Lecture 1 Flashcards
What is history?
History is the interpretive study of the events of the Human past.
What is historiography?
Historiography is the writing of history including techniques and strategies for investigating specific content areas. This also includes philosophical questions about history and historical method. Historiography is how we study history.
How does the study of history start?
What are hermaneutics?
History starts with observations, so can be considered an empirical discipline but these must be interpreted. Cannot really separate data from the search as the search itself introduces biases.
Freudian psychoanalysis sort of follows a similar method. Data provided from client and analysed by analyst.
Hermeneutics is how we interpret data. History cannot be considered science cos does not follow the scientific method. BUT still valid.
What is historicism?
Historicism is the interpretation of these facts with reference to political, social, artistic or intellectual values as they were respected then and there. Preferred by historians.
What is presentism?
Presentism is the interpretation of these facts with reference to political, social, artistic or intellectual values as they were respected here and now. Generally, historians try not to do this though this can be very hard with certain subjects like racism which seem abhorrent to us in the modern era but were quite tolerated for large parts of the past. Can be challenging.
What is a special person orientation?
A special person orientation is the idea that certain people influence history and that without those people, history might have been different, and things might not have happened the way they did. It might be that without Freud, we would have no unconscious or talking therapies.
What is a zeitgeist?
The Zeitgeist is the sprit (mentality) of the times. This is the climate of opinions and attitudes assumed in an epoch.
What is an ortgeist?
The Ortgeist is the spirit (mentality) of a place. This is the climate of opinions and attitudes assumed in a community or country.
What is the Zeitgeist/Ortgeist orientation?
The Zeitgeist/Ortgeist orientation is to say that without the special people, history would have continued as it did anyway. That is that events have their own momentum and individuals are secondary puppets in the hands of history. Events by themselves have a momentum that permits somebody at the right time (Zeitgeist) and place (Ortgeist) to enact or express them.
What is the linear/rpgressive hypothesis?
The linear-progressive hypothesis posits that each generation builds upon discoveries from previous generations. This means society is going generally towards an ideal, even if the path occasionally goes backwards. Overall, there is progression. Comte and positivism are a good example; science leads to certain truths and will eventually solve all problems.
What is the cyclical hypothesis?
The Cyclical hypothesis posits that history repeats itself in cycles. Political, economic, social, artistic and scientific events and concepts disappear and reappear again in new forms. An example of this was introspection which aimed to explore consciousness. This disappeared in the 1930s due to the rise of behaviourism but has reappeared recently because Francis Crick in the 1990s said that our understanding of the brain is now sufficient to relook for consciousness. This could be seen as introspection disguised as neuroscience because this is palatable for the new time period. Other ideas and philosophies disappear in one era and then are revisited later.
What is the chaos hypothesis?
The Chaos hypothesis posits that there is no order whatsoever. Political, social, artistic, and scientific events happen by chance. These cannot be predicted. Nothing and no one make history; history makes itself.
What did Ebbinghaus say about psychology?
Ebbinghaus – psychology has a long past but a short history.
What is the Greek Miracle?
The Greek miracle was the period when the people of Greece stopped attributing the causes of natural phenomena to gods and mythical things and started to turn to natural problems. Greece had settlements all over, so this miracle spread fast.
What was thought about the universe in the time before the pre-socratics?
Prior to the pre-Socratics, people thought the world was made of 4 elements: earth (food), air (breathing), fire (warmth) and water (drinking). All four of these are essential for human life so it makes sense why they would find these fundamental.
In the time of the pre socratics, what were philosphers interested in?
What were the 4 schools of thought?
Prior to the pre-Socratics, people thought the world was made of 4 elements: earth (food), air (breathing), fire (warmth) and water (drinking). All four of these are essential for human life so it makes sense why they would find these fundamental.
During this time, people were interested in what makes up the universe. There was no scientific method so they theorised using philosophy. There were 4 schools of thought.
How many basic elements make up the universe?
Qualitative monist – one basic element
Qualitative pluralist – many basic elements
Is there just one thing in number or many?
Quantitative monist – one thing
Quantitative pluralist – many things
What is qualitative monism?
Qualitative monism: There is only one basic element making up the universe. For instance, the Milesians were qualitative monists. The basic element is water or air. Democritus is also a qualitative monist: the basic element is the atom.
What did the Milesians think?
- Come from Mylese
* Believe there is one element behind everything and that this explains the observed order of the universe.
Milesians - Thales
• The first philosopher was Thales. He contributed greatly to the Greek miracle. He was a head in the cloud philosopher who people looked down on. He got tired of this and used his accurate astronomical and meteorological measurements to predict it would be a good season for olives and bough all the olive presses. It was and he made a lot of money. He did this to prove a point; he could make money from knowledge, but he considered it more important to understand the universe than to get rich.
He felt the most important thing in the universe is water. For him, everything was made of water. Water is what we can see in all 3 phases and is essential for life.
Milesians - Anaximander
• Anaximander believed that everything is organized into pairs of opposites. E.g., wetness/dryness. Following from this, if everything is opposed then we cannot define what the basic element is. He called this Aperion; a basic element for the universe that cannot be defined.
Milesians - Anaximenes
• Anaximenes said that the basic element is air.
What is Quantitative pluralism?
Qualitative pluralism posits that there may be more than one thing which fundamentally makes up the universe. The best example of pure qualitative pluralism would be the then prevailing view that there are 4 basic elements.
Give an overview of double aspect monism
What is the saucer example?
• Heraclitus and Pythagoras – double aspect monism (qualitative pluralists (double aspect) & quatitative monists)
Heraclitus and Pythagoras were qualitative pluralists (there are two aspects of one thing) but quantitative monist (there is only one thing).
E.g., a saucer. It is one thing but appears convex or concave depending on where you view it from. It is only one thing, but it has two aspects.
• These philosophers had similar theories (but never met). They believed that there one thing but that it has a double aspect to. Is a saucer complex or concave? It is both!
Double aspect monist - Heraticlus
• Heraclitus from Ephesus says everything Is changing; “you cannot step in the same river twice”/ But he believed there was order in the change. For him, fire represented one aspect (change) and logos (order) the other. Logos is an intrinsic order in the Universe. It is not God (just an organising force).
Double aspect monist - Pythagoras
• Pythagoras says everything is changing but does not assign an element. For him. the organising principle was mathematics because any kind of chape can be expressed in mathematical form (and so this is the order of the universe).
He founded a school in Croton the Academy (southern Italy) and was visited by Socrates and Plato. Mystical aspect, a bit like a cult.
