What are some of the problems we encounter trying to learn the truth about the past?

Question

essay topic...help please for US history.

Answer 1

This is largely the nature of the field called historiography, also called the philosphy of history. Basically, the issue is that we can never know the past by direct mean, like science. Therefore, it creates problems about how we can say we know what we know (techically, epistemological problems). As others have mentioned, the issue becomes the perspective or bias of the one writing the history. In a post-modern perspective, some would say that history doesn't really exist, not in an "objective" sense. All that we have are varying perspectives shaped by gender, race, class, etc. Thus, history is actually unknowable in a concrete sense and all that it can teach us is to learn more about our own biases and perspectives.

In a more tangible way, some of the problems have to do with the fact that most all history is based on what has been written down or printed. This usually places a greater emphasis on the history of rich, white men who had access to the means of recording events in this manner. The history of, say, slave women in America is a story that's nearly impossible to tell because it was never recorded. Historians try to get around this in various ways, generally by studying things indirectly. My history advisor in college was interested in the lives of medeival French peasant women. Nothing was written about them at the time and they left nothing behind for us to study. So the main thing she studied was charters (contracts and legal documents) and tried to see what property women owned or how property was divided at death, etc. to get a picture of the life of common women at the time.

Answer 2

The biggest problem is probably interpretation. That is, everything we learn the past is what we have been told by others--they tell us verbally or they write it down. But that means that we are getting their interpretation of what happened--we are getting their perspective. It is almost impossible to get a completely objective account of what took place in the past.

Answer 3

bias in recollection/ document compilation...ppl remember only the pts that most relate to them, usually only in their favor....therefore, what we know is what was 'worth remembering' in their opinion....

if you go very far into the past u get into the second really difficult part about record-keeping...the poor/uneducated were not only surplus but silenced by the upper classes....therefore, the true conditions of the MAJORITY of ppl during many time periods goes undocumented simply because they had no physical/mental means or time/interest to put towards remarking on their own existence(s)

Answer 4

History is written by the victor, not the loser, so we only get one side of the story.