Paul Christiansen and Bruce A. McMenomy, Ph.D. for Scholars Online
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Chapter 1: The Emergence of Civilization
Mon, Sep 9, 2013
3: Tue, Sep 10, 2013
This chapter contains a great many scattered facts and theories, not connected into anything approaching a continuous narrative. In defense of the (shadowy) authors it’s worth pointing out that there probably isn’t any other way to do it. We have some tantalizing information, but we have far larger gaps that leave many questions wide open. One of the things we would like to discuss here is how we know what we know — the epistemology of history, so to speak — and what that does and does not buy us. This is at least partly rooted in the kind of knowing that we’re talking about — how does historical knowledge differ from scientific knowledge or mathematical knowledge, for example? Part of it, I would argue, is in the fact that history, as a form of story (and storytelling) is fundamentally narrative, whatever other features may adorn it, or whatever other abstractions we may be able to draw from it. What separates completely naive storytelling from sophisticated historiography? What values do each have? What are the relative values of the "what happened?" piece and the "what do we make of it?" piece?
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