E. H. Carr Believes Everyone Draws Their Own Conclusions in His Book, The Historian and His Facts, and Causation in History

This paper deals with ways history can be interpreted and influences different interpretations have on society and individuals. This is explored through

I think the past will always be extremely relevant. Life is full of billions of possibilities and it’s hard to make choices sometimes, by knowing even a little bit about the past, you’re much more likely to end up where you want to be. You can draw on situations in the past to help you make decisions about situations in the present. Yes, there are a lot of things that are extremely different now, but there have always been times in history where things had just become extremely different. When fire was discovered, when soap was invented, when electricity was discovered, when the telephone was invented, indoor plumbing, cars, computers, theory of

The article “History Still Matters” by Bill Moyers expresses some important concerns in our societies over the loss of interest in history. Throughout the article Moyers explains the loss of interest but also shows the reader the subject is crucial for societies to progress. He uses deeper meanings to further understand the importance of history as well as expressing the reasons he thinks cultures have lost interest past events. The author also mentions that although people find no relations to history in today’s world, there are conflicts that can resemble current problems. It is also imperative to realize history has assembled our concurrent world. For those reasons we can have our own outlook and interpretations of history to further understand the progression and stage we are currently in.

“I don’t understand why I have to take this class. All that old history stuff has no relevance to my life, and it is a waste of time to fool with it. My life today is more important than the lives of all those dead and boring people.” This remark is said more frequently than we realize. History is a combination of events that created our present and future today. The past it what simply gives our present it’s value. Another way to look at history is it can be compared to our ancestry line. Without our ancestors we wouldn’t have the make-up of genes that we do today. For example, the Columbian exchange is one of the events in history that has really impacted our world. Not only did one change come from the event but a variety including food, plants, animals, goods and knowledge. History also exposes knowledge to us. It is the resource that allows us to better our lives and expand our knowledge. Believe it or not, our life we peruse everyday consist of history. Including languages, we inherited, religions that weren’t just created on the spot, technologies that have been upgraded in the past years, and the clothing we decided to put on our backs everyday that has evolved from different materials to different fittings. The world has evolved in many ways in the past and it continues to evolve.

History is such a significant thing in the United Sates, and to our counterparts all over around the world. It has many purposes that help advance us, and it creates a source to learn from what was successful and unsuccessful. History in simpler terms is a preservation of thought during a certain period of time, documented by a person. This is why, it is important to think about how history has currently been documented and written. Often the source of our history comes from a person on one side, which usually is the more privileged side. This privileged side is able to fabricate a perfected image of themselves, and leave out the details of people with different perspectives. This is why I agree strongly with Robert Zinn’s Quote on history, and I believe that because of the amount of subjectivity in history there is not a such thing as impartial history.

Why is it that knowing our past history is so important to our society? Would it be easier to just leave what is meant to be in the past, in the past and focus on the present and future? These are questions that historians would never dare ask because history has formed what is considered our present, without it people would not know how ancient Greece came to be or when America was founded. It’s not every day that there is someone that has the courage to stand out in society, it’s usually about following the rules and falling in line with what is considered normal. When one steps out of line people will listen or wonder as to what it is for. History is made every single day from new laws being put into place to abnormal movements. We take

History is the totality of all past human events, and historiography is the written record of what is known about our lives and societies. In the recent past, history lessons were meant to convey a certain patriotism or to turn an immigrant into a “true American,” but today too many historians are using historical analysis for political purposes. This probably dates to the tumultuous times of the 1960s. Gordon Wood offers a prescription for the proper use of history. Shunning the ideologues of today, he believes historians should “seek to study past events not to make trans-historical generalizations about human behavior but to understand those events as they actually were, in all their peculiar contexts and circumstances.”

Knowledge of the past helps us learn from mistakes people made, keep the people who will protect our future in power, and make better

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” -George Santayana (as originally written). This much has always been true to those who study the seemingly extinguished conflicts of the former world. The undeniable fact of it is, history can and will repeat itself, lest society seeks to learn from it. In order for society to learn from the tragedies of yesteryear, certain changes must take place, because change is essential for growth - which in turn fuels further change: a fundamental cycle that society must commence. Without change and growth, humanity is thrown into a state of chaos and destruction; one’s logical thinking may get the best of them. In order to grasp control over the recurrences of history, Some supposedly

Some people think there is no reason to know about the past, their excuses are “Oh, well it already happened, there’s nothing we can do about it” or “They’re already dead so it doesn’t really matter anyways”. But it really does matter, without learning what happened in the past we will make the same mistakes over and over again. Why do you think we have to learn about all the wars and what caused them? It’s so that everyone knows what mistakes were made so that it doesn’t happen again or what could happen when everyone isn’t treated equally. We basically learn lessons without having to suffer through mistakes that people in the past have made. It has to do with something like when we make really big mistakes, sometimes it haunts us forever and we want to make sure we never make the same mistake again. Without learning about the past, more people would still think certain things are okay.

Cliché as it may be, the phrase, "history always repeats itself" is more or less a universal truth. Even if the world today looks and feels different from the world our parents and grandparents grew up in, basic issues and societal foundations remain the same.

Our world is a rich and amazing environment with a vibrant past, present, and quite possibly future, and hundreds and thousands of years ago, we humans took it upon ourselves to record the events of importance that happen over time. However, each person has their own unique perspective, influenced by experiences, childhood, belief systems and more, and each of these aspects of our personality affect how we view and record historical events. It is inevitable that we will take sides -- it’s what people do. Still for the sake of history, historians try to remain objective. However, sometimes people want opinions. In these cases, experienced persons might publish professional, personal beliefs about an important historical or political event.

History comes from the thoughts of people from the past. The history of someone or something can be seen as a story. When telling a story you decide what should be put in the story and what should not be put in it. Along with deciding what goes into the story you also decide what point of view or perspective the story will have. Because of history being like a story it can sometimes be bias towards certain people or events. Sometimes history does not mainly matter on the truth but on the value of the story. A sum of historians see history as being a Western tradition. This definition of history might discredit or dispute some history. An example of this might be the Mexican annals. Mexican annals which was a yearly record of events in chronological order. This view of history can cause problems with cultures that did not have a form of narrative or writing.

The past is an essential part of growing societies and the natural world around us. Without small, memorable fragments in earlier years, there would be no beginning to the growing building blocks we've continued to developed as history.

However, Carr rebuts this, as he states that ‘the belief in a hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but one which it is very hard to eradicate.’ This statement explains the misconception that history is made up entirely of facts without the interference of opinion and biases. Carr’s argument is that for facts to become historical facts they must be interpreted and analyzed by the historian. This requires the process of selecting facts, evaluating and interpreting them, which inevitable will contain certain elements of personal prejudices. It is based on this reasoning which he therefore claims that facts can only become historical once they have been selected by a historian and this is what makes them significant. He therefore questions the extent to which a historian could be objective as experience could affect what we perceive as being important, meaning that historians are determining what the facts of the past are according to the own biases and agendas, whether they are consciously or unconsciously aware. Hence emphasising Carr’s point that history is an interpretation. He uses several examples to explain this for example it was the historian that decided Caesar crossing the Rubicon was a significant event whilst ignoring the many others that crossed it before and after him. Thus,