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Or how women’s contribution to sciences were continually overlooked and sometimes purposefully hidden, going along with the social/political status of women. H

Or how women’s contribution to sciences were continually overlooked and sometimes purposefully hidden, going along with the social/political status of women. History is stories we tell ourselves about the world, stories backed by the evidence not yet lost to entropy. But which stories we choose to tell and which to forget — and what records to preserve — are always influenced by politics.

kazinator 2y ago
You two point out something important: a history that appears apolitical on the surface can have a social/cultural/economic/political bias in it (whether conscious or not) by omission or emphasis. As someone who was born and raised in behind the Iron Curtain of the Eastern Bloc, for instance, I remember the Periodic Table of the Elements being taught as "Mendeleev's Table". That's a political stance: crediting "Us" as much as possible for every development rather than "Them". Political bias in ostensibly apolitical historic storytelling, is not quite the same thing as historic storytelling from an explicitly political angle.
- tossandthrow 2y ago
  > Political bias in ostensibly apolitical historic storytelling, is not quite the same thing as historic storytelling from an explicitly political angle. It sounds like you are talking about intent rather than politics - you example does, however, seem to be made with intent.
  - labster 2y ago
    I think they’re just not used to thinking about historical study. Even in science, do you focus on the Great Men like Einstein and Newton, or do you choose an Annales approach like Connections? Neither is wrong, but there are right and left overtones to these approaches. The way you assign causes is not always clear; even events themselves are socially constructed. History is a map to the past, but the map is not the territory.
- tremon 2y ago
  Why do you assume that table was named differently in other parts of the world? I lived on the west side of that curtain, and I was also taught it was called Mendeleev's Table.

kazinator 2y ago

You two point out something important: a history that appears apolitical on the surface can have a social/cultural/economic/political bias in it (whether conscious or not) by omission or emphasis. As someone who was born and raised in behind the Iron Curtain of the Eastern Bloc, for instance, I remember the Periodic Table of the Elements being taught as "Mendeleev's Table". That's a political stance: crediting "Us" as much as possible for every development rather than "Them". Political bias in ostensibly apolitical historic storytelling, is not quite the same thing as historic storytelling from an explicitly political angle.

tossandthrow 2y ago
> Political bias in ostensibly apolitical historic storytelling, is not quite the same thing as historic storytelling from an explicitly political angle. It sounds like you are talking about intent rather than politics - you example does, however, seem to be made with intent.
- labster 2y ago
  I think they’re just not used to thinking about historical study. Even in science, do you focus on the Great Men like Einstein and Newton, or do you choose an Annales approach like Connections? Neither is wrong, but there are right and left overtones to these approaches. The way you assign causes is not always clear; even events themselves are socially constructed. History is a map to the past, but the map is not the territory.
tremon 2y ago
Why do you assume that table was named differently in other parts of the world? I lived on the west side of that curtain, and I was also taught it was called Mendeleev's Table.