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How do historians and human scientists give knowledge meaning through the…
How do historians and human scientists give knowledge meaning through the telling of stories?
Discuss with reference to history and the human sciences.
PT No. 4 May 2022
- The prescribed title question is challenging because we do not immediately associate storytelling with the work of historians and human scientists and that is because storytelling has a connotation of something which is not true, something that may be invented which has more to do with the imagination than knowledge.
- The idea of telling of stories in history and human sciences could encompass a range of possibilities. On a basic level this could include the conveying of knowledge with a beginning, middle and end
- In the human sciences economists might use a trend to explain the beginning, middle and end of a specific economic period
- You may very well discuss these ideas when considering possible issues that could arise when historians and human scientists tell stories to give knowledge meaning
- The result of selecting the details and evidence they consider to be important does not necessarily distort the truth, but it can positively or negatively steer the knower towards certain conclusions or understandings of the event or situation
- The story is the narrative employed in an area of knowledge (AOK) in order to make explanations clear. It is not just a giving of information; it is the clarifying and appealing narrative that leads to understanding and in doing so confers meaning.
- However, we also use storytelling as a tool to communicate knowledge. It enriches and clarifies and is often used to make knowledge more accessible.
- It is therefore a way of giving knowledge meaning.
- The question asks how historians and human scientists give knowledge meaning through the telling of stories not if they use them
- The prescribed title is not saying that this is the only way and there could be comparisons with other ways in which knowledge is given meaning if it helps answer the prescribed title.
- When historians or human scientists tell stories they will emphasize or focus on particular details and aspects within their stories
- The question may be answered with reference to how experts weave a narrative or how they use narratives as sources for their own telling of stories.
- Therefore, stories created by others may be used by historians and human scientists as much as the stories they themselves write
- Story telling could involve embedding a moral message in the knowledge, the portrayal of characters, the use of metaphors or cause and effect.
- In an ethnography, anthropologists, are, in some sense, telling the story of a specific group of people or culture—their rituals, values and hierarchies representing the plot.
- Psychologists often use case studies which in themselves are narratives, in order to better understand human character and behaviour
- In history, it may be more apparent that historians tell stories, as the chronological organisation of past events lends itself particularly well to the structure of a story
- We often speak of characters in history and analyse their importance or significance in a way not altogether dissimilar from the study of literature.
- Historians have many sources from which to glean stories such as diaries, memoirs, autobiographies and letters.