[追星剑特训] Chapter2.6 History 历史

imongUID：140258

[追星剑特训] Chapter2.6 History 讨论

历史类分类讨论链接：https://bbs.gter.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=128443

今天来看看一篇风格和我们不太一样的文章：

Issue110
"When we concern ourselves with the study of history, we become storytellers. Because we can never know the past directly but must construct it by interpreting evidence, exploring history is more of a creative enterprise than it is an objective pursuit. All historians are storytellers."

History is a study of the past. It is primarily, though not limited to, a study of human civilisation and progress over the centuries preceding ours. It involves analysis of evidence to gauge the changes that have occured with human evolvement and development.似乎是不着边界的从History的定义来讲起。

The need for historical surveys and analyses is a moot one. Historians exist and operate to satisfy mainly two needs - one being sheer human interest and curiosity in the way our forefathers survived in their time, and the environment and atmosphere (both physical and intellectual) that existed in their time; the other being a need to identify how people have evolved to reach the socio-economic world that we exist in today. 仍然是不急不忙的给出读者作者对the need for historical surveys的看法。

History can be managed in only one inherently simple way - through the processes of analysis and reconstruction. Analysis is the process of collecting and collating data on previous existences through research and physical exploration of expected zones of past civilizations; reconstruction is the method of objectively analysing this collected information to recreate past existences and beliefs.这一段对analysis and reconstruction进行了解释。

花了三段的笔墨大做铺垫，恐怕我们从来没有人这么干过吧？看到这里仍然不见response，继续往下：

Clearly, there is no scope for "storytelling" here - all concrete historical conclusions can, and are, made only from facts. 千呼万唤始出来 Where facts cannot satisfactorily explain situations, the concept of theories (or unproven but expected ideas) are used - the boundary between theory and fact is always clearly demarcated.

Theorizing is different from storytelling. Storytelling is a creative art; 上一段后末提出的新概念Theorizing在此紧接着就做出了对应，和storytelling相对 it is, to put it succintly, it is "a collection of bald-faced lies". Stories are inherently fallacies - they assume prior knowledge that the author is creating his or her own version of the truth, and is not trying to, as the cliched phrase goes, "change history to suit his own needs". 一句话写的起伏跌宕History is a science; historians use tried and tested objective methods to reconstruct the past - at no level can it be considered unsubstantiated or arbitrary. 分别进行解释。看看人家写得多清楚！
用词上也有的可学习：inherently fallacies, at no level can it be…

作者决不停在泛泛而谈的层面上（上次说的关于泛化的问题就是在这里），这一点尤其值得注意：Let us assume that there are two people with a decision to make - they are given a number of facts. They are given a situation that must be explained with these facts; but sadly, the facts cannot *wholly* explain the situation. What is their decision? One of them, the carefree one, can take the easier path and fill the holes with creative and baseless verbiage.注意这里的用词：creative and baseless verbiage. The other is, by definition, The Historian. He must use the facts, and only the facts, to explain the given situation. The parts that cannot be explained must be clearly indicated as being so; the historian must now fill these gaps by utilising only the best and choicest conclusions that can be made *from the given facts*. If certain issues cannot be explained competently, it must be accepted as being part of the price of objectiveness - the incapacity to completely explain something with a limited amount of information. 到这里，大家体会一下什么是elaborate. Though the first person may generate literature more pleasing to the eye,形象 it is a fact that the historian's version must be the more accurate, and thus far more relevant one. 就算是一个Let us assume，一个“设想”的例子，都可以写成这样的。好好体会一下。

用词上可以看出作者的笔法相当娴熟，插入结构和同位语（以及等位修饰）用得很好，从而很有效的帮助把文章充实了起来。（希望大家在自己的文章里也尝试注意一下）

Of course, like in all debates on issue, there is another side to the argument. The given division between the art of storytelling and the science of theorizing lies in the problem of how one can explain those parts that cannot be explained by extrapolating facts in historical analysis methods - the "gaps", as it were, in explanations of history. 一个简短的未交待的说明。似乎是出现了个败笔，且继续看：

Since the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the 1660s, when printed literature started becoming common; since the Media Revolution of this century, where real events, people and things have been recorded "live" on visual and audio equipment for posterity; and most importantly, since the birth of the ubiquitous and all-encompassing Internet of the world, 华丽的平行结构排比 the need for theorizing has almost been eliminated. 一下子提出了很猛爆的观点 There is so much literature present describing every event in history in minute detail from all possible perspectives, that there remain no "gaps" to be covered 看到这里的gap了吗？再回去看上一段，现在可以看到，上一段并不是孤立的没交待，而实际上是很特殊的起到了承接的作用 - historians have now been reduced 好词to the roles of mere accountants, though ones of a different nature. They now can only assemble facts together and state them as they are; they cannot theorize, they cannot tell stories.到了这里比开始的historians theorize又进了一步。

Given their reduced role with the burgeoning of the Information Revolution in today's times, there can be but one future for the given issue - its gradual movement into obscurity, where historians play no part greater than that of collection and reorganization of facts. 接上一段，文章从historians theorize写到historians cannot theorize，是不是自己驳倒了自己呢？且慢，姑且不谈从theorize到cannot theorize的过程外界条件的改变在文中已经提及，看看原题：All historians are storytellers. 文章从中间的theorize深入到最后的cannot theorize是一步又一步的更加深刻的彻底反驳storyteller而确立fact的地位——才不是平白无故到了最后突然喊句口号，这才是真正的叫做“升华”！

纵观全文，这篇文章的写作风格和我们这里常见的情况差异不小。最为明显的莫过于开头三段不紧不慢的大做前导和铺垫，全文行文的流畅程度让人赞叹，丝毫不见我们有些练习文章中的生硬和脱节（esp.每个段落都能看出生拼上去的TS的那种文章），观点一一阐明，而又全然free of 腐朽纲目的僵硬。这篇文章的结构，拿来和我们的文章，以及老外280的文章相比，可以刺激我们思考这样的问题：人家的结构和我们不同，为什么达到了相同的甚至更好的效果？这篇文章的优点究竟在哪里？我们怎么样去学习？

在独特的构架之外，从始至终贯穿着作者的一个又一个清晰的说明和定义。从开篇的history， the need for the study of history开始，到theorizing和storytelling的辨析，全都是清清楚楚——说明作者思考得很清楚，同时有效地进行了表达。这时候回过去看看Chapter2.1，可以感到，作者对history的扎实的基本观点，让这篇文章做到了有效的回应。

作为Chapter2的最后一节，看完这篇文章，我们再回去看看前几个小节里面涉及的写作元素和对“题材”的讨论分析，复习一下，能得到一些什么样的体会感悟呢？

这篇文章是我在internet上面搜索到的，似乎同一个人写的issue还有七八篇，大多都是这个风格。单以这篇文章而言，无论reasoning还是rhetorical都是相当出色，不敢断言定拿下6分，但必定是高分之作。

推荐的素材帖子链接：

历史类题材：History and the Present Become [下载]
https://bbs.gter.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=71784

[参考资料]历史哲学，历史写作与历史研究
https://bbs.gter.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=180875

TOEFL030148听力 storyteller的素材
https://bbs.gter.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=188631

History and Architecture：issue26的相关资料
https://bbs.gter.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=137358

同主题写作：issue54和issue189。作为Chapter2的最后一期，看看我们能不能写出同样精彩的文章呢？

gra cie0213UID：157500

太好了，这次有例子，看得比较明白
顶一下  :D

detail_yyyUID：167745

刚写了这一篇，好好借鉴借鉴 :D