KASPIL1

Submitted by:

CLAPAROLS, John Paul

MATIAS, Jimuel
PANTINO, Rina Bianca
TIANGSON, Bon Marie
YU, Sheila

C35

Submitted to:

Professor Arleigh Dela Druz

 In the previous weeks, we were tasked to answer a number of questions
regarding history in order to gauge our knowledge with said topic. Also, in order to fully
grasp the concepts of history, we were also ordered to construct questions structured
with Bloom’s Taxonomy.

History came from the Greek word historia which means, inquiry. Greeks defined
history as any systematic explanation of a natural phenomenon regardless if its
chronological. But over time, this study became science. So history is now limited to
chronoligical explanation which is composed of man and the events that man holds.
Most dictionaries would define it as the study of the past and some would state that its a
chronological record of events. So to encapsulate everything we defined history as: the
study of a continuous typically chronological record of important or public events of a
particular trend or institution.

We know that according to E.H Carr, the two important components of history are
the facts and the historian himself. A historian’s job is to record and to interpret the facts.
In the 19th century, history was said to be nothing with out facts. According to Ranke: no
document, no history. People from that time believed that historians are irrelevant. They
say that history, is to be interpreted by the audience, by the readers and not the
historian.

The Greeks has already started writing their history as early as 490 BCE when
Herodetus the father of history recorded the Greek and Persian war. Historical writing in
the Philippines on the other hand only started when the Spaniards went to colonize the
country. The first historical record of the Philippines and the Filipinos were written by
Spanish Friars, though their accounts were ethnocentric for their basis were only their
observations. The Spanish friars wrote that Filipinos as barbaric and indolent. A non-
friar also had his take in writing the Philippine history, Antonio Morga wrote sucesos de
las Islas Pilipinas. In his writing he said that Filipinos are civilized and kind people. His
writing, was annotated by Jose Rizal not long after. Many other non-friars wrote about
the Philippines, such as Pigafetta who was Magellan’s chronicler.

Events and man are the main topic of history. But when does a man or an event
become historical? It must be recorded, or passed down. It must have credible and true
sources. Historians rely on sources to be able to present authentic and credible
“history”. With sources being mentioned, there are three (3) types of sources: (1)
Primary Source - actual records that have survived from the past. These are records
that came from eye-witnesses and/or records that were recorded contemporaneously.
Examples of such are, published documents such as laws, articles from newspapers,
etc., unpublished documents such as police records, voters’ list, etc., oral tradition/oral
history such as myths, legends, interviews, etc., visual documents such as photos,
videos, etc., artifacts such as jars, weapons, etc. (2) Secondary sources - these sources
are mainly just sources that are based from the primary sources and/or were written
after sometime the event has already happened. Examples of such are, published
documents such as articles from magazines, high school books, etc., unpublished
documents such as student essays, etc. (3) The tertiary source is based and derived
from the secondary source. Most books used by elementary are tertiary sources.

Historical methodology is the process of critically examining and analyzing the

records and survivals of the past. It has four steps: Firstly you must choose a topic,
secondly you must gather sources, thirdly you must examine the sources externally
(you must answer what? why? who? where? The source’s authenticity) and internally
(the content of the document, the words used the document).

There is an on going debate on whether history is an art or a science, we believe

that history can be considered as both an art and a science. It is a science since it aims
at discovering facts of the past events and interprets them objectively, while making use
of some scientific methods such as observation and formulating hypotheses. On the
other hand, it is an art because there is a certain way or manner of presenting the series
of events that happened in the past. Historian imagine, historians interpret, historians
write history elegantly, so it is an art. For example, we can consider history as a
historian’s craft because he creates a narrative of the events.

Annales School was established by Ferdinand Braudel, Lucien Febvre and Marc
Bloch. They concentrated on history as being a multidisciplinary. They say that history
can be used in many other social sciences such as political science, sociology, and
many other more. History is often regarded as a boring subject. We’ve had it since
elementary and we’re still studying it now? In the field of business, how is history
significant? History is prescriptive and there are lot of lessons that we can learn from it.
By that we can avoid making the same bad decisions and mistakes the people before
us has made. Also, relating it to the field of business and economics, we can use
historical record to find out what techniques the people before us used in order to boost
our economy. Generally, because history covers everything, history would be useful in
field.

Lastly, history is a very interesting subject because it answers these questions:

What happened? Why did it happen? And what did we learn from what happened?
These are also questions of life that we need to answer in order to be successful.