History: Definition, Etymology, and Perspectives
Do you agree that history is written by the victors? Do you believe that history is a mere fable that is agreed upon? Whatever your answer is, we can say that there is no absolute “yes” or no” to these questions. It all depends on who writes the history and why he/she writes it. Nonetheless, its point cannot be discounted. At some point, particularly the autobiographical and biographical accounts, there could be biases in the history due to the point-of-view favorable to the victor; however, in cases where the writer is a “third party” (mostly called ‘historian’) who is independent of the ‘actors’ of the history, bias tends to be minimal. One thing is sure, history (the unfolding of events) is always true, but the writing of history is not perfect especially that the points-of-view reflected in it are limited. Yet, we cannot simply say they are not true, either. In this time of information explosion, we have the privilege to assess the truthfulness of a given historical account by doing the research ourselves. Herein enters what we call “critical thinking.”
But what is history? You might answer “it is the study of the past.” Yes, it is true that history is the study of the past, but this is just the starting point. Going deeper, though, we can define history from its Greek derivation which is historia, meaning “knowledge acquired through inquiry or investigation” (Candelaria & Alporha, 2018). Since around 2, 400 years ago, history has already existed, but its adaptation to classical Latin has given it a news definition. Historia, then, became to be the “account of the past of a person or a group of people through written documents and historical evidences” (Candelaria & Alporha, 2018; p. 2). This regard for history lasted until the early 20th century.
History became an important part of the academic discipline. Herein, historians became focused on writing about the lives of important individuals
like monarchs, heroes, saints and nobilities (Candelaria & Alporha, 2018). As such, wars, revolutions, and other significant breakthroughs became the favorite themes in historical accounts.
Supply these boxes with appropriate words or phrases that you think will help clarify what history is.