Abel Questions

1. Why is history being rewritten constantly?
Histroy is being rewritten constantly because it is always being written wrong. History is a process of reinterpretation and reconstruction; we want it to be meaningful to us in the present.

2. What factors influence the process by which the historian picks and chooses his/her "facts"? Please provide a specific example for each factor.
The factors that influence the historian is society's intrests (what we want to read about; wars vs. peasantry's life), our conceptual apparatus changes (new insight's; advances in pscyhology, new social ideas etc.), our views of the of the basic historical segments (different ideas about history), the historians change (the intrests of the historians), and the audience for whom the historian writes changes (the ideas of the historical community and society at large).

3. What is the "Baconian fallacy?"What would the Positivists think? Would Carr agree with Namier?
The Baconian fallacy is the idea that all a historian has to do is to collects facts. The posivists would completly disagree, whereas Carr would tend to agree with Namier's idea that there is more to the historian then merely finding facts.

4. How does History differ from Geology?
History is not fixed, unlike Geology, which is fixed. Our interpretations of past events is constantly changing and evlolving, wheras geology is fixed.

5. According to Abel: "The patterns to be found in past events are selected by the historian; like the hypothesis of the scientist, they may be suggested, but are neither imposed nor dictated, by "the facts (p. 166-7)." Based on your experience with the Cheques Lab, how far do you agree with this explanation of history?
I agree with this statement; everything we did supposed in the Checks Lab was suppositioned from our own experiences and our own beliefs. Our ideas shaped what we came up with.

6. In your opinion, "how will future historians so elect to describe what is going on now(p. 167)?"
I do not think it's possible to see how future historians will see us because we won't be able to know how they see the world, which shapes how you see history, so it isn't possible for us to know how they'd see us.

7. What is historical pluralism?
Historical pluralism is the idea that every event is not related to every other event.

8. The list of events (or non-events) listed on p. 168 makes Abel ask the question: "Is there, then, no hard core or bed-rock of indisputable facts that the historian must recognize." Does it matter if there ever was a man named Trotsky?
Yes, because Trotsky was a major theorist of communism, and there are still people around today who consider him to be a major figure in communism's creation.

9. How is a historian like a physicist?
Because, like a physicist, a historian gathers information, and then interprets that information to determine its meaning.

10. What are the Five Frameworks or Hypotheses of History? Please provide an example from your HL or SL history class of each.
cyclical (Rome), functional (WW1-WW2), progress (Capitalism-Communis,), Christian (Rise of Chritianity), Organismic (society's live and die)

11. Do you believe in Historical Inevitability?
No

12. What does Abel mean when he says: "No crucial experiment can test the validity of a theory of history, any more than than it can the truth of a metaphysical theory (p. 174)."?
Because, both history and metaphysicality are unable to confirmed, due to the fact that there are areas in both which are gray; this might have happened, but we don't know.

13. Abel writes: "Macaulay regards history as a branch of literature (p. 174)." How would Jill Lepore of Just the Facts, Ma'am respond? Please provide to specific quote from the article to justify your claim.
She would tend to agree, as she seemed to lean toward the idea that history was merely a branch of literature, and said as much.

14. How does the footnote at the bottom of page 175 relate to the Shaper from Grendel?
It relates to the Shaper, in that like the Shaper does, we see events through the lens of our culture. If there is something we don't consider important, we ignore it, and we tend tto exagerate our side of the story, just like the Shaper