Nature of History

The happenings in the lives of human beings are prone to change, resulting in a consequence change in the nature of history. In the most, it was merely a cataloger of events serialized in a descriptive manner. Later on the trend became to study history in a critical and scientific way, and thus history became a study of reality. The term history stands for three related sharply differentiated concept such as

1. Past haman events and past actuality
2. The record of the same
3. The process or technique of analyzing the record.

These three concepts or functions makes historian a scientist to gather facts, a philosopher to interpret them and a litterateur to express them’. There are certain characteristics that reveal the nature of history.

• History is humanistic:  the nature of history is primarily humanistic because it deal with human actions. It also deals with other than human actions which are presented and understood within the backdrop of human actions.
• History  consist of events:   In history, events  or happening that already tool place from the sources or facts for analysis or interpretation.
• History is concerned with change:  the changing political, social, economic, artistic, philosophical, scientific and other aspects of humanity are dealt with in history. Looking or interpreting theses changes may vary from historians but the feature common to the historian is change-how, when and why change takes place in human society.
• History is time and place oriented:  historical facts are located within the boundaries of time an space. As age geographical location determine human behaviors, societies and events are better understood in their set background, when they are mentioned in their context of time and space.
•  History is scientific:   Historical writing is based upon inquiry into fact but also upon a rational scientific analysis of the facts. The prime responsibility of the historian is to analyse a available facts to provide an analysis or interpretation  of the facts. In this process, the historian has to be objectives without giving priories to personal opinion and feelings.

References

Chakravarti, A., (2012). History, Historical thought and Historiography. New Delhi: Dorling Kindersley Pvt. Ltd, India.

Sheikh Ali, B. (1978). History: Its Theory and Method. New Delhi; Macmillan India Limited.

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