On Interpreting Historical Texts and Contributing to Current Philosophy

2018 ◽  
pp. 69-87
Author(s):  
Marcel van Ackeren
Keyword(s):  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Text

The chapter discusses four aspects of the question of how we have to interpret historical text in order to make a contribution to current philosophy. It first argues against the dialogue approach, according to which philosophers of the past can be our interlocutors and our interpretations of their texts are dialogues with them. Second, it criticises the Rorschach approach for claiming that our interpretations of the historical texts do not have to be faithful representations of the texts. Third, it is possible that historical text and our current debates concern identical questions but that we should not presuppose transhistorical identity, for there is too much change. Fourth, three types of contexts are distinguished and it is argued that referring to them might enhance the interpretation of the arguments in the texts.

What is a Classic in History?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Jaume Aurell
Keyword(s):  
Literary Texts ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
Historical Text ◽  
Historical Condition ◽  
Historical Writings ◽  
Narrative Language

Abstract What is the classic in history? What is a classic in historical writing? Very few historians and critics have addressed these questions, and when they have done so, it has been only in a cursory manner. These are queries that require some explanation regarding historical texts because of their peculiar ambivalence between science and art, content and form, sources and imagination, scientific and narrative language. Based on some examples of the Western historiographical tradition, I discuss in this article to what extent historians should engage the concept of the classic – as has been done for literary texts. If one assumes that the historical text is not only a referential account but also a narrative analogous to literary texts, then the concept of the classic becomes one of the keys for understanding the historical text – and may improve our understanding not only of historiography, but of history itself. I will argue in this article that it is possible to identify a category of the classic text in some historical writings, precisely because of the literarity they possess without losing their specific historical condition. Because of their narrative condition, historical texts share some of the features assigned to literary texts – that is, endurance, timelessness, universal meaningfulness, resistance to historical criticism, susceptibility to multiple interpretations, and ability to function as models. Yet, since historical texts do not construct imaginary worlds but reflect external realities, they also have to achieve some specific features according to this referential content – that is, surplus of meaning, historical use of metaphors, effect of contemporaneity without damaging the pastness of the past, and a certain appropriation of literariness. Without seeking to be normative or systematic, this article focuses on some specific features of the historical classic, offering a series of reflections to open rather than try to close a debate on this complex topic.

scholarly journals Research on Middle School History Teaching based on the Cultivation of Core Literacy of Space-Time Concept

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sen Yang
Keyword(s):  
Middle School ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
History Teaching ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Experience Teaching ◽  
School History ◽  
Historical Text ◽  
Middle School History ◽  
Core Literacy

Experience is a kind of knowledge and understanding of value, the discovery and sublimation of the meaning of experience. The most important thing of effective history teaching is to develop and improve students’ emotions, attitudes and values; experience is the premise, carrier and destination of developing and improving students’ emotions, attitudes and values. Experience teaching is an ideal choice for effective teaching of history. History is people’s knowledge and understanding of the past facts; historical text is the existence form of history. In essence, historical experience teaching is a dialogue between students and historical texts across time and space. Building a bridge for dialogue is the strategy of historical experience teaching.

scholarly journals Interpreting and Explaining Historical Texts – Is it Possible?

2006 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenche Vagle
Keyword(s):  
Text Analysis ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Social Semiotics ◽  
Correlation Model ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Structural Correlation ◽  
Historical Text ◽  
Context Models ◽  
Text Context

Abstract With reference to particular problems of interpretations that radio listeners of today are likely to encounter when listening to a Norwegian radio reportage from the 1930s, this article discusses the question of whether it is possible for present-day readers/viewers/ listeners or text analysts to understand texts from the past in the way that they were originally meant to be understood. It is argued that we need to gain some kind of access to the contexts that once engendered the texts if we are to arrive at historically acceptable interpretations and explanations of them. The article suggests a solution to the problem of historical text analysis, namely historical context reconstruction. This solution is concretised in terms of a specific methodology, which has here been used for research on the formation and first development of the genre system of Norwegian radio. This methodology involves the application of three different text-context models for discourse-analytical purposes: 1. Halliday’s structural correlation model 2. The multistratal realisation model developed within social semiotics 3. Goffman’s frame model.

