The past consists of everything that ever happened to everyone everywhere, but you cannot remember or learn it all.
Critical Thinking Consortium
This way of thinking focuses on impact. You’ll look at historical events, trends, persons, or issues to explain why people today still care about them.
The study of history depends on deciding which events and people from the past we should remember. In other words, which events and people have historical significance?
Nothing happens in isolation. One thing inevitably leads to another.
Critical Thinking Consortium
This way of thinking focuses on cause and effect. You'll ask questions and find evidence to explain how certain conditions and actions led to other events in history.
To answer those questions you need to look at the conditions and the context, as well as the actions and reactions of people around an event.
Causes can be complex or many-layered. Consequences are the ripple effects that follow which, in turn, may become the causes of new events.
The factors you study and the perspective you take will also affect how you see causes and consequences.
Continuity gives us roots; change gives us branches.
P.R. Kezer
This way of thinking focuses on what has changed and what has remained the same over a time period. It can be applied to an issue, theme, or group.
At any point in time, some things are changing while others remain more or less the same.
Looking at history as a mixture of continuity and change gives a richer view of the ebb and flow and interconnections of events over time. It can help you find patterns and make comparisons between different points in time.
A good strategy to see these connections is to look for change where you may think there was none, and to look at what continued during times of great change.
The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.
L. P. Hartley
This way of thinking focuses on seeing the past from its own perspective. You gather evidence in order to develop a sense of what it was like to live in a particular place and time.
Judging history from today’s point of view and standards can be misleading. Beliefs and customs that were perceived to be reasonable in the past may have been disproven or are inappropriate today.
However, to apply our ‘modern’ standards to history can prevent us from understanding the peoples, cultures and events of the past.
For example, some people in the past believed the sun revolved around the earth. However, we cannot judge them as ignorant or unintelligent. Rather, we need to consider their culture, their context and their society to understand their beliefs and actions. Without carefully conducted astronomy and a culture that trusted scientific evidence, it would have seemed reasonable for a person to believe that the sun revolved around the Earth.
Instead, before applying today’s knowledge and standards to a historical issue or event, historians need to take a historical perspective. They need to use evidence from historical sources to make judgments about how people thought at the time.