HIS106Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Divine Providence, Atlantic World
Document Summary
History and the past are not the same thing. History is an argument about the past, often in a narrative form, achieved thru research. Not just primary, but secondary to understand how people have argued it over time. History is selective, past is literally everythi(cid:374)g. not all past is releva(cid:374)t. what"s i(cid:374)cluded a(cid:374)d what is left out: boundless imagination: reconstructing the past from evidence. Avoiding the cardinal sin of anachronism - applying something from the present into the past, where it never existed. historical consciousness places change over time. Searching for the right sources - appropriate sources, libraries and archives. A manuscript, usually only one copy, but books could have many copy, transcribed from the manuscripts. Embracing cultural relativity - all history is cross cultural. Refusing to take anything at face value - be a sceptic. Some things are written with different notion of truth or facts since debunked, perspectives, generalizations, etc, read between lines with source in consideration.
