how and why have historians sought to emulate or borrow from natural sciences

?
View mindmap
  • how and why have some historians sought to emulate or borrow from the natural sciences
    • do you agree with the nature of the question - probs not outline this in the intro, and explain how your arg can fit into this
      • neither an art nor science - discipline all of its own - isaiah berlin -1
      • the nature and focus of history has changed - when and why was this is a thing then? - sign of its times, and why not anymore??
      • but perhaps a more recent upturn in scientific methodology for history - interdisciplinary to discover more about past civilisations etc - depends how link it to science e.g. objective and archives, or as a liberating tool etc
    • how
      • methods: objective - seminars as laboratories, investigating primary evidence
        • RANKE - positivist approach - let the facts speak for themselves - xii, not only collecting but also understanding the facts - xlii. historian should be separate from the work they're producing despite spiritual apperception - objective - 9 - permissible to confess ignorance - 16
          • in contrast to Saidiya Hartman's critical fabulation - embracing the fictitious
      • scientific imagery - seminars as laboratories, importance of observations - Peter Novick pg 35
      • rigid practices - Bonnie G Smith - 1150. Seminars - trying to find real and authentic past - 1157
    • why
      • BURY association with literature has made it seem unscientific - 9. emphasises the importance of truth and accuracy - 13. to protect its sanctity as a discipline - "no more than the handmaid of social science" - 17
        • association away from literature, and towards the sciences bcos facts of the universe - 19
      • "scienticity was the hallmark of the modern and the authoritative" - Peter Novick - 21
    • WK11 - anthropocene
      • defining historical periods through scientific criteria - e.g. demography, climate change, agirculture etc - Paul Crutzen - 23
      • Bruno Latour emphasises the importance of understanding networks between human and non-human - Donna Haraway - 42
      • interelation between human impact on planet and vice versa - step away from a human centric view - Dipesh Chakrabarty - 203
      • "to reconstruct the past from rocks rather than written records" - JR McNeill - pg2 - "We are often told how technology will revolutionize the future. I wonder if it will revolutionize the past" - peak document - the need for scientific methods in order to learn more about the more distant past etc - 3
        • - aDNA and Africanisation - learning about cultures with less documentation and archives etc - can help to illuminate undocumented areas of the world - 5. Archaelogists using natural scientific methods e.g.  LiDAR - 8
    • professionalisation and disciplinisation of history in universities - modelled from Germany
      • 19th century historical innovators - seminar truth, rigorous practice - masculine bcos intrinsic to scientific history - Bonnie G Smith - 1150
      • "scienticity was the hallmark of the modern and the authoritative" - Peter Novick - 21

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar History resources:

See all History resources »See all historical thinking resources »