Please respond to at least 2 of the following questions.
1. Can one talk meaningfully of a historical fact? How can we speak with certainty about anything in the past?
2. In what ways has technology affected the study of history? How have the methods of gaining evidence and the means of communicating historical interpretation, for example, been affected by technological development? Can we now observe the past more directly?
3. What is the role of the historian? Does the historian record history, or create it? Can the historian be free of bias in the selection and interpretation of material? Could it be reasonably argued that the personal understandings of historians, despite their possible bias, is necessary or even desirable in the interpretation and recording of history? Is the power of persuasion a characteristic of a good historian?
4. To what extent is the very nature of this Area of Knowledge affected by being about the past? In what ways do other Areas of Knowledge also concern themselves with the past? Is all knowledge, in a sense, historical knowledge?
1. Can one talk meaningfully of a historical fact? How can we speak with certainty about anything in the past?
2. In what ways has technology affected the study of history? How have the methods of gaining evidence and the means of communicating historical interpretation, for example, been affected by technological development? Can we now observe the past more directly?
3. What is the role of the historian? Does the historian record history, or create it? Can the historian be free of bias in the selection and interpretation of material? Could it be reasonably argued that the personal understandings of historians, despite their possible bias, is necessary or even desirable in the interpretation and recording of history? Is the power of persuasion a characteristic of a good historian?
4. To what extent is the very nature of this Area of Knowledge affected by being about the past? In what ways do other Areas of Knowledge also concern themselves with the past? Is all knowledge, in a sense, historical knowledge?
