these discoveries are no less interpretive. This has never been more true than in the recent past with the rise of postmodernism and within the archaeological sphere, gendered archaeology.
Gendered archaeology seeks to remove preconceived notions (largely western views) of gender from interpretations of the past, because outside of the western world (and sometimes even within it) it can be difficult to prove that these social constructs existed in the past as they do in the present, and in a completely different social context which writes the books (coming full circle on how histories can lie). Now, these studies are not necessarily based on what we might consider "contemporary" ideas of gender, as gendered archaeology really has its beginning in 2nd wave feminist archaeologists who decided they wanted to challenge the world views which informed the biases that traditionally male academia placed women in over the course of history. There's a lot of interesting discussions to have here, but in the interest of time we'll jump right to the point. Archaeology due to its ability to challenge the written record made it an attractive medium for rediscovering the past of women, which was a subject largely ignored in earlier archaeological pursuits. Gendered archaeology has since become a widely accepted approach due to both its confirmation in the archaeological record and its ability to open up new lines of interpretation. What gendered archaeology and its acceptance shows is the importance within the field of multiple interpretations of the past because the fatalistic flaw of archaeology in its pursuit of the "objectively true past" is that each and every archaeologist knows that no true past exists, all we can do is look at the evidence and make our best guess. Our best guesses can always be wrong however, and each and every one (including gendered archaeology) is informed by biases present in the researcher which are informed by the time and place they live in, so understanding the past almost becomes the art of balancing multiple interpretations, which in recent years has seen the inclusion of public and community interpretations of the past through community projects. This "no true past" has bled over into Cultural Resource Management (CRM) through the redefinition of "authenticity" with the Nara Document of 1994.
So just as a quick explanation, Cultural Resource Management deals largely with heritage and how we can accurately portray the past en masse to the public through tourism for the most part, as well as maintaining historical sites, historical districts, curation of material culture, and in more recent years maintaining cultural landscapes and intangible cultural heritage. Authenticity is the sort of nebulous metric which gauges the accuracy of the past, and there is just a ludicrous amount of literature on interpretations of authenticity itself, so I can't really hope to do justice to this discussion, but what I can tell you is that its redefinition became a necessity with the legitimization of areas which were more difficult to curate, for example, the aforementioned cultural landscapes and intangible cultural heritage. Where material culture is somewhat easier to curate (You take an object, you put it in a glass case, it is now safe for as long as it can be.), built heritage, site features and the practices of the past are increasingly difficult to manage. Buildings and monuments are subject to weather and ware which compromise their integrity, which in turn harms their ability to demonstrate the "authentic" experience of their time period. Landscapes continually evolve on a level which park managers can simply not control; and even if they could, would that even be an accurate representation of the landscape? And practices are entirely subject to the people performing them, who come from different time periods and social understandings altogether. The major change we see in the spirit of authenticity with its redefinition is the idea that authenticity is subject to time, a building's history is not simply the history of its construction, but of its use over the years and its impact on the people who have inhabited that place, as well as restorations which focus on using practices akin to those of initial construction. In the same vein cultural landscapes are more defined by their relationships over time with humanity, which has had a deep impact on the aboriginal communities in that this allows for them to use modern technology in cultural practices without persecution for in-authenticity. For intangible cultural heritage we acknowledge that cultural practices are as much a representation of their time as they are of a long line of constantly evolving practices, and that their authentic meaning are always in flux. Each of these further accentuates the idea that there is no true past, heritage is something we create for ourselves, and probably says more about our relationship to the past than "true history."
I'd say that's about enough of that, though there's certainly much more discussion to be had. If you made it this far, thanks for listening to me gush about archaeology.
Nicely done. This was my focus back in college in VT. I actually have a collection of history textbooks and compendiums of primary sources dating back to the 1880s. It is fascinating to see what got left in, and left out, based on the publication date - it is totally written for the time. Second: two really good books on this subject are Peter Novick's 'That Noble Dream' which deals with objectivity in American history (spoilers: it doesn't exist), and, for the really abstract thinkers in the group, check out Hayden White's 'Metahistory' which deals with these issues of narrative and tone, not comparing how we write history, but even more removed: how we write *historiography* (hence the 'meta').
Good points to remember in this one that were downplayed a bit include the political power that semantics regarding history has. To quote Orwell, " He who controls the 'past' controls the future, he who controls the present controls the 'past.'" Which events we pay attention to from recorded sources also can alter perception of how the past was. How much attention do you place on things such as McCarthyism & Black Book projects like MK Ultra in a study of The Cold War? Was Tim McVeigh's Oklahoma City Bombing a crime or an act of domestic terror? The answers to each change how the reactions are understood.
I think this idea of history speaks to our brains, and our need for patterns and meaning. We human animals are wired for pattern recognition, the way we approach the past is no different. It is our responsibility to not silence people who find different patterns or meaning in the past, but to discuss it, and wrestle with it, and allow ideas about the past to shift (I.E Columbus). The older I get, the more certain I am that the absolute truth so many of us strive for is more nebulous, grey, and elusive then we would like to believe. As in, we would like history and/or the past to be a single place, when in reality, it's more of a receding horizon.