History (from Greek ἱστορία, historia, meaning "inquiry; knowledge acquired by investigation") is the scientific study of the past. Events occurring before the invention of writing systems are considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events. Historians place the past in context using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, ecological markers, and material objects including art and artifacts.History also includes the academic discipline which uses narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze a sequence of past events, and investigate the patterns of cause and effect that are related to them. Historians seek to understand and represent the past through narratives. They often debate which narrative best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians also debate the nature of history and its usefulness by discussing the study of the discipline as an end in itself and as a way of providing "perspective" on the problems of the present.Stories common to a particular culture, but not supported by external sources (such as the tales surrounding King Arthur), are usually classified as cultural heritage or legends. History differs from myth in that it is supported by evidence. However, ancient influences have helped spawn variant interpretations of the nature of history which have evolved over the centuries and continue to change today. The modern study of history is wide-ranging, and includes the study of specific regions and the study of certain topical or thematic elements of historical investigation. History is often taught as part of primary and secondary education, and the academic study of history is a major discipline in university studies.
Herodotus, a 5th-century BC Greek historian is often considered (within the Western tradition) to be the "father of history", although he has also been called the "father of lies". Along with his contemporary Thucydides, he helped form the foundations for the modern study of human history. Their works continue to be read today, and the gap between the culture-focused Herodotus and the military-focused Thucydides remains a point of contention or approach in modern historical writing. In East Asia, a state chronicle, the Spring and Autumn Annals, was known to be compiled from as early as 722 BC although only 2nd-century BC texts have survived.
My birthday is coming up and I'm planning to ask for books. I've just returned to school and am in my first year of calculus and physics. For those of you who have read this book, is there much background required to understand it?
okay, this thread should be fun, find something that went horribly wrong in the course of history (in a funny way).
i'll start:
the events that triggered WWI:
a group of terrorists wanted to assassinate Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austria-Hungarian throne.
they agreed that after...
While visiting Bulgaria, I got to see some old Europan history going back almost to 0 CE. However, I also learned that there is a Thracian legacy, which is truly amazing.
In the last 10 years or so, an effort has been made to explore several ancient tombs at Starosel, Kazanluk, Alexandrovo...
Here is another gem I found at [PLAIN]www.talk-history.com[/URL]
History: Fiction or Science?
Anatoly Fomenko
"This is a most unusual book, one that undermines the very foundations of History. According to the author and his team of researchers, History as it has been taught in Europe...
This struck me as odd.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chile
It just struck me as strange that a guy name O'Higgins would be Chile's most renowned patriot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardo_O%27Higgins
The vast expanse of Russia means and proximity to so many cultures has meant a fascinating and dynamic history. Various tribes have crossed those lands over the last several millenia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia#History (a quick summary)...
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/food.html
t resteth now that we speak of boyled meats and broth, which forasmuch as our House-Wife is intended to be general, one that can as well feed the poor as the rich, we first begin with those ordinary wholsome boyl'd meats which are of use in every good mans...
Ok I need me some super help. I have a term paper due next monday and things have just been piling on me like there's no tomorrow so I am barely getting a topic as we speak :cry: :cry: :cry: . So I need some suggestions here. I need an important figure to do a report on that was famous or...
What advance in physics do you feel has had the greatest impact on history? This is a question I have to answer for a research project. Currently my plan is to do John Bardeen and the transistor but I'd like to here some other ideas.
Isn't it true that you can find all sorts of historical accounts of events by keywords that were taken by equidistant letter spacings of almost any text? For example: watergate, who is he?, president, but he will be kicked out. Ya know, things like that, found by equidistant letter spacings that...
The daily express on its front page is predicting the coldest winter in the uk
since 1968, it states that gas ond other reserverves will not last and that a
3 day working week may be enforced.
Where do they get these long range forcasts from ?
Disclaimer: While I think I'm pretty well educated in math and the physical sciences, I'm pretty much a moron in biology. Be nice to me.:redface:
I read the following statement from one George Olshevsky, responding to a Creationist argument:
He was responding to the claim that...
The recent PBS special, Einstein's Big Idea, is well worth watching (it's a history of e = mc^2). One reason is that in the first hour, it traces the historical development of the concepts of mass, energy, electricity and magnetism and electromagnetism in the 1700's and 1800's.
One item of...
New York Times had an article today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/weekinreview/16luo.html?8hpib=&pagewanted=print
Apparently a man named Darby in the 19th Century was very important in inventing the idea of rapture and puttting a particular spin on the Good Book.
- http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/mathhist/
Pick a region - http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/mathhist/earth.html
Maintained by
David E. Joyce
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Clark University
I picked up a thick paperback book on the history of mathematics...
Back when I was at university studying Physics, I also studied Religions, including Eastern Religions, which brought me to study Chinese History and Culture. It is an extraordinary history.
Here are some resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_History...
