4 ms·

Maybe it is a little late in the day but I just read that and I don't think I got anything out of it. Some people say it existed and some say it didn't. What's

Maybe it is a little late in the day but I just read that and I don't think I got anything out of it. Some people say it existed and some say it didn't. What's the point?

DubiousPusher 11y ago
When studying history, there is utility in developing and understanding frameworks for grouping historical events. It's also important to understand that these models are often flawed. If you are interested in history as a series of facts, then this notion isn't particularly useful. But if you are curious as to how our modern societies came to be, you will endlessly scour history for patterns demonstrating how our era is different and how it is not from other eras, how the eras leading up to it were different and how similar eras may or may not have flourished in bygone ages.
- smacktoward 11y ago
  It is especially interesting when you consider that the general consensus is that we are entering a period of dramatic climate change, and the crisis/crises in question took place during the "little ice age" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age), another period of dramatic climate change. If you're the type who looks for lessons in history, it raises some obvious questions: are the dislocations, wars and struggles that came from the privation of the little ice age something we'll be seeing in our future too? Are there things about warming that make it more or less prone to these types of problems than global cooling was? Are there mistakes people made back then that we can avoid making?
- aaronem 11y ago
  > developing and understanding frameworks for grouping historical events This is called "historiography", and were it more commonly taught in US primary and secondary schools, fewer Americans would think of "history" as being dull -- an endless stream of bare facts lacking context is indeed dull as dishwater; it's in the drawing and analysis of narrative that all the interest lies.
  - amyjess 11y ago
    I've always felt that people would enjoy history more if teachers would remember that history contains story.
    - scarmig 11y ago
      In fact, etymology-wise history preceded and begat story. It was only as an analogy to history that we invented that signifier for the concept of story.
      - amyjess 11y ago
        Actually, I wasn't talking about the etymology at all, just providing a nice mnemonic for educators to remember when deciding how to teach history. I do find etymological stuff like that fascinating, though.
  - anigbrowl 11y ago
    I too would like it taught in schools, but I also think its important to have reliable sources for the bare facts. It depresses me when I go to the history section in a bookstore and see how much of it is given over to conflicting viewpoints of the same events, so there's (almost) different versions of history available depending on what you already like to believe - conservative history over here, liberal history over there, progressive history in this corner and so on.
    - aaronem 11y ago
      > reliable sources for the bare facts A laudable goal, but one I'm not sure can be achieved. It's often difficult or impossible to obtain accurate reporting of today's events, and, at least in my experience, the passage of time does nothing to simplify the task.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > I too would like it taught in schools, but I also think its important to have reliable sources for the bare facts. No such thing is possible. Facts are inferred unreliably from physical evidence and (at best) primary sources which are written by people who (claim to have) direct experience, but who also write with agendas. > It depresses me when I go to the history section in a bookstore and see how much of it is given over to conflicting viewpoints of the same events, so there's (almost) different versions of history available depending on what you already like to believe I don't know how you'd expect it to be otherwise; if you look at first-person accounts of current events, its clear that agendas and biases shape them, and history is largely what is pieced together from those kinds of accounts (often fragments of those kinds of accounts!) plus fragmentary physical evidence. Even if historians didn't have their own biases, there's multiple self-narratives that can be reconstructed to explain the evidence historians work from and no foolproof way to choose the right one from among those.

Maybe it is a little late in the day but I just read that and I don't think I got anything out of it. Some people say it existed and some say it didn't. What's the point?

DubiousPusher 11y ago

When studying history, there is utility in developing and understanding frameworks for grouping historical events. It's also important to understand that these models are often flawed. If you are interested in history as a series of facts, then this notion isn't particularly useful. But if you are curious as to how our modern societies came to be, you will endlessly scour history for patterns demonstrating how our era is different and how it is not from other eras, how the eras leading up to it were different and how similar eras may or may not have flourished in bygone ages.

smacktoward 11y ago
It is especially interesting when you consider that the general consensus is that we are entering a period of dramatic climate change, and the crisis/crises in question took place during the "little ice age" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age), another period of dramatic climate change. If you're the type who looks for lessons in history, it raises some obvious questions: are the dislocations, wars and struggles that came from the privation of the little ice age something we'll be seeing in our future too? Are there things about warming that make it more or less prone to these types of problems than global cooling was? Are there mistakes people made back then that we can avoid making?
aaronem 11y ago
> developing and understanding frameworks for grouping historical events This is called "historiography", and were it more commonly taught in US primary and secondary schools, fewer Americans would think of "history" as being dull -- an endless stream of bare facts lacking context is indeed dull as dishwater; it's in the drawing and analysis of narrative that all the interest lies.
- amyjess 11y ago
  I've always felt that people would enjoy history more if teachers would remember that history contains story.
  - scarmig 11y ago
    In fact, etymology-wise history preceded and begat story. It was only as an analogy to history that we invented that signifier for the concept of story.
    - amyjess 11y ago
      Actually, I wasn't talking about the etymology at all, just providing a nice mnemonic for educators to remember when deciding how to teach history. I do find etymological stuff like that fascinating, though.
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  I too would like it taught in schools, but I also think its important to have reliable sources for the bare facts. It depresses me when I go to the history section in a bookstore and see how much of it is given over to conflicting viewpoints of the same events, so there's (almost) different versions of history available depending on what you already like to believe - conservative history over here, liberal history over there, progressive history in this corner and so on.
  - aaronem 11y ago
    > reliable sources for the bare facts A laudable goal, but one I'm not sure can be achieved. It's often difficult or impossible to obtain accurate reporting of today's events, and, at least in my experience, the passage of time does nothing to simplify the task.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > I too would like it taught in schools, but I also think its important to have reliable sources for the bare facts. No such thing is possible. Facts are inferred unreliably from physical evidence and (at best) primary sources which are written by people who (claim to have) direct experience, but who also write with agendas. > It depresses me when I go to the history section in a bookstore and see how much of it is given over to conflicting viewpoints of the same events, so there's (almost) different versions of history available depending on what you already like to believe I don't know how you'd expect it to be otherwise; if you look at first-person accounts of current events, its clear that agendas and biases shape them, and history is largely what is pieced together from those kinds of accounts (often fragments of those kinds of accounts!) plus fragmentary physical evidence. Even if historians didn't have their own biases, there's multiple self-narratives that can be reconstructed to explain the evidence historians work from and no foolproof way to choose the right one from among those.