World History i
Unfortunately, historians have become so absorbed in detailed research that they have tended to neglect the job of building these larger-scale maps of the past. Indeed, many historians deliberately neglect the task of generalization in the belief that the facts will eventually speak for themselves when enough of them have been accumulated, forgetting that it is we alone who can give the “facts” a voice. The result of this one-sided approach to historical research is a discipline that has plenty of information but a fragmented and parochial vision of its field of inquiry. Not surprisingly, it has become harder and harder to explain to those we teach and those we write for, why they should bother to study history al all.
World history is, among other things, an attempt to redress this balance.
David Christian, The Case for “Big History”
[x]#1010 fan zaterdag 15 januari 2005 @ 22:40:37
