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James Hagen's List: Historical evidence

  • Feb 07, 12

    TOK note

    2.3.4.2.1

    Can one talk meaningfully of a historical fact? How far can we speak with certainty about anything in the past?

    2.3.4.2.2

    In what ways has technology affected the study of history? How have the methods of gaining evidence and the means of communicating historical interpretation, for example, been affected by technological development? Can we now observe the past more directly?

    2.3.4.2.3

    What are the implications for historical knowledge of the following claim?

    It is impossible to write ancient history because we lack source materials, and impossible to write modern history because we have far too many. - Charles Péguy

    2.3.4.2.4

    Which is the more important attribute of the historian, the ability to analyse evidence scientifically (and so secure the foundations of an argument), or the ability to expand it with creative imagination (and create a living account)?

  • Apr 06, 14

    Scientists' obsession with one particular man - and with the tiny scraps of evidence left in the wake of his death - gives us a surprisingly intimate peek into the life of someone called "Ötzi", who should've been lost to the ages.

    www.radiolab.org/...ice-cold-case TOK science history archeology evidence Ötzi Radiolab audio

  • May 05, 14

    The study of history has always been a battlefield between the “great man” approach that puts the likes of Napoleon and Stalin at the helm, and the notion that history is pushed along by more pervasive social and cultural forces, perceptible even in the smallest of gestures and habits.

    For example, the habit of itemising things on a piece of paper is nearly universal, if only because we all sometimes need help remembering what to get done around the house. Even if we don’t realise it, these personal lists are also discrete sets of information - traces of data about our lives.

    Lists not only provide a historical trace of people whose lives might have otherwise gone unrecorded, they also furnish evidence of broader historical events.

    www.boston.com/...y_trash_buy_milk_forge_history TOK history lists data evidence

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