METHODOLOGY FOR HISTORY
History is two things: first, a collection of data about what took place; and second, the study of that data. Rather than thinking about the data as a continuum, think about it as a ?white noise.? Thinking this way helps conceptually with the problems about causation and motivation.
The study of the data requires a methodology bounded by significance; this is the first philosophical notion that must be investigated. Attributing significance is the historian?s role. Significance is the first editing tool of the white noise, and the philosophical meaning of significance must be addressed.
I was very impressed with the discussion of the limits of causation (or more correctly, the inability to be certain about causes) in the study of history. In the face of the subjectivity of the historian, and the uncertainty about causation and motivation, Ranke said ?Just write [as best you can(my words)] what happened.? It is too hard to make ?sense? of causation in past events; so the only way to write objectively about history is to tell what happened, understanding that there will be all the subjectivity you can tolerate in the historian?s application of his/her significance standards.
I am surprised to hear the opinion from the experts that ?no serious school of historiography has come about in the last fifty years.? The criticism discipline ?Historicism,? started in Berkeley in the eighties, seeks to provide a methodology for understanding significance; and it does this very, very well. The main thrust is to investigate all documents and representations contemporaneous with the time and place under study, and to start by giving them all equal ?weight,? to reveal as much as possible about what was considered significant by those being studied.
A very good study of the place of causation in historiography, which reveals much about the methodology of the historian, is ?What If,? edited by Robert Cowley (Putnam 2001), in which very eminent historians ?imagine what might have been, if? something other than what happened, happened.

History has always fascinated me. It is an influence and it is influenced; it is both cause and effect; it can go one way or it can go another with little or no provocation. These brief statements are not meant to simplify something so complex. I am sure this post will generate many insights and have been expecting such a discussion on Philoso?hy Talk.

The only person who can truly tell the future is the same person who can truly tell the past, and that most truly is absolutely no One.
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Happy New Year!

I was "fired" and "nudged" by Mr. Taylor's distinction regarding the past vs. representation of the past. This distinction has bothered me for as long as I have been cognizant of the fact that there are those who subscribe to revisionism and practice it at every available opportunity. These are the kinds of folks Al Gore was talking about when he coined the phrase, 'inconvenient truth.' History, in some circles of thought, is inconvenient, embarassing or downright counter-productive to the advancement of ideology(ies).
A response to this has been orchestrated, implemented and refined over a number of years. Just how long this has been going on is hard to know because it began somewhat innocently---I think of it as beginning with things we should have learned in school, HAD WE THOUGHT OF AND ASKED THE RIGHT QUESTIONS.(The innocence of it is, of course, relative.)
Cowley's study may get to some of this in a round about way---I do not know because I am unfamiliar with his work. In any case, history is probably 70% of what we are today. Misrepresentation of it is the other 30%---these numbers are highly speculative. The X factor is the kicker, however. What is it? Well X represents what we DO NOT know about history because of its MISrepresentation. And all of those questions we did not think to ask.
We can learn some thing new every day. On a good day, we might learn several.

I think we can see the current US/obama drive toward empire, repression at home, and burgeoning militarism reflected in thousands of years of history. The technique of fear mongering to perpetuate war and war to perpetuate repression and repression to perpetuate and augment the concentration of personal power, has been around since at least the time of Pericles.
And I am amazed at how ignorant of this are most people, how forgotten it is and how people can't see how they are being manipulated politically propagandistically for the purposes of private profit and authoritarian ambition.
And I amazed at how alternatives to war are completely
ignored. In the 70's the radically violent red brigades and the baader meinhof gang bombed and machine gunned their way across Europe. They were finally apprehended by police work, not attacks on foreign countries.
We should have done the same thing----and could have but imperial ambition of the "war President"
dictated stupid war.
Greed for campaign money and greed for wealth brought our economy down---as has happened many times before--in the 1890's, the '29 crash,and the savings and loan/keating debacle in the 80's--to mention a few. But--lessons learned from history?
No, greed blind and ambition choked and brutality minded folk don't listen to history.
At the beginning of the Afgan war, many writers
pointed to the Vietnam debacle as the obvious parallel
and were shouted down by the jingo crowd. The writers listened to history and now----after billions of bucks and thousands in lives---those writers proved correct. History is all we have for a guide. Amazing
how many people think they invent the wheel and how history doesn't apply to them. Listening
Obama?

The role of secular history in religion was first underscored during the Enlightenment. It was then the realization first fully dawned that religious authority and validity depended fundamentally on the authenticity of history, and the fact that religious claim to historical accuracy on the basis of religious authority itself was overtly circular.
Consequently, all sources of claimed revealed religious philosophy must depend on the accuracy of "secular" history, whether or not studied by those who happen to be within a religious establishment.
It's interesting to examine and contrast the historical bases claimed for ancient religions such as Judaism or Hinduism and relatively recent religions such as Mormonism.
Given the divergences of opinion among historians and historical authorities about a lot of things, not the least being religions, this once more raises the question of why the preternatural should choose to keep the natural world guessing. Come to think, the usual practice is to keep the children's gifts sequestered -- all of which hinges on what one assumes about one's parents.