Re: The evolution of language; was Re: Semaphore - needs practice


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Posted by Duncan on December 04, 2002 at 16:50:21 from 152.163.188.167 user Duncan.

In Reply to: Re: The evolution of language; was Re: Semaphore - needs practice posted by Jonathan Labaree on December 04, 2002 at 14:39:52:


Is that not just semantics? I mean, that email debate is already history isn't it - not necessarily terribly significant history but, as a social historian, I can see some significance even in just having put the kettle on... If we change the course of the future then we will have changed the course of history (once those changes come into being) - won't we? Or am I missing your point? (Quite possible, I've been getting bogged down with an academic paper on educationalism today and I think I've got my thick head screwed on!)

As for changing history through our interpretation: of course we don't changed what happened. Is history the truth of what happened or our contemporary knowledge or understanding of what happened? I suspect it's a bit of both. Therefore some groundbreaking piece of research (or indeed a cheap bit of revisionism!) both changes history and leaves history entirely unchanged at one and the same time.

If AR's writing about egg-collecting changed society's attitudes to the practice then he changed the course of history (whatever he thought he was doing at the time). If in fact AR simply reflected changing attitudes to the practice for reasons that are unclear in the records and historical sources available to us and then I as an historian come along and read from those sources (wrongly, for the sake of this argument) that the change in attitude WAS down to AR then I have at one and the same time left history entirely as it ever was (because as you say it's already happened!) but I've also changed history in changing our contemporary understanding of how attitudes to egg-collecting changed and MADE history, both inter-war history (I've constructed new historical knowledge) and 21st century history in that I have created a new historical source for now which might later be studied as early 21st century historiography. Now I've really confused myself, but I think it makes sense down there somewhere!!!


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