Historical Truth Analysis

I believe that there is truth found in history. There is an individual truth, which is how the experience being told is the truth to the individual who wrote it, and there is a common truth, which is where many individuals' truths overlap. When reading Voltaire's quote, "History is the

In a world that filled with disputes and disagreements, it is somehow difficult to describe a conflicting event in a neutral tone based on one’s own judgment, typically for those historians who attempted to examine the events occurred in the past. As a matter of fact, people’s perspectives may be influenced by many conditions such as their cultural identities, genders, religions, emotions etc. Therefore, it is more likely that historians tend to hold biased view that may affect their tone in neutrality. However, to what extent can historians, or more generally the people, learn the history from an unbiased and neutral perspective? In general, as long as people equally analyze the view points from both sides and take the position between

What do you believe truth is? There probably are a few different definitions of truth. I consider truth being honesty and facts. “I don’t care about truth. I want some happiness.” said Fitzgerald’s version of truth. Hansberry says, “Perhaps I will be a great man… I mean perhaps I will hold on to the substance of the truth and find my way always with the right course.” O’Brien’s truth is, “I want you to know what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.” These three have some decent definitions, but truth itself doesn't really have just one right definition, it's more open-ended.

Truth and Belief Truth cannot be found by intellectual effort because the truth is not a theory, it is an experience; to know it, you have to live it. People think that if they can hold on to belief, these will help them find the truth. Gradually they settle in belief,

History may be examined and interpreted in many different ways. This is because there is little evidence that had survived to go by in which historians have to use to study the past. Evidence, written and made by the historical people themselves, include but are not limited to written documents, such as books and letters, and material culture, as in art and architecture. Now, because the original authors or artists are not alive to tell the story, historians have to examine the evidence left behind to make an educated judgment on what had really happened in the past. This judgment or argument is always incomplete and up for revision as more evidence is found as time passes by. Although many conclusions can be generated from one piece of evidence, arguments can be biased, leading to different, possibly incorrect, views of history. In his essay, “The Whig Interpretation of History,” Herbert Butterfield elaborates on the matter that many historians tend to write on the behalf on a Protestant or Whig point of view when researching about history. The argument he has provided in his essay states that the “whig interpretation of history” relates to the act of “abstracting [ideas and events] from their historical context and judging them apart from their context – estimating them and organizing the historical story by a system of direct reference to the present” (Butterfield 30). To Butterfield, studying the past in the eyes of the present is one of the biggest errors a historian

Current events have a basis in historical fact and the practice of analyzing and acting upon past experiences is all considered thinking historically. Without history, human society would have no identity or base. Chapter Two begins by expressing what Doing History has already stated on the definition of history. However, Methods and Skills delves further into the nature of history by explain that a historian can shed light on an event in history, but nobody can actually show exactly how things took place during that event. All of history is naturally subject to the historian’s point of view and interpretations, therefore, the absolute fullest and truest version of history is essentially unattainable. However, this fact does not negate the importance of studying and understanding history, because historical fact is grounded in reliable, factual evidence from the event. Consequently, historians must always be asking questions and looking for the best possible answers for the ever-evolving dialogue of

Do we really know what the “truth” is? How can we distinguish what the truth is in real life? Are you every completely sure of the truth? In the Question of the Truth Unit we read a variety of selections based off of people’s perception of the truth, though in many of these selections the truth wasn’t what people expected. These selections help develop a contrast between how things seem on the surface, and how they really are. A couple of these selections accept the surface appearance of things as embodying reality and not the actual truth.

For a historicist historian, the purpose of history is to show what actually happened in the past. This can be found out with sources and past records. Once enough information is found, the historians can use it to recreate the past and by learning about it as a study they are able to use what they learn to recreate it with objectivity. After these historians are able to recreate the past from all of their research, they will discuss it with other historians, who have studied the discipline, and come up with the only true interpretation of the event. By finding the sole interpretation, these historians are able to accurately state what happened as, “the strict presentation of the facts, contingent and unattractive though they may be, is undoubtedly

TOK- Essay Question 9 “Discuss the roles of language and reasoning in history” 1451 words Nadia Lotze 000 865-015 Mr Skeoch History is the past written by the present. The very nature of this statement creates the predicament of historical knowledge. The historians of the present are under constant pressure of rapidly changing society;

Throughout history, philosophers have come up with their versions of the actual definition for ‘truth’. The Greek philosopher Aristotle had explained truth as “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true” [1]. Aristotle explains that truth can be described as that something that is definite and distinct in its own form, nature or identity. Another Greek sophist and philosopher Protagoras held the view that “man is the measure of all things, of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are not”[2]. According to him, every person’s opinion of truth is based his or her own perception of truth. In the famous

Ten pieces of knowledge I deem valuable. I chose very few specific historical facts, but instead tried to keep general since I believe that having a proper framework for analyzing history is much more important than merely giving facts 1) Culture, language, and religion never static. For example, 2,000 years ago

History The study of history is a challenging and often ambiguous pursuit of reconstruction. Historians are forced to remove themselves from the confines of modernity while desperately trying to grasp the fleeting remnants of an ever fading past. It is impossible, however, for a historian to fully accomplish either one of these necessities of research. The present remains an integral part of his perspective causing a distinctive slant in the analysis; evidence of the past can remain hidden or be entirely lost in the strides of time. These limitations of individual historians’ conceptions of the past necessitate the study of history to be an accumulation of different theories throughout the ages by conflicting researchers. A

The false assertion claims that historians solely work to determine an understanding of the past. The historian’s role is defined with a dictation of understanding the past; however their study of the past is through today’s lens. Thus, they are writing in hindsight. A knowledge issue is present with the “fallible” eyewitnesses in primary sources which cannot be entirely accepted as the truth due to flexible interpretations. History, a reconstruction of events, is viewed from a modern standpoint allowing the historian to produce secondary sources using primary sources as a basis. These sources suggest that those who control the past also control the future expressing the need for historians to look at evidence in terms of the future. Furthermore, historical interpretations are inevitably bonded with a sense of personal value as historians fail to simply regurgitate prior knowledgebut rather use it as a creative endeavor combining evidence with imagination. This leads to the derivation of a unique conclusion in retelling events of the past. Although, it can be argued that the historian’s purpose is to eliminate issues such as bias and empathy. However, this proves to be impossible as they inevitably include a sense of empiricism.

Historical Truth Historical Truth? As a child sits through history class in the first grade, he or she learns of

The historian would be able to go on for hours churning out historical facts. If you were to ask the same question of philosophers, they would have to admit that their studies have obtained positive along with negative results. The reason for this is that as soon as any knowledge about a subject gets definite, it turns into its own science, and is no longer called philosophy. (Bertrand Russell p21 Book).