Practical
Questions to Help You Answer the Broader Questions of Why History? Why
Evidence? And How Does Evidence Affect Your Grade?
You can answer questions 1, 2, and 3 (shown below) by examining the What questions provided. There is no magic answer to each one, but if you don’t see the answer, then ask. |
What’s the Difference in
These Two Views of History as Essential for Analysis of Today’s Challenges?
What’s the Difference These
Two Views of Human Life?
What’s in Common with These
Two Events?
What Do These Pairs of Names
Reveal about History and about Assumptions?
What’s the Role of Evidence
in Civilization (or Safe Places for Ordinary People to Live)?
Question 1
The WCJC catalog
lists this requirement for an AA degree: “HIST 1301 and 1302” Why
Is history required? (See Course Orientation for the
rest of this answer.)
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Question 2
Can history pay
off for you (beyond getting that degree)? How
can history pay off for you?(See Course Orientation
for the rest of this answer.)
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Question 3
What is history?
What is evidence? Why
do they both matter—including to your grade?
(See Good Habits for Evidence for the rest of this answer.)
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What’s
the Difference in These Two Views of History as Essential for Analysis of
Today’s Challenges?
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Dietrich Dörner,
cognitive psychologist. “…[W]e face an array of
closely¾though
often subtly¾linked
problems. The modern world is made up of innumerable interrelated
subsystems, and we need to think in terms of these interrelations. In the
past, such considerations were less important. What did the growth of Los
Angeles matter to a Sacramento Valley farmer a hundred years ago? Nothing.
Today, however aqueducts running the length of the state make northern and
southern Californians bitter competitors for water. Of what concern to us
were religious differences in Islam forty years ago? Apparently none. The
global interrelations of today make such dissension important everywhere.… “[In the past],
[t]he need to see a problem embedded in the context of other problems
rarely arose. For us, however, this is the rule, not the exception.”
[Bold added] |
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The Logic of Failure (1996) |
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Henry Ford (1863–1947), U.S. industrialist.
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We
want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s
damn is the history we make today.” |
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Interview in the Chicago Tribune
(May 25, 1916) |
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What’s
the Difference These Two Views of Human Life?
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Thomas Malthus
(1766-1834), English demographer. “The perpetual struggle for room and food.” |
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On Population, chap.
iii. p. 48 (1798). |
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John Winthrop
(1588-1649), Governor in Massachusetts Bay. “. . . [W]ee
must be knitt together in this worke
as one man, . . . wee must be willing to abridge our selves of our superfluities, for the supply of others
necessities, wee must uphold a familiar Commerce
together in all meekenes, gentlenes,
patience and liberallity, wee
must delight in eache other, make others Condicions our owne rejoyce together, mourne
together, labour, and suffer together, allwayes haveing before our
eyes our Commission and Community in the worke, . .
. that men shall say of succeeding plantacions: the
lord make it like that of New England: for wee must Consider that wee shall be as a Citty upon a
Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us; soe that if wee shall deale falsely with
our god in this worke wee have undertaken and soe cause him to withdrawe his
present help from us, wee shall be made a story and
a byword through the world . . .” |
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City upon a Hill, 1630 |
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What’s
in Common with These Two Events?
·
The Black Death (a disease) in England
(1347) ·
West Nile (a disease) in New York State
(2002+)
and in Texas (2003+) |
What
Do These Pairs of Names Reveal about History and about Assumptions?
·
Old World and New
World ·
Age of Jackson and Age of the Common
Man ·
Federalists and Anti-Federalists ·
Pro-Choice and Anti-Abortion |
What’s
the Role of Evidence in Civilization (or Safe Places for Ordinary People to
Live)?
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“Quoting other writers
and citing the places where their words are to be found are by now such
common practices that it is pardonable to look upon the habit as natural, not
to say instinctive. It is of course nothing of the kind, but a very
sophisticated act, peculiar to a civilization that uses printed books
[and other documents], believes in evidence, and makes a point of
assigning credit or blame in a detailed, verifiable way.” [Bold
added] |
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Jacques Barzun and Henry F.
Graff, The Modern Researcher, |
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Sources
for Quotations
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations
for Thomas Malthus The Chicago Manual of Style
(p. 356) for Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graff The Columbia World of Quotations
for Henry Ford Dietrich
Dorner. The Logic of Failure: Why Things Go Wrong and What We Can Do to
Make Them Right. Translated by Rita and Robert Kimber. New York, New
York: Metropolitan Books, 1996. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/winthrop.htm
for John Winthrop |
Copyright
C. J. Bibus, Ed.D. 2005-2018
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WCJC Department: |
History – Dr. Bibus |
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Contact Information: |
281.239.1577 or bibusc@wcjc.edu |
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Last Updated: |
2018 |
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WCJC Home: |