01-What-is-History PDF

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unique opportunity of recording, in the way most useful to the greatest number -- contradicted this; ○ Knowledge of the past has come down through one or more human minds ○ Idk who said this:“I hope that I am sufficiently up-to-date to recognize anything written in the 1890s must be nonsense. But I am not yet advanced enough to be committed to the view that anything written in the 1950s necessarily makes sense” ○ When we attempt to answer the question “ our What view we take of the society in which we live -- The we read though based on facts is not factual at all but . ○ The facts whether found in documents or not has to be processes by the historian before he can make any use of them (1880s-1890s)-- All history is contemporary history, and the main work of historians is not to record, but to evaluate, because if he does not, how can we know what is worth recording? (1910)-- the facts of history do not exist for any historian till he creates them (1945)-- history is the inquiry conducted by the historian and the series of past events into which he inquires ○ The past which a historian studies is not a dead past, but a past which in some sense is still living in the present, but a pastry act is dead, i.e. meaningless tot he historian unless he can understand the thought that lay behind it. ○ Hence, all history is the history of the thought and; ○ History is the reenactment in the historian’s mind of the thought whose history he is studying ○ Selection and interpretation Prod. Oakeshott-- History is the historian’s experience Basic facts, there are certain basic facts which are the same for all historians which is the backbone of history The historian is expected to be accurate, because it is a duty and not a virtue. Facts speak only when the historian calls on them. So, the historian is necessarily selective. Process of how a basic fact turns into a historical fact or not: if the interpretation of an historian is accepted by other historians as valid or significant. Interpretation is the key for every basic fact to become a historical fact Our view or picture of history has been preselected and predetermined for us, and so others view. Facts and documents are essential to reconstructing history, just like the example, if we know the other person’s thoughts of Stresemann’s conversations, then we would not solely based on his documents alone.

The author’s 3 points: 1) It follows that when we take up a work of history, our first concern should not be with the facts which it contains but with the historian who wrote it. ○ Study the historian before you begin to study the facts ○ Background of the historian 2) Historians’ need of imaginative understanding for the minds of the people who he is dealing with. ○ Imaginative understanding instead of sympathy because sympathy is agreement ○ History cannot be written unless the historian achieves some kind of contact with the mind of those about whom he is writing. 3) We can view the past, and achieve our understanding of the past, only through the eyes of the present. The 19th century historians do: ● Collect countless facts which drowns us, fact-fetish historians ● Believes that history speaks for itself and is implicit and self-evident ● Believed in divine providence or the hidden hand in laissez-faire to take care of everything and no need to nag or question it. Conclusion: ● If I were Sir George Clark: History is a hard core of interpretation surrounded by a pulp of disputable facts. ● There is no point in asking which was the right POV. Each was the only one possible for the man who adopted. ○ Theory of infinity meanings: in place that History has no meaning ○ One interpretation is as good as another: because there is no objective interpretation ● We shall encounter the same dichotomy of fact and interpretation (same weight of facts and interpretation) ● The historian without his facts is rootless and futile; the facts without their historian are dead and meaningless ● History is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past.

Constantino ● Rewrite Ph history from the point of view of the Filipino. ● Certain foreign sources which used to be the staple of history books were flawed by bias. ● Revisit the past. ● New framework for Ph history.

Colonial Scholarship: ● Other scholars demonstrated their nationalism by projecting the heroic deeds of recognized heroes and idealizing other national leaders... The failure to do this had the effect of propagating other myths and abetting the illusion that history is the work off heroes and great men. ● Critical areas of official history have remained fundamentally unchallenged. ● The task of correcting historical misimpressions was not successful ● There is the danger that the increasing depth of a historian’s specialization may become the “means for escaping a reality too complex for his comprehension” (like if ever they get too immersed on one side, they tend to lean on that path rather than check other angles, so it will become biased) The Task at Hand ● This means that the principal focus must be on the anonymous masses of individuals and on the social forces generated by their collective lives and struggles. ● Man the collective and not man the individual ● men→ society→ history ● Struggle therefore is the essence of life. Motivators of history ● History is the recorded struggle of people for ever increasing freedom and for newer and higher realizations of the human person. ● History consists of the people’s efforts to attain a better life. ● Historic struggles provide the people with lessons in their upward march and give form and strength to the constantly changing society. ● History is both a guide and a weapon. The Inarticulate in History ● No supermen [or great men] exist, only leaders who became great because they were working with the people. ● For in the final analysis, it is the people who make or unmake heroes. ● Only by correctly understanding these particularities will the general patters of evolving history of the people be fully comprehended. (interrelationships of particularities → general patterns of history) Redressing the Imbalance ● (Consequence:) In pursuance of [filipinization of history], the present work may appear to overstress certain betrayals and may seem to exaggerate the importance of certain events while paying scant attention to others customarily emphasized. This is necessary today as we still have predominantly colonial views of our past. ● Intellectual decolonization Limitations and a Beginning

