"The study of History is about critical thinking, not facts." Thoughts?

True.

Absolutely. It is much more important to understand why events happened, then the exact year they happened. (Although some general perception of how events in history mesh together is helpful…)

Maybe you could give us a bit more of the conversation and/or the different sides to help jump-start the convo?

My favorite history professor said: “History was NOT written for true-false or multiple choice.”
He expected us to know facts so we would know the context, year, or era in which the event happened, but spent much more time showing relationships between events, cause and effect, long and short term impacts, and the whys of the events. He was one of the most intriguing teachers I have had!

Certainly the point of mastering history is to avoid repeating past mistakes. And certainly critical thinking is a vital part of using historical knowledge to that end. But how are you to learn the lessons of history without any knowledge of the facts?

Just memorizing facts and parroting them mindlessly is pointless, for sure. But claiming to understand history well enough that it can guide your critical thinking about the present when you don’t even know what happened in the past is worse than pointless, it’s a load of steaming BS.

And then there’s the famous quote: “Those who fail to learn from History are doomed to repeat it.”

The study of history has to begin with facts but that is only the beginning. To study history is to imagine the lives of people in other times.

It is less important that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. It is important that after the Norman conquest in 1066, the govenance of England moved from a system the lands were divided up among the king’s relatives, to one where the eldest son of the king inherited all the lands by the right of primogeniture. The Normans also introduced corporal punishment into the English legal system. With the introduction of French nobility into English society, refinement of culture, in terms of education, language, manners, etc. were introduced into English life. The Battle of Hastings and the Norman victory was the last successful invasion of England.

All of which is far more important than 1066, Normans vs. Saxons, Harold dies.

@BarnacleBill What? Normans vs Saxons is hugely important! The Anglo-Saxons wanted England for their own land, whereas the Normans (or at least William) wanted to use it as a business venture. The A-Ss were invested in what happened socially in their home, William just wanted to impose whatever rules and traditions he felt like with no regard for the social consequences so long as it was making him money for his ventures in Normandy and France. The nature of the link between England and Normandy then lead for Gregorian reforms to come in swiftly, as well as the ideal of chivalry. This, combined with antecedent of the Vikings slowly changing the view of women to a more misogynistic one, created a perfect breeding ground for becoming a heavily misogynistic culture in which women had very little rights, and the ones they did have were rarely, if ever, autonomous and free of going through their man.

@MyNewtBoobs Yes, Normans v Saxons is important. It’s a given in the answer. Critical thinking presupposes that you know the facts. The fact that the Norman conquest of England resulted in radical changes presupposes knowledge of Norman v Saxon.

It’s about both facts and critical thinking.

Disagree. In school a lot of us learn history as facts, so historians/history fans see the need to emphasize the critical thinking aspect. Overall though, without a deep knowledge of the facts, you can’t do the critical thinking part at all. Exact years are not always important but the “story” is extremely important.

Facts do not a story make. You need to link the facts to each other, and that’s where critical thinking comes in.

@roundsquare Only in pre-higher education classes do they teach it as facts. The entire rest of the field is all about the critical thinking.

I think it requires both. Of course facts are never just facts, they’re not always facts, etc.

History major, here. *waves

To me, history is about the interpretation of facts in a larger context.

History revolves around things that actually happened. To study history is to study evidence of these events for as far back as evidence is available. Yes, history involves conjecture at times, but it is ridiculous to say that history “is not about facts.” However, critical thinking is also involved, as in any worthwhile discipline.

Richard the Lionheart and Saladin had a total bromance. Fact, as supported by critical thinking.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard I disagree. There’s no such thing as facts, only bias. Some is supported more, some is supported less.

@MyNewtBoobs, so 5000 US troops landing at Arkhangelsk in September of 1918 as part of the “Polar Bear Expedition” is a somehow a bias and not an objective fact? ...And King Leopold II privately purchasing the Congo to serve as his own personal playground is not strongly enough supported by evidence to count as a fact? No offense, but that doesn’t really make much sense.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard How do we know this? Because someone else said it? Someone else who was human and had human bias? Is there no other explanation as to what was going on with Leopold II, supported by evidence? So much is debatable, so much is contestable, so much can be looked at from another angle. To call them facts means they are undeniable, which they really aren’t.

That’s what primary sources are for.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Ok, that links says I don’t have permission to see the photo. So whatever you were trying to prove there, I can’t access. But I really don’t want to get caught up in a specific scenario. If 35 people witness the same event, there will be 35 different accounts of what happened. They’re all right, and they’re all wrong – it’s all their own personal reality and bias, not fact. To have a field based upon the opinions and biases and errs of humans all the time is to get rid of the chance of undeniable truth.

@MyNewtBoobs, it’s photographic evidence of the Polar Bear Expedition. I don’t know why you can’t see it because it’s not from any special website.

To have a field based upon the opinions and biases and errs of humans all the time is to get rid of the chance of undeniable truth.

I’d hate to play this card, but is it not the undeniable truth that 6million+ people were killed in the Holocaust?

@MyNewtBoobs I would say that eyewitness testimony is a little more reliable than that. They’re not going to be surgically precise in their recounting of minutiae, but the big stuff ought to carry over without trouble. Heck, the difference in accounts might even be complementary rather than contradictory.

The older I get, the more I see historical figures as just people, much like people I know or people whose decisions affect my life and see the dates and facts as just the unburned cinders left over from some battle, a battle very similar to ones going on now and handled by people no more or less fallible.

To see the people behind the history and to relate it us now. That is what matters.

History can be fact and critical thinking. Most of the history we know today was written by the victors. However, that does not mean history is presented without facts.

Eye witness testimony can be far different from facts. 5 eye witnesses can witness a multiple homicide. They could tell the story in 5 different ways. However, the end point is someone killed x number of people. That is a fact.

While some parts of history are conjecture, such as intent/motive/cognitive planning, some parts of history are facts. Distribution of troops, commodities and territories can be objectively stated.

One of my favourite professors in university always taught his history classes as x number of stories. The history of modern China was a 13 story class. He gave you facts, but constantly encouraged critical thinking. When it comes down to it, the study of history is about asking questions and using facts to try to reason out an answer to the best of our abilities.