The Invention of Papal History

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Reformation ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Standards ◽  
Commissioned Works ◽  
The One ◽  
Late Renaissance ◽  
The Church

How was the history of post-classical Rome and of the Church written in the Catholic Reformation? Historical texts composed in Rome at this time have been considered secondary to the city’s significance for the history of art. The Invention of Papal History corrects this distorting emphasis and shows how history-writing became part of a comprehensive formation of the image and self-perception of the papacy. By presenting and fully contextualizing the path-breaking works of the Augustinian historian Onofrio Panvinio (1530–68), this book shows what type of historical research was possible in the late Renaissance and the Catholic Reformation. Historiography in this period by no means consisted entirely of commissioned works written for patrons; rather, a creative interplay existed between, on the one hand, the endeavours of authors to explore the past and, on the other hand, the constraints of patronage and ideology placed on them. This book sheds new light on the changing priorities, mentalities, and cultural standards that flourished in the transition from the Renaissance to the Catholic Reformation.

scholarly journals Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the structure of a historical text

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Grigory Ivanovich Gerasimov ◽  
Andrei Vladimirovich Gerasimov
Keyword(s):  
Cluster Analysis ◽  
Structural Analysis ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Comparison Analysis ◽  
Main Method ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Text ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Historical Methods

The subject of this research is the historical writing technique, which allows creating convincing images of the past. The goal of this article is ti analyze the structure of texts written by the historians and covering the period from antiquity to the XXI century. The theoretical framework consists of the idealistic approach towards history developed by the author. This article is first to examine the structure of texts written by the prominent historians of the past, such as Herodotus, Nestor, Karamzin, Klyuchevsky, and some historians of the XX – XX centuries from the perspective of idealistic approach and the use of quantitative methods. For comparison, analysis is conducted on the literary texts of A. S. Pushkin and V. S. Pikul dedicated to historical themes. The article employs content analysis, structural analysis, and terarchical cluster analysis of the texts on the basis of their structure. This revealed that the structure of these texts consists of the factual and theoretical statements, where the firs prevailed until the mid XX century. The use of cluster analysis allowed building a matrix of similarity of the works. The main method of creating convincing historical text lies in selection and interpretation of the the facts in accordance with the dominant worldview or a widespread historical concept. Facts are subordinated to the theory and confirm the fundamental ideas and historical concepts, as well as depict a convincing image of the past. The conducted analysis indicates that theory plays the key role in creating a convincing historical text, while facts are secondary; no significant impact of historical methods is revealed. The major difference between the analyzed historical and literary texts consists in the fact that there is no theory in the literary works.

scholarly journals Toward the optimized crowdsourcing strategy for OCR post-correction

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-197
Author(s):  
Omri Suissa ◽  
Avshalom Elmalech ◽  
Maayan Zhitomirsky-Geffet
Keyword(s):  
Character Recognition ◽  
Optical Character Recognition ◽  
Stage Structure ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Two Phase ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
Efficiency Measures ◽  
Historical Text ◽  
Amazon's Mechanical Turk

Purpose Digitization of historical documents is a challenging task in many digital humanities projects. A popular approach for digitization is to scan the documents into images, and then convert images into text using optical character recognition (OCR) algorithms. However, the outcome of OCR processing of historical documents is usually inaccurate and requires post-processing error correction. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how crowdsourcing can be utilized to correct OCR errors in historical text collections, and which crowdsourcing methodology is the most effective in different scenarios and for various research objectives. Design/methodology/approach A series of experiments with different micro-task’s structures and text lengths were conducted with 753 workers on the Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform. The workers had to fix OCR errors in a selected historical text. To analyze the results, new accuracy and efficiency measures were devised. Findings The analysis suggests that in terms of accuracy, the optimal text length is medium (paragraph-size) and the optimal structure of the experiment is two phase with a scanned image. In terms of efficiency, the best results were obtained when using longer text in the single-stage structure with no image. Practical implications The study provides practical recommendations to researchers on how to build the optimal crowdsourcing task for OCR post-correction. The developed methodology can also be utilized to create golden standard historical texts for automatic OCR post-correction. Originality/value This is the first attempt to systematically investigate the influence of various factors on crowdsourcing-based OCR post-correction and propose an optimal strategy for this process.

Real and Literary Landscapes in Ancient Egypt

2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Bunbury ◽  
David Jeffreys
Keyword(s):  
Satellite Images ◽  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
Human Intervention ◽  
Changing Environment ◽  
Constant Flux ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Literary Landscapes ◽  
Borehole Logs ◽  
Ancient Texts

During the past thirty years the Survey of Memphis and others have acquired more than two hundred borehole logs from the Capital Zone of Egypt. Combining these boreholes with maps and satellite images, we show that, during the past five thousand years, the geography of the Nile has been in constant flux with mean rates of migration around 2 m/y and one of its channels becoming extinct, by nature or through human intervention. Re-visiting ancient texts in the light of this changing environment, we show that the literary settings of both fictional and historical texts were real landscapes known to the authors. Hence we infer that ancient descriptions of landscape can be interpreted in a more literal way than before and that the authors were not as prone to writing of a metaphorical realm as was previously thought.