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(Consequence:) To obtain a comprehensive knowledge of the activities of the masses in each period of our history will require painstaking examination of documents and all available records. The need for a real people’s history becomes more urgent as we Filipinos search for truly Filipino solutions to Filipino problems. As it is, we habitually analyze Ph society in the light of colonial myths nad foreign concepts and values and act on the basis of assumptions and premises. History appears as a segmented documentation of events of the past, without a clear interrelation with the present.

Rediscovering the Past ● A history that serves as a guide to the people in perceiving present reality is itself a liberating factor, for when the present is illumined by a comprehension of the past, it is that much easier for the people to grasp the direction of their development and identify the forces that impede real progress. (one answer why people tend to repeat the same mistakes again and again--history repeats itself) The Unifying Thread ● A Conscious struggle for liberation The Motive Force ● Participation in mass actions raises the level of consciousness of the masses. The more conscious they are, the more they become active and the more telling their contribution to the changing of society and the changing of their own attitudes. (end result) ● It is also essential to sift world events to find their correlation with local events ● A people’s history thus unifies past with present experiences. Gottschalk’s What are “History” and “Historical Sources”? Meaning of History ● Greek noun meaning learning ● Aristotle: A systematic account of a set of natural phenomenon, whether or not chronological order ● Latin word Scientia means non-chronological systematic account of a set of natural phenomenon, so history went to “chronological order” ● Common definition: Past of mankind ● German word Geschichte means to happened or which has happened Objectivity vs Subjectivity ● Subjective-- with interference of human mind ● Objective-- w/o or outside human mind Artifacts as Sources of History

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Artifacts-- results of events Written documents-- results of records of events A historical context can be given to them [artifacts] only if they can be placed in a human setting

Historical Knowledge Limited by Incomplete Records ● The whole history of the past (history-as-actuality) can only be known through surviving record of it (history-as-record) ● History can only be told as HAR, and history-as-told (spoken or written history) is only the historians’ expressed part of the understood part of the credible part of the discovered part of HAR ● In other words, the “object” that the historian studies is not only incomplete, it is markedly variable as records are lost and rediscovered. History as the Subjective Process of Recreation ● The utmost the historian can grasp from HAR no matter how real it may seemed when it was happening is nothing more than a mental image based upon an application of his own experiences ● Historians struggle to make history bc ○ Yesterday is different from today ○ His own experience is both like and unlike other men’s. ● History becomes only the part of the human past which can be meaningfully reconstructed from the available records and from inferences regarding their setting Historical Method and Historiography Defined ● Historical method-- the process of critically examining and analyzing the records and survivals of the past ● Historiography-- the imaginative reconstruction of the past from the data derived by the process; the writing of history ● The historian is handicapped bc he rarely can tell the story even of a part of the past “as it actually occurred” Imagination in Historiography ● The historian is not permitted to imagine things that could not reasonably have happened. ● But he is frequently required to imagine things that must have happened History of Historical Method ● Check for history’s historical method by using historical analysis (degrees of unanimity) ○ 1) the selection of a subject for investigation ○ 2) the collection of probable sources of information on that subject ○ 3) the examination of those sources for genuineness ○ 4) the extraction of credible particulars from the sources proved genuine

