History Extension key terms/definitions
When I first started started History Extension I found a lot of the readings really confusing and difficult to understand, especially because of all the hard/unfamiliar words they used. Theres heaps of new terms for historiography that we can use within our essays. I’ve included some terms and definitions here, mainly that we used for the first half of the course.
Empiricism: Experience, which is based on observation and experimentation, is the source of knowledge.
Enlightenment: A process from ignorance to truth, intellectual mood, key feature-confidence in reason not superstition so anti-religion.
Anachronism: Placing of an object/building/person out of it’s natural time frame.
Objectivity: A lack of bias, judgement or prejudice.
Relativism: Truth is related to the person who wrote it at the time in which it was written.
Historicism: History just be understood in it’s own context-can’t judge it by our current values.
Public History:Those forms of historical representation which are produced outside the academy, either directly addressing a large general audience, or for public, often governmental purposes.
Romanticism:Similar timing to the Enlightenment, reaction against it, about free expression, creativity and anti-reason, history is a thing of beauty/art not science.
Total History:A total history of one place, at one time, incorporating mentalities, the event and the long term as wells the use of anthropological, economic, demographic and more traditional political history.
Teleology: An idea which holds all things to be designed for or directed towards a final result, that there is an inherent purpose or final cause for all that exists.
Whig: A British political party in Britain. Their origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute monarchy.
Economic determinism: Economic (material) conditions shape everything significant in society.
Economic base: Economic foundation of society.
Relations of production: Relationships between different classes/people to make production occur.
Superstructure: All visible aspects of society (eg. political structure, legal system, etc.)
This definitely isn’t al the terms you can come across in History Extension-I’l try to update it throughout the year. If you are confused with anything please post and I’ll explain it more. If you have any other terms that aren’t here feel free to add their definitions in, or ask about them.
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