【Flyer杀G作文组】2月10-11日作业Issue48

wagner1985UID: 2838595

Maybe history is one of the oldest subjests which generations of the intellectuals are involved. As the most of the social sciences, the methodology of the study of history, whereby all of the ideas and opinions base on, is not far from a mud of controversies. Of all of those controversies, how we could find an appropriate angle to depict a blueprint of a society at a time is the most imperative one, which every disitinctive historian cannot move around before making any persuavasive argument. However, a considerable number of the history writings with or without distinctiveness are actually used to describeing the activies of some powerful characters. Perhaps, the fact itself may remind us it is more or less reasonable to pay much attention on individuals to make an insightful argument on history study.

If we read the history of the historians, we may find it is by far a more difficult task for the precedents make any study or any conclusions than their descendants, due to the depth of the development of human thoughts. In the time in which the history study is not fully developed, Clearly, we cannot find any mature theory which can mirrors human behaviors. Thereby, in ancient Greece as well as any old civilizations, the understanding on history relies on the stories within the myth and religions. From the great Herodotus to Thucydides, historians cannot explain what happen in the past, besides adding more or less mysteries. in which the variety of gods, monsters, ghosts or god-like characters, actually mirrors the feeling and emotions of individuals. In other words, the early historians, even more generations, tries to tell us it is the emotion and characters of gods, which actually belongs to the mental world of human being, dominate what happen in reality, because the anger, happiness, envyness, hatredness and etc. are the only knowledge with certainty about people themselve.


And we should also realize that analyzing and drawing the activities of individuals are more easily than recording the group, which is not only a problem in history as well as the social science, but also an interesting problem in literature. In a long time, the writing of history studies are really similar with the creation of a novel, because, to some extent, these two works are indifferent at telling a story, which are quite easy to describe the activies of one person, or several, but difficult to precisely record a group of ones at one time. Even the most sophsiticated novelist could not do that. Maybe it is our human nature that we cannot notice everyone of many individuals, which may influence the way of recording and thinking over a activity. The lack of descripsion techniques determines the lack of descrpsion. However, to record what happen before, emphasizing individual seems inevitable but not useless. For those common people, the individual cented study at least contained some information and knowledge about humanism. For those historian, better doing than nothing.

Also, we have to admit not all of the historians are like to make reaserch center on individuals, especially those in contemperary, like Tonybee, Ranke, or Braudel. Most of their inteests are paid for finding out some general law of the advancement of human times.So it is incomplete to summarize the study of history place so much attention on individuals.


To sum up, historians should pay some attention on their individuals and the individualistic methodology itself. Emphasizing individual is neither too much nor totally inappropriate. If and only if we solve the methodology, we may realize how could we understand and do the study of history. And then we could answer the question that which class of people really promote the development of history.