What are Humanities and Social Sciences? What is History?

Author: Ge Jianxiong, Zhou Xiaoyun
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2002-07-04
Features: Some say that past events are history. But whether they can truly become history depends on how later generations record them. From this perspective, everything we see as history today has a subjective nature, as it is all recorded by humans. Since it is recorded by humans, it is inevitably influenced by the recorder's own thoughts, emotions, methods, and means. The historical facts remain unchanged, but if the recorder changes, the recording perspective changes, and the recording methods change, the focus of history will shift. However, no matter what, it is absolutely impossible for all past events to become history. Everyone hopes to travel through a time tunnel and return to the past, but so far, this is still just science fiction. What we can truly do is read historical documents and understand the past through this method. Therefore, the historical facts we see now have all been selected and processed by historians or historical recorders across generations. At the end of the day, what exactly is history? For this question, I think, in simple terms, history is not only the past facts themselves but also the conscious and selective recording of those past facts by people. As for the specialized study of history, that is historiography, also known as the history of historiography, or historical science. It not only includes history itself but should also include the study and summarization of the laws of historical development based on historical facts, as well as the summary and research methods and theories of history.