Week 2 - Historiography, Science and the Ancients Flashcards
This Week’s Reading:
Introduction - https://ocul-it.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?context=L&vid=01OCUL_IT:UO&search_scope=ONTECHLIBS&tab=ONTECHLIBS&docid=alma991006682339705160
Historiography Definition - http://%20https://www.britannica.com/topic/historiography
Social history - https://history.uchicago.edu/content/social-history
Cultural History - https://history.uchicago.edu/content/cultural-history
Schools of Literary Criticism - http://bentonenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/literary-criticism.pdf
Origins of Natural Philosophy - https://ocul-it.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01OCUL_IT/1aaog7t/alma991006682339705160
Socrates - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/socrates/
Plato - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/
Aristotle - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle/
Nullius in verba
In no one’s words
5 key questions in this course
1) What is stuff
2) What is life
3) Where are we
4) When are we
5) How can we agree on what we know
Key conclusion
Highlight how the values (Beliefs about right and wrong) and ethics (acceptable behaviours) of scientists and engineers shape our world. And how, conversely, sciences and technologies are shaped by the societies that produce them.
historiography
- the study of historical perspectives (not necessarily events)
- the writing of history, especially the writing of history based on the critical examination of sources, the selection of particular details from the authentic materials in those sources, and the synthesis of those details into a narrative that stands the test of critical examination. The term historiography also refers to the theory and history of historical writing.
- schools of historiography - i.e political views
history
historia - knowledge from inquiry
- chroniclers note dates, locations, etc of events whereas historians ask questions and seek answers through primary, secondary, and archeological sources
Social history
https://history.uchicago.edu/content/social-history
Social History emerged as a field in the mid-twentieth century as a reaction to older fields—political history, diplomatic history, the history of great men and great ideas—that, in their focus on elites, failed to address the historical experiences of the vast majority of the human population.
Cultural history
https://history.uchicago.edu/content/cultural-history
As a another related subfield of history, cultural history draws on a critical knowledge paradigm (theory) and explores the role of large cultural trends, and the political processes behind these trends, in influencing cultural meaning and practice.
Literary Theory and Schools of Criticism
A very basic way of thinking about literary theory is that these ideas act as different lenses critics use to view and talk about
art, literature, and even culture. These different lenses allow critics to consider works of art based on certain assumptions
within that school of theory. The different lenses also allow critics to focus on particular aspects of a work they consider
important.
Timeline of Schools of Criticism
Moral Criticism, Dramatic Construction (c. 360 BC-present)
Formalism, Neo-Aristotelian Criticism (1930s-present)
Psychoanalytic Criticism (1930s-present)
Marxist Criticism (1930s-present)
Reader-Response Criticism (1960s-present)
Structuralism/Semiotics (1920s-present)
Post-Structuralism/Deconstruction (1966-present)
New Historicism/Cultural Studies (1980s-present)
Post-Colonial Criticism (1990s-present)
Feminist Criticism (1960s-present)
Gender/Queer Studies (1970s-present)
New Historicism, Cultural Studies (1980s-present)
This school, influenced by structuralist and post-structuralist theories, seeks to reconnect a work with the time period in
which it was produced and identify it with the cultural and political movements of the time (Michel Foucault’s concept of
épistème). New Historicism assumes that every work is a product of the historic moment that created it. Specifically, New
Historicism is “…a practice that has developed out of contemporary theory, particularly the structuralist realization that all
human systems are symbolic and subject to the rules of language, and the deconstructive realization that there is no way of
positioning oneself as an observer outside the closed circle of textuality” (Richter 1205).
A helpful way of considering New Historical theory, Tyson explains, is to think about the retelling of history itself: “…questions
asked by traditional historians and by new historicists are quite different…traditional historians ask, ‘What happened?’ and
‘What does the event tell us about history?’ In contrast, new historicists ask, ‘How has the event been interpreted?’ and ‘What
do the interpretations tell us about the interpreters?’” (278). So New Historicism resists the notion that “history is a series of
events that have a linear, causal relationship: event A caused event B; event B caused event C; and so on” (Tyson 278).
New historicists do not believe that we can look at history objectively, but rather that we interpret events as products of our
time and culture and that “we don’t have clear access to any but the most basic facts of history … Our understanding of what
such facts mean [is] strictly a matter of interpretation, not fact” (279). Moreover, New Historicism holds that we are
hopelessly subjective interpreters of what we observe.
Questions New Historicists Investigate
What language/characters/events present in the work reflect the current events of the author’s day?
Are there words in the text that have changed their meaning from the time of the writing?
How are such events interpreted and presented?
How are events’ interpretation and presentation a product of the culture of the author?
Does the work’s presentation support or condemn the event?
Can it be seen to do both?
How does this portrayal criticize the leading political figures or movements of the day?
How does the literary text function as part of a continuum with other historical/cultural texts from the same period?
How can we use a literary work to “map” the interplay of both traditional and subversive discourses circulating in the
culture in which that work emerged and/or the cultures in which the work has been interpreted?
How does the work consider traditionally marginalized populations?
Natural Philosophy (500-300 BCE)
-field of inquiry that investigates the link of elements of nature to natural processes, rather than attribute them to supernatural and religious beliefs
-First supported by a small group of ancient thinkers, specifically the Presocratics.
-The Greeks: “the observation of nature has been key to human survival.”
-The application of science to improve life
-The Renaissance is the revival of Natural Philosophy in Europe
The pre-Socratics
-did not exclusively live in ancient Greece, but were stretched across the Mediterranean;
- not scientists in the traditional sense
- developed schools of thought and methods of knowledge making around rationality;
- were several different philosophers who lived BEFORE Socrates;
- lived in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE (before current era, or 600 - 400 BCE);
- are considered some of the first known philosophers;
- rejected supernatural explanations in favor of natural philosophy, or the idea that you can explain the world outside;
- sought to apply natural philosophy to society;
- emphasized unity and viewed the world as an ordered arrangement that could be understood.
Thales
- one of the first pre socratics
- Thales - natural world separate from divine world
- not a religious though
- founder of the Milesians school of though, believed water was the primary element
