Author:
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412840507
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464
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Book Description
This is a work in both the social history of professional historians, and a sociology of knowledge study of how and why a discipline surrenders the search for truth in favor of assertions of ideological purity. In a frenzied effort to cope with exaggerated claims that the study of history is the high road to statesmanship, citizenship, and good neighbors, historians struggled to innovate. Some became radicalized and threatened to tear the world apart, but the more common response was the assertion that the subject would equip citizens to solve current and future policy problems.
Author: C. Behan McCullagh
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134696256
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
Modern relativism and postmodern thought in culture and language challenge the 'truth' of history. This book considers how all historians, confined by the concepts and forms of argument of their own cultures, can still discover truths about the past. The Truth of History presents a study of various historical explanations and interpretations and evaluates their success as accounts of the past. C. Behan McCullagh contests that the variety of historical interpretations and subjectivity does not exclude the possibility of their truth. Through an examination of the constraints of history, the author argues that although historical descriptions do not mirror the past they can correlate with it in a regular and definable way. Far from debating in the abstract and philosophical only, the author beds his argument in numerous illuminating concrete historical examples. The Truth of History explores a new position between the two extremes of believing that history perfectly represents the past and that history can tell us nothing true of the past.
Author: Joyce Appleby
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393078914
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
"A fascinating historiographical essay. . . . An unusually lucid and inclusive explication of what it ultimately at stake in the culture wars over the nature, goals, and efficacy of history as a discipline."—Booklist
Author: Russell Miller
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780276427510
Category : Curiosities and wonders
Languages : en
Pages : 319
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Book Description
This volume offers the reader information on scientific discoveries from early man to World War II, offering a view of world events.
Author: Steven Shapin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226750191
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 516
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Book Description
A Social History of Truth is a bold theoretical and historical exploration of the social conditions that make knowledge possible in any period and in any endeavor.
Author: Julian Baggini
Publisher: Quercus
ISBN: 1786488906
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 69
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Book Description
How did we find ourselves in a "post-truth" world of "alternative facts"? And can we get out of it? A Short History of Truth sets out to answer these questions by looking at the complex history of truth and falsehood. It identifies ten types of supposed truth and explains how easily each can become the midwife of falsehood. There is no species of truth that we can rely on unquestioningly, but that does not mean the truth can never be established. Attaining truth is an achievement we need to work for, and each chapter will end up with a truth we can have some confidence in. This history builds into a comprehensive and clear explanation of why truth is now so disputed by exploring 10 kinds of truth: 1. Eternal truths. 2. Authoritative truths. 3. Esoteric truths. 4. Reasoned truths. 5. Evidence-based truths. 6. Creative truths. 7. Relative truths. 8. Powerful truths 9. Moral truths. 10. Holistic truths. Baggini provides us with all we need to restore faith in the value and possibility of truth as a social enterprise. Truth-seekers need to be sceptical not cynical, autonomous not atomistic, provisional not dogmatic, open not empty, demanding not unreasonable.
Author: Howard Zinn
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620975181
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
American history told from the bottom up by Howard Zinn himself—and the perfect all-ages introduction to his eye-opening viewpoint, published on Zinn’s hundredth birthday Truth Has a Power of Its Own is an engrossing collection of conversations with the late Howard Zinn and “an eloquently hopeful introduction for those who haven’t yet encountered Zinn’s work” (Booklist). Here is an unvarnished, yet ultimately optimistic, tour of American history—told by someone who was often an active participant in it. Viewed through the lens of Zinn’s own life as a soldier, historian, and activist and using his paradigm-shifting A People’s History of the United States as a point of departure, these conversations explore the American Revolution, the Civil War, the labor battles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, U.S. imperialism from the Indian Wars to the War on Terrorism, World Wars I and II, the Cold War, and the fight for equality and immigrant rights—all from an unapologetically radical standpoint. Longtime admirers and a new generation of readers alike will be fascinated to learn about Zinn’s thought processes, rationale, motivations, and approach to his now-iconic historical work. Zinn’s humane (and often humorous) voice—along with his keen moral vision—shine through every one of these lively and thought-provoking conversations. Battles over the telling of our history still rage across the country, and there’s no better person to tell it than Howard Zinn.
Author: Paul Ricœur
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 9780810105980
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 362
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Book Description
Incredible originality of thought in areas as vast as phenomenology, religion, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, intersubjectivity, language, Marxism, and structuralism has made Paul Ricoeur one of the philosophical giants of the twentieth century. The way in which Ricoeur approaches these themes makes his works relevant to the reader today: he writes with honesty and depth of insight into the core of a problem, and his ability to mark for future thought the very path of philosophical inquiry is nearly unmatched. In History and Truth, Ricoeur investigates the antinomy between history and truth, or between historicity and meaning. He argues that history has meaning insofar as it approaches universality and system but no meaning insofar as this universality violates the singularity of individuals' lives. Imposing unity upon truth, or unifying the diversity of knowledge and opinion, creates a singular and universal history but destroys historicity and subjectivity. Allowing for singularities in history promotes a multiplicity of truths over a single, unique truth and thereby annihilates system. This volume and the other new editions of Ricoeur's texts published by Northwestern University Press have joined the canon of contemporary continental philosophy and continue to contribute to emergent discussions in the twenty-first century. Book jacket.
Author: Murray G. Murphey
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791477509
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
Setting aside barren issues such as the scientific status of history, Murray G. Murphey develops an empirical approach to historical study that can yield theories (interpretations) that are testable and confirmable. He examines the evidence on which historical theories are based, the types of explanations used, and particularly the way historical theories are tested. The book treats not only the actual process of historical research but also the philosophical problems involved in historical work. The treatment of causation is new, as is the discussion of epistemology. In his discussions, Murphey covers a wide range of sources and examples, including Frederick Jackson Turner, the Gospels, perspectives on the causes of the Great Depression, the Vinland Map, witchcraft, and material culture. The book is addressed to all who do history or write about it, and it will be a useful text for those who teach courses in historiography.
Author: Hilary Putnam
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521297769
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
'This is a timely book, with penetrating discussion of issues very much in the forefront of the contemporary philosophy. Despite the prominence of negative arguments it contains much to contribute positively to our understanding of what is needed for a conception of rationality and objectivity that covers ethics and value theory generally as well as physics.'
