3rd Post

“All new knowledge depends upon our ability to find in our present knowledge an analogy for the new phenomenon.”

This line by Oakshott is, in my opinion, an exact depiction of how we as historians interpret history.  I believe strongly in a saying that I learned in my Western Civ. class; “History is written in the present”.  That is, history is a reflection of the past from the minds of historians and is changing at every moment because of our present experiences.  While reading something historical, I am constantly finding parallels to present day and automatically interpreting the historical information based on my opinions of my own background, understanding of the world, etc.

For example, when learning about the recession in the 1920’s that led to The Great Depression, thoughts of today’s recession are constantly flashing through my mind.  Before the depression of the 1930’s, society was practically run by republican ideals for years.  It reminds me of Wisconsin’s governor, Scott Walker who took away the collective bargaining rights of many state employees.  Since I detest Scott Walker (for that reason, as well as many, many others) and that period in history reminds me of him, I will be more apt to say that such a republican society was not a good idea.  I might even go as far as to say that it was part of the cause of the Great Depression.  However, somebody with republican values would argue otherwise.  This proves that our own life experiences play a factor in the way that we present history.

I agree with Steph’s blog when she says that history cannot be completely reliant on the facts.  Even if one tried to construct a completely factual history, he/she would have to be forced to choose which facts to include and this would result in a selective history.