What is History- Article #1

History is the study of past events or events that occur in the past. Past is a word very hard to define just like history. The past is anything that is not occurring right now. Everything will soon become the past. The past is very hard to define because right after it something occurs it becomes the past. It could be as long ago as 500 years or as short ago as .1 of a second. Studying history is helpful in many ways. It can lead us to figure out what will happen in the future, why things happen, and explains many of the things in the present. History can be defined in many different ways. Each person may have their own interpretation of what exactly history is. History is anything that happened in the past. To some history is just a record of what occurred in the past. There are four types of history that we can study are, linear, cyclical, Hegelian, and vortex. Linear history is when the events are laid out like a timeline. Cyclical history is when the events occur in a cycle and there is no beginning so you cannot tell what started them.  Hegelian history is made up of a thesis and an antithesis to make up a synthesis. Last the vortex history is a history where the events are always changing and they go from big too small to big.

                 In my opinion the best type of history is linear history because all of the events are put in order by which they occur. It is like a time line and the events are put in chronological order. This is helpful because for the other types of history it is debatable what came first but with this you know. This can be helpful because if a historian is looking a timeline which is part of linear history the can tell what events occurred after each other. They can use this to tell them what has occurred before a major event. For example if there is a war and before the war you know that the invention of steel has occurred for that region you can tell that during the war they had steel to help them fight. It can help you figure out what tactics they had during war. When you first start learning history the type of history you learn is linear because it is easiest to follow and understand. When you get more advanced with the study of history you learn the other types. Linear history is most common and used. In linear history there is a beginning and an end unlike cyclical history where you don’t know where it started.  Events are constantly being created added to history so the ending is constantly changing but there is an end.

                Cyclical history is a way of history when all the events occur in a cycle. There is no beginning or end because they keep cycling back to each other or to new events. You cannot tell what the beginning to the events is because there is no beginning. Think about what came first the chicken or the egg. This in a sense is like cyclical history because one had to have came first but it keeps cycle the chicken had the egg and the egg hatched a chicken and the chick had an egg and so on. It could also start with the egg. The egg hatched a chicken and the chicken had an egg which hatched another chicken. This would keep continuing just like the events in cyclical history. The problem is you don’t know which event caused the other to occur. You don’t know which one came first so you have no cause.

                Vortexual history is a type of history in which the events occur like a tornado. The events work from going really big then to really small, then to big, then to small and so on. The events are never the same, they are always changing. Yeats was the man who invented or started the vortex history. He was an irish poet. It is the ups and downs of everyday life. It gets really high and then falls and then it will get high again and then fall. These keeps occur over and over. The events are constantly being rebuilt over and over. A way to look at this is like a line graph for stocks. The stocks will go up and then fall. They will work back up and then fall. Sometimes this fall is dramatic and causes a steep slope and sometimes it is not that bad but it is still a fall. This is a way to look at the Hegelian theory of history.

                The last type of history is Hegelian. Hegelian theory of history was invented by George Hegel. He was a German philosopher. The Hegelian theory of history consists of thesis, antithesis to compose of a synthesis.  He also wrote a book called the Philosophy of History. In the Hegelian theory of history events occur because of each other. Each event causes one another. It works like cause and effect. You always know what caused what or why something occurred. This is easy because if a piece is missing you can make a good guess of what that piece is because it will all go together and make sense.

                I believe the best type of history is the linear history in linear history a timeline is often used to show what events occurred in when. They will be placed in chronological order. History is the study of past events and one way to study this is through linear which will show what happened first and what happened last. In linear history there is a beginning and an end. Although the end is constantly changing when each event is added. There are many ways to study history and but studying history we learn many things about our past, present and future.

               

"History -." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Web. 29 Jan. 2010. .

"What is History?" WiseGEEK: clear answers for common questions. Web. 29 Jan. 2010. .