Historical narratives

1. Historical narratives Making Sense of Things

2. Making assumptions Group Work Task #1i). Get together into groups to complete the following the task: use the history handout to brainstorm assumptions people have made about the beliefs, technologies, and events, etc. making different time periods of Western history unique from one another (10 mins). ii). As a class share the results. iii). Move on to the next slide.

3. Historical narrative Although history is considered a “social science,” the story-based nature of history allows the historian to include a degree of storytelling and creativity. For example, historians have organized the history of the West roughly into the following eras: • Classical (Ancient Greece and Rome) • Medieval (Fall of Rome to Renaissance) • Renaissance (Scientific Revolution to Enlightenment) • Early Modern (End of Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution to World War I) • Modern (Post-World War I, Nuclear Age, Information Age) The question needs to be asked: are these time periods meaningful or real. Time is organized only after it has passed by looking for patterns. In the case of the current so-called Information Age, for example, life is dominated by the rapid transmission of information through the Internet, computers and social media. Are we really that different from what came before though?

4. The “Dark age” The phrase “Dark Ages” was first used in the 18th century by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. The term is used to describe the first few centuries following the collapse of Rome. Kant wrote during the 18th century when the Catholic Church was being attacked for being an intolerant institution. Philosophers like Kant argued the path to freedom was through the exercise of reason, logic and science. Kant looked at the time he was living in as a period of “light” (and historians picked up on this calling his time period (1650-1800 AD) as the “Enlightenment”). By comparison the early medieval period, dominated by superstition and the Catholic Church, was a “dark age.” Kant ignored the fact that there was social, economic, political progress during the so-called “dark ages.” His bias and use of the phrase “dark age” shaped our subsequent understanding of the early medieval period. How dark were the “dark ages” really? Click here to see….

5. The “renaissance” During the years 1450 to 1650, intellectuals across Europe re-discovered the Classical writings of Greece and Rome. This led to a “rebirth” of culture beginning first in Italy and then spreading to Western and Central Europe. The people living during this time period did not say they were living in a Renaissance. The term Renaissance wasn’t even used until Jules Michelet did in his 1858 book The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. The influence of Classical writers on Europe during the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries was certainly unmistakable; however, Europeans never stopped reading Classical writers like Plato or Aristotle. The only thing which really changed is more people had access to reading these writers which increased their impact and influence; thus, the Renaissance is less a departure from the medieval period and more or less a continuation of what was already happening. Was there a Renaissance? Click here to watch a short video discussing this question.

6. A question of time Group Work Task #2In your groups, develop answers to the following questions about the philosophy of history: 1). Is history more of a science or more a form of sophisticated story-telling? 2). Does organizing time into neat and tidy periods encourage accuracy or inaccuracy when it comes to understanding history? 3). Is humankind on a path towards progress or are we in decline?