catapult magazine

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The Problem with the Science of History

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grant
Jul 31 2003
05:05 pm

“Modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one has asked.”

(Tolstoy in “War and Peace”, explaining how the science of history stops short at probing the motivating factors that make history possible: the very factors with which human beings are most concerned)

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vanlee
Jun 11 2004
10:16 pm

Whatever modern history written by modern historians may lack, dare we disregard history altogether?

A partial roadmap of the past is better than no roadmap.

The challenge here is to read and write & research history even better….so we can have it as a more effective tool to understand challenges today…and so we can learn morefrom the past.

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grant
Jun 12 2004
01:29 pm

Tolstoy isn’t talking about disregarding history. He’s talking about the shortcomings of modern history, which only describes certain empirical factors leading up to events. Modern history (history as science) is not the only way to understand our relationship with the past. The biblical story of Israel, for instance, is a history that guides our lives. The Bible gives us a tradition of generations that helps us find our identity. Modern history as science operates out of a mindset that is anti-traditionalist and assumes we have an individual identity outside of our past that enables us to look objectively upon events.

Does this make more sense of Tolstoy’s main point?