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Definition: history from Philip's Encyclopedia

Written record of the human past, often used to mean the events themselves rather than the record of them. The Western historical tradition began with the Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides. China (and countries influenced by it) had a different, even older historical tradition in which the past was seen as the source of wisdom and historians strove to distinguish comprehensible patterns in it.

history

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
in its broadest sense, is the story of humanity's past. It also refers to the recording of that past. The diverse sources of history include books, newspapers, printed documents, personal papers, and other archival records, artifacts, and oral accounts. Historians use this material to form coherent narratives and uncover linked sequences and patterns in past events. Most histories are concerned with causality, that is, why certain outcomes happened as they did, and how they are linked to earlier events. In preliterate societies, the accounts of the past are related orally, and many cultures have produced intricate and sophisticated oral histories. African peoples have long relied on oral histories to learn about their past. Starting with the medieval Islamic kingdoms of Africa some of these oral chronicles were recorded in Arabic, and sub-Saharan Africa developed its own written histories. In the 1550s the Popol Vuh , an elaborate account of the history and mythology of the Quiché…
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Full text Article History

From Key Concepts in Sports Studies
Few academic subjects have lent themselves so readily to pithy quotation as the discipline of history. 1 Some historians, the eminent historian Arnold Toynbee once suggested, 'hold that history is just one damn thing after another'. History is, after all, the study of the past – 'a foreign country' …
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Full text Article history

From Collins Dictionary of Sociology
the entirety of the past. any written accounts of the past. the recorded past (recorded history); the history of literate societies; societies in which there have survived written records of a recorded oral tradition (compare ARCHAEOLOGY ). the professional academic discipline concerned with the…
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Full text Article history

From Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought
Now used in two senses: 1 . The process of change in human societies over time. 2 . The art of describing that process. The term ‘historiography’ has recently been invented in place of sense 2. Theories of history in sense 1. are attempts to give general ‘laws of motion’ for human societies. …
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Full text Article HISTORY

From Global Dictionary of Theology
History, in the broadest sense, is the story of humanity's past. More narrowly it is the practice of recounting past events as a means of discovering meaning and establishing the identity of a people. In the West this has developed formally into a highly specialized discipline that uses written or…
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Full text Article history

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
in its broadest sense, is the story of humanity's past. It also refers to the recording of that past. The diverse sources of history include books, newspapers, printed documents, personal papers, and other archival records, artifacts, and oral accounts. Historians use this material to form coherent…
| 2,413 words
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Full text Article HISTORY

From Collins Dictionary of Quotations
History, faced with courage, need not be lived again. [Speech at the Inauguration of President Clinton, 1993] Every time history repeats itself the price goes up. Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in ... The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all…
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Full text Article HISTORY

From Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations
English historian The great object, in trying to understand history, political, religious, literary or scientific, is to get behind men and to grasp ideas. Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone March 15, 1880 (p. 6 ) George Allen. London England . 1904. No biographical data available History is…
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Full text Article HISTORY

From The Edinburgh Dictionary of Modernism
In contrast to the reputed historical-mindedness of REALISM , to which it is typically opposed, modernism is deemed to turn away from history by favouring artistic AUTONOMY , premised on the precedence of form over historical content. This argument can be traced back to Georg Lukács's contention…
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Full text Article history

From The Macquarie Dictionary
histories the branch of knowledge dealing with past events. histories histories the record of past events, especially in connection with humankind. histories histories a continuous, systematic written narrative, in order of time, of past events as relating to a particular people, country, period, …
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The turning point in the Greco-Persian Wars,...
✣Key Facts Conflict: Greco-Persian Wars Time Period: 492–479 BCE Genre: History OVERVIEW The Histories of the fifth-century-BCE Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus presents the earliest-known attempt in Western literature to write a broad, accurate nonfiction record of the past. Preceded…
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