Sources ● The historian has to use many materials that are not in books. ● The more precise his delimitations of persons, area, time, and function, the more relevant his sources are likely to be The Distinction between Primary and Original Sources ● Primary Source-- is eyewitness’ testimony ● Different from og source bc PS may be a copy of its original source ● Original Source’s condition for historians-○ 1) to describe a source, unpolished, uncopied, untranslated, as it issued from the hands of the authors ○ 2) a source that gives the earliest available information (i.e. the origin) regarding the question under investigation bc earlier sources have been lost Primary Particulars Rather than Whole Primary Sources Sought ● Sources whether PS or SS are important to the historian bc they contain primary particulars ○ The historian sough primary particulars rather than the whole of PS bc they tend to use SS for some of the info, such as in news which asks for someone’s statements ○ If he finds a SS containing PS, then he’ll use the primary particular. The Document ● Written document-- a written source of historical information ● Official document-- reserved for only official and state papers The “Human” and the “Personal” Document ● Human Doc-- “experience… in social life” ● Personal Doc-- “the author’s mental life” ● Another difference is the degree of subjectivity like first-person or third-person POV but it is not significant to the historian (3 reasons on p. 59) and bc it is tautologous bc all works are human and personal since they are works of human beings. Gottschalk Chap 7: The Problem of Credibility or Internal Criticism ● Historian aims to examine testimonies and prove the particulars as relevant (selective) ● Historical fact is more of a relevant particular than a source as a whole ● It is credible base on the proximity of its sa what really happened ● Historical fact can be credible if derived directly or indirectly from the document ● Historical fact is accepted by historians ● Hypothesis should be more interrogative than declarative ● 4 aspects of historical fact: bio, geo, chrono, occupational/ functional ● Should isolate the credibility of historian and his facts ● The documents should be guilty of deceit until proven innocent

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The task is easier for historian if he know the author's bg From the document itself, we will know who the author is. Personal equation-- individuals have certain bias on their observation

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Does not rule out any evidence whether it is irrelevant or not 3 steps to historical testimony: Observation, recollection, recording External and Internal criticism-- authenticity vs. credibility of the information

FILM What is History? ● Ideas, concepts and terminology instead of places, dates and names ● Historia-- knowledge from inquiry, someone who asks questions from the past ● Literary history and science history, history can be applied to any subjects Historiography: ● How history is written; study of history ● When writing or reading history, we must check on what kind of historiography they use. intellectual context ● Historical method-- methods historians use and history students use. ● There are as many histories as much as historians ● There are several perspective in the writing of the history (ie imperialist history, nationalist hist, marxist hist)

Why is the discovery of Homo luzonensis such a big deal? ● Callao Cave, Penablanca Cagayan ○ 4 meters under the floor ○ Adults and 1 child ○ Previous unknown species: Homo luzonensis ○ 50-67,000 years old, earliest human remains found in the Ph ○ Before this, only 3 known ancestors in Asia-- Homo sapiens (Modern man), Homo erectus (java man) found in Indonesia, Homo floresiensis (The Hobbit) Flores in Indonesia. ○ Philippines was put into realm of human evolution (unlike before that it was not even mentioned) ● 4 ft, as tall as 6yr old boy, ● it can stand upright and climb tree for food ● molars are small, the shape of the teeth are not pronounced, same as us. But has 3 roots, uncommon to us.

● Led by Armand Mijares, first surveyed the cave (1999), Came back to study tools used (2003), Got funding (2007), He and his Intl team returned to the cave (2011) and got most of the fossils, Found a single third molar that satisfied the requirement when identifying a new species (2015) ● First Filipino to have his research in Nature (Asia), put in the Scientific map.

The Austronesian Heritage | A Brief History of the Philippines Pt. 1 ● Taiwan, ancestral homeland of Austronesians peoples which include Filipinos, Indonesians, Malaysians, Pacific Islanders and Madagascar people. ● Accdg to model, all Austronesian speaking people moved outward from Southeastern shores of continental Asia towards Twaivan (3000 BCE) → Philippines → Borneo (1500 BCE) --> Oceania → New Zealand → Madagascar ● The austronesians are the first one to invent maritime technology to journey ● Although they separated, they have similar/ commonalities in traditions, culture, and language remaining like tattooing, stilt houses, jade carving, wetland agriculture, rock art motives ○ Carrying houses to moved from one place to another ○ Rice terracing cultivation techniques ○ Chewing of betel nut ○ Distinct pottery technology ○ Dental modification ○ Religion and Architecture ● Yet, of all these commonalities, a united front like statehood, did not exist back then which makes them vulnerable to colonizers (diversity) mainly because of ○ Vast island geography ○ How Austronesian spread out and diversified...