HIS 2391 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: World War I, Reductionism

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: History
• Course: HIS 2391
• Professor: Beatrice Craig

Document Summary

Caesar crossed the rubicon and changed the course of history gaddis argues that millions have crossed the rubicon since, one person crossing the rubicon became a fact of history. We know about the crossing of the rubicon because caesar himself wrote it down he decided that this was a turning point. Through selectivity: they can filter the facts of history out of the facts of the past. Historians are the ones that decide what is meaningful and what is not. They are the ones imposing significance on the past they can spot what eluded contemporaries too (people did not know how the story would end historians do). Possibility to study processes as opposed to a multitude of individual events. Each historian will select the type of information that pertains to their work this effects the direction that their work/research takes will result in a specific outcome. Jenkins believed that there is an issue with knowing how the story ends.