scholarly journals Sayyids and Social Stratification of Muslims in Colonial India: Genealogy and Narration of the Past in Amroha

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 467-487
Author(s):  
SOHEB NIAZI
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
North India ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Islam ◽  
History Of ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Asian Context

AbstractWhile Islamic scriptures like the Quran and Hadith are often quoted to negate the existence of social stratification among Muslims, authors of genealogical texts rely on the very same scriptures to foreground and legitimise discussions on descent and lineage. In the South Asian context, several conceptions of hierarchy as practised by Muslims in north India evolved over the course of colonial rule and were deployed interchangeably by Sayyids. These were based on notions of race, ethnicity, respectability and nobility, and occupational distinctions as well as narratives that referred to the history of early Islam. This article contributes to the study of social stratification among South Asian Muslims by exploring the evolution of Urdu tarikh (historical texts) produced by Sayyid men in the qasbah of Amroha in the Rohilkhand region of the United Provinces during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Sayyid authors narrated the past through the medium of nasab (genealogy). While their texts place emphasis on lineage and descent to legitimise a superior social status for Sayyids, they also shed light on the changing social and material context of the local qasbah politics with the discourse on genealogy evolving into a form that engaged with social contestations.

scholarly journals THEORY OF THE HISTORICAL NARRATIVE IN THE CONTEMPORARY MYTHODOLOGICAL DISCOURSES

2016 ◽  
pp. 34-38
Author(s):  
A. Kosheliev
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Development Theory ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
Research Results ◽  
Analytic Tradition ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Text ◽  
Theory Of History ◽  
The Common

Article says about process of the development theory historical narrative during second half XX – XXI centuries. Attention is paid on questions of the connection between the historical narrative and past reality and on the influence subject-objective attitude in the process demonstration of the historian's research results. Article concerns the transformation of the perception by theoreticians of history the connection between texts and the past reality. Research of the theory of historical narrative begins with a review of vision in the analytic tradition the connection between historical text and the past, what he researches. Emphasize on the logical-deductive element of formation the historical research results, considering the specific of perception the problem by analytics. Building on the achievements of analytical philosophy of history article says about the postmodern narrative theory of history, which was formed by H. White. Research of this theory based on connection with analytic tradition; traces the common roots of both directions and difference between them. Attention is paid on the poetic element of the historical narrative.

scholarly journals Características Enunciativas Presentes em Textos Históricos de Divulgação Científica e Possíveis Contribuições ao Ensino

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 103-123
Author(s):  
Filipe Silva de Oliveira ◽  
Edson José Wartha
Keyword(s):  
Science Teaching ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Teaching History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Brazilian Science

ResumoHistória da Ciência e Ensino de Ciências são áreas do conhecimento com possibilidades de interface anunciadas e investigadas na atualidade, desse modo, produzindo conhecimento a comunidade de pesquisa interessada em encontrar caminhos didáticos para a sala de aula. Por meio de Narrativas Históricas (NHs), Estudo de Caso e sistematicamente Sequências Didáticas, essa interface tem sido desenvolvida. O estudo de textos históricos de divulgação científica auxilia a compreender a divulgação do conhecimento científico para o público comum no passado, acredita-se ser possível o uso desses textos na construção de materiais didáticos como Narrativas Históricas (NHs) e Estudo de Caso. Neste artigo discutimos características enunciadas em textos de divulgação científica escritos por um divulgador da ciência brasileiro, relacionando essas características na construção de Narrativas Históricas que venham a utilizar os textos desse divulgador. As características são conteúdo temático, composição do enunciado e estilo verbal. Essas características auxiliam na compreensão dos textos desse divulgador no processo de construção das Narrativas Históricas.Palavras-chave: Ensino de Ciências. História da Ciência. Divulgação Científica. Narrativa Histórica. AbstractHistory of Science and Science Teaching are areas of knowledge with possibilities of interface announced and investigated today, thus, producing knowledge to the research community interested in finding didactic paths for the classroom.  Through Historical Narratives (NHs) Case Study and systematically Instructional Sequences, this interface been developed. The study of historical texts of scientific popularization assist to understand the popularization scientific knowledge to the common public in the past, it is believed that the use of these is possible in the construction of instruction materials such as Historical Narratives (NHs) and Case Study. In this paper we discuss characteristics stated in scientific popularization texts written by a Brazilian science disseminator, relating these characteristics in the construction of Historical Narratives that come to use the texts of disseminator. Features are thematic content, statement composition and verbal style. These characteristics assist in the understand of the texts of this disseminator in the process of construction the Historical Narratives.Keywords: Science Teaching. History of Science. Scientific Popularization. Historical Narrative.

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