Nature of Historical Knowledge

Nature of Historical Knowledge PDF

Author: Michael Stanford

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9780631152910

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In this original argument, Michael Stanford proposes a single structure to incorporate all aspects of history -events, evidence, interpretations, books and lectures, popular ideas and social effects - into one comprehensive whole. Stanford grounds his study in the common-sense meaning of the word, 'structure'; he then composes one paradigm encompassing the organization of history as a whole and the organization of each of its parts. Dr Stanford locates the poblems of studying story, both philosophical and practical. He clarifies the issues and exemplifies the current thinking of both historians and philosophers.

The Anatomy of Historical Knowledge

The Anatomy of Historical Knowledge PDF

Author: Maurice Mandelbaum

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2019-12-01

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1421431971

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Originally published in 1977. In this major work, an overview of the structure of historical writing, Maurice Mandelbaum clarifies some of the problems concerning the nature of history as a discipline, of what constitutes explanation in history, and whether historical knowledge is as reliable as other forms of knowledge. The work is divided into three parts. The first part provides an analytic account of different types of historical inquiry. The second treats at length the nature of causal explanation in everyday life and in science and considers the relation between causes and laws. The final part analyzes the concept of objectivity and estimates both the extent to which the inquiries of historians can be said to be objective and the limits of that objectivity in some types of historical accounts.

Historical Knowledge

Historical Knowledge PDF

Author: Susanna Fellman

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2011-10-18

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 144383484X

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Historical Knowledge approaches the topic of historical knowledge in depth and from various angles. It seeks to offer theoretical and methodological building blocks for the use of anyone pursuing historical research. This book brings novel insights into classic and topical issues currently under debate: the importance of theory in historical thinking, the dialectic of “text” and “annotation”, the actor and observer levels, the relationship between the general and the individual, the issue of comparison, and the problem of sporadic sources and of understanding the singularity of each one. The overall theme of the book, the possibility of historical knowledge, reflects the very issue that makes historical research distinctive: the challenges of evidence and the problems, both concrete and conceptual, with deciphering and interpreting remnants of the past. This book refreshes the discussion about sources and proper evidence, two issues that the linguistic turn and the postmodern challenge pushed into the background. The book addresses these issues in an easily accessible way and serves as an introduction and guide to the role of theory, method and evidence in historical research not only for students and scholars of history, but also for anyone outside the field with an interest in the topic. Historical Knowledge is the first book to include texts by the three eminent historians, Professors Natalie Zemon Davis, Carlo Ginzburg and Giovanni Levi. The other contributors, Professors Risto Alapuro, Janken Myrdal and Matti Peltonen, are active debaters in current theoretical and methodo-logical discussion.

Historical Knowledge, Historical Error

Historical Knowledge, Historical Error PDF

Author: Allan Megill

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2007-02

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0226518302

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In the past thirty years, historians have broadened the scope of their discipline to include many previously neglected topics and perspectives. They have chronicled language, madness, gender, and sexuality and have experimented with new forms of presentation. They have turned to the histories of non-Western peoples and to the troubled relations between “the West” and the rest. Allan Megill welcomes these developments, but he also suggests that there is now confusion among historians about what counts as a justified account of the past. In Historical Knowledge, Historical Error, Megill dispels some of the confusion. Here, he discusses issues of narrative, objectivity, and memory. He attacks what he sees as irresponsible uses of evidence while accepting the art of speculation, which incomplete evidence forces upon historians. Along the way, he offers succinct accounts of the epistemological road historians have traveled from Herodotus and Thucydides through Leopold von Ranke and Alexis de Tocqueville, and on to Hayden White, Natalie Zemon Davis, and Lynn Hunt.

Times of History, Times of Nature

Times of History, Times of Nature PDF

Author: Anders Ekström

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2022-02-11

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 1800733240

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As climate change becomes an increasingly important part of public discourse, the relationship between time in nature and history is changing. Nature can no longer be considered a slow and immobile background to human history, and the future can no longer be viewed as open and detached from the past. Times of History, Times of Nature engages with this historical shift in temporal sensibilities through a combination of detailed case studies and synthesizing efforts. Focusing on the history of knowledge, media theory, and environmental humanities, this volume explores the rich and nuanced notions of time and temporality that have emerged in response to climate change.

The Nature of the Book

The Nature of the Book PDF

Author: Adrian Johns

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-05-15

Total Pages: 779

ISBN-13: 0226401235

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In The Nature of the Book, a tour de force of cultural history, Adrian Johns constructs an entirely original and vivid picture of print culture and its many arenas—commercial, intellectual, political, and individual. "A compelling exposition of how authors, printers, booksellers and readers competed for power over the printed page. . . . The richness of Mr. Johns's book lies in the splendid detail he has collected to describe the world of books in the first two centuries after the printing press arrived in England."—Alberto Manguel, Washington Times "[A] mammoth and stimulating account of the place of print in the history of knowledge. . . . Johns has written a tremendously learned primer."—D. Graham Burnett, New Republic "A detailed, engrossing, and genuinely eye-opening account of the formative stages of the print culture. . . . This is scholarship at its best."—Merle Rubin, Christian Science Monitor "The most lucid and persuasive account of the new kind of knowledge produced by print. . . . A work to rank alongside McLuhan."—John Sutherland, The Independent "Entertainingly written. . . . The most comprehensive account available . . . well documented and engaging."—Ian Maclean, Times Literary Supplement

The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation

The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation PDF

Author: Paul A. Roth

Publisher: Northwestern University Press

Published: 2019-10-15

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 0810140896

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In The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation, Paul A. Roth resolves disputes persisting since the nineteenth century about the scientific status of history. He does this by showing why historical explanations must take the form of a narrative, making their logic explicit, and revealing how the rational evaluation of narrative explanation becomes possible. Roth situates narrative explanations within a naturalistic framework and develops a nonrealist (irrealist) metaphysics and epistemology of history—arguing that there exists no one fixed past, but many pasts. The book includes a novel reading of Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, showing how it offers a narrative explanation of theory change in science. This book will be of interest to researchers in historiography, philosophy of history, philosophy of science, philosophy of social science, and epistemology.

Before Nature

Before Nature PDF

Author: Francesca Rochberg

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2017-01-01

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 022640627X

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In the modern West, we take for granted that what we call the “natural world” confronts us all and always has—but Before Nature explores that almost unimaginable time when there was no such conception of “nature”—no word, reference, or sense for it. Before the concept of nature formed over the long history of European philosophy and science, our ancestors in ancient Assyria and Babylonia developed an inquiry into the world in a way that is kindred to our modern science. With Before Nature, Francesca Rochberg explores that Assyro-Babylonian knowledge tradition and shows how it relates to the entire history of science. From a modern, Western perspective, a world not conceived somehow within the framework of physical nature is difficult—if not impossible—to imagine. Yet, as Rochberg lays out, ancient investigations of regularity and irregularity, norms and anomalies clearly established an axis of knowledge between the knower and an intelligible, ordered world. Rochberg is the first scholar to make a case for how exactly we can understand cuneiform knowledge, observation, prediction, and explanation in relation to science—without recourse to later ideas of nature. Systematically examining the whole of Mesopotamian science with a distinctive historical and methodological approach, Before Nature will open up surprising new pathways for studying the history of science.

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