History is not study of past. History is a study of recorded passed. It is not possible to know every event which have happened before now to everyone, everywhere, at any time. What we could know is based on survived evidence such as pass newspapers, documents, articles, videos, etc.
History is not like other social sciences which can do the experiment directly and make conclusion. For example, economist can collect the data like GDP, and to predict future economy. History study is only based on the evidence that left behind from the past because historian cannot take time-travel to see what was happened, and those evidence are very limited.
Furthermore, those evidence which consider to be useful was usually created by authorized man, and because of the censorship. Those survived evidences usually were not complete story, even more, untrue. It only tell us what the “authorized man” thought what was happened or what he want others to think what happened. Therefore, it is hard to tell that what we learn from the history is the facts about the past or the story that the people in the past want to tell us.
I agree your point of “Those survived evidences usually were not complete story, even more, untrue. ” History are usually told by the people who have the strongest power, and most of time they will change the evidence to praise them self even if they are a tyrant.
I do agree that not all the historical event are reliable, but for instance, there are so many documentary, newspaper and even some people that are actually involved into the WW2, which proved the reliability of the WW2.
What’s your take on how we should assess history, if the historical events are tampered with by “authorized men”?
how can we know that survived evidence, especially written evidence, is not fake or made up?
Do you think we will ever have a way of knowing if history is true or false?
I really liked your first paragraph about the history and about the recording of it. Do you think that it’s better for people to record everything or that some things can be left undocumented as now we live in a time where everything gets documented about every person through social media?
How have so many past events have been taught to us but some are not very documented or has no enough evidence? Do you think some things are made up for the benefit of some people.
I agree! But what if all the evidences show the whole story of history?
i am disagree with your opinion that”economist can collect the data like GDP, and to predict future economy. ” as you just said in your text, history is a subject that record the passed, we cant use those GDP data to make a predit of the future economy