An interesting site:
http://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/def_en/kap_5/advanced/t5_1_4.html
It is amazing how humans have progressed from wood/bone/sinew to stone to metals - to highly technical materials.
http://www.key-to-steel.com/Articles/Art106.htm - Part 1...
So how about those Celts?
They existed in parallel with the Greeks, Romans, Germanic and Norse tribes (not forgetting peoples of Central Asia, e.g. the Slavs and Turkic peoples). There is still a lot of mystery and perhaps some misinformation, but such happens with an incomplete or partial...
Early history of gauge theory---a science history paper
one way to enrich one's understanding of scientific theories is to
learn about the people who discovered them and what they were thinking about at the time, and how other scientists reacted etc.
gauge theory apparently got started in...
I'm a bit disappointed that no actual threads on history have been started.
Some intersting periods to discuss would be the 3rd, 4th & 5th centuries with the barbarian invasions that helped to bring down the Roman Empire. We have the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, the Vandals, Sueves and Alans...
A spinoff of the what is it thread, to ask historical questions!
Isidore of Seville is the Patron Saint of the Internet. Which of the following works did he write?
There is a thread about references in every forum, so i will start by posting this. Feel free to add to this list with reputable sources.
www.historychannel.com - why not, its the history channel!
http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/History_n2/a.html - looks good to me
www.loc.gov -...
HELLO FRIENDS,
I am rakesh an student of quantum physics...
LAST week i had a presentation on quantum physics this is a PPt of my talk...just have a look...
n do reply...
I believe the world would be nothing as good as it is now if it weren't evil. Prove me wrong:
Napoleon-Evil: Invented the tin can and nursed Franceafter it's bloody revolution.
Leonardo da Vinci-Evil:Designed weapons of warfare, yet created some of the most beautiful pieces of artwork in...
I've been reading a rather interesting book about Vlad "The Impaler" Tepes or Vlad Dracula. In the final chapters of the book the author questions whether or not Tepes really deserves the reputation he garnered or if it was mainly spin, politics, and popular fiction which has made him into this...
Does anyone know how the function names sin, cos, csc, sec, ... came about?
Wouldn't they be easier to remember if cos was 1/sin; csc was 1/sec; just like cot is 1/tan? (Instead of 1/sin = csc and 1/cos = sec.)
This is one thing in trig that always throws me off.
What I've read on special relativity has built it up from its two postulates, the principle of relativity (in the restricted sense) and the constancy of the propagation of light in vacuo. But I haven't seen general relativity's postulates in such a concise listing. I assume the equivalence...
"you can bet your sweet apples that they are natural warriors"
This comment, followed by a list of Middle Easter conflicts in another thread on this forum really pissed me off. Its incredibly misleading and very racist too.
The United States for instance has been involved in over 140 armed...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/britainmexico;_ylt=Aon0rXpox4dKJnDRC2lKF7Os0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ
Somehow I'm not surprised at all. And then the rigidness and arrogance of the defence of the Clovis people and Beringia landbridge crossing 13,000 years ago, a.k.a. the Clovis mafia.
Typically when we consider any particle of matter, one is identical to another. There is no difference between an electron, proton nor atoms or molecules with identical properties. Certainly when we consider an experiment done in the lab, the properties of any particle are consistant. But...
I have been wondering how the classical mechanics that I study in my textbook today was framed. Newton gave his laws of motion, but what about vectors, who invented those. We deal with freely falling bodies and acceleration due to gravity while studing kinematics. But I know that the law of...
Thank you for your answers.
There are some aspects regarding the distribution of the baryons which are unclear to me. I am not sure whether the following questions fit in this thread. If you want, I could start a new one (or the moderators could split this post).
First, let's assume that...
How do you solve this type of PDE problem:
\int^t_0 e^{-(t-\tau)}\frac{d^2u}{dx^2} d\tau - \frac{du}{dt} = 0
where u(x,0) = sin x
Any links or info on this will be appreciated.
:
Heya, I am writing a paper at the moment on aether theories from an historical perspective. I am mostly interested in the mathematical basis of aether theories starting from when Maxwell unified electric and magnetic fields.
What I would like to know is if anybody has any idea where to...
I didn't want to get too far off topic in the greatest tragedies thread so instead I decided to post this separately. This was in response to the latest on page five [that thread really took off eh? ].
On the re-writing of history: Back in Huntsville I ran into a WWII AF vet. I forget...
This idea came up in another thread and I thought it might make for an interesting discussion. So, what are your thoughts? I have always believed that the loss of the library at Alexandria may be one of the greatest tragedies of all time. Of course we can't know what we are missing, but there is...
Interesting article on the history of energy researches
http://twm.co.nz/energ.html
From a site called PubMed, National Library of medicine
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=1353653&dopt=Abstract
Articles about energy development technology...
Hey Everyone :)
I'm trying to find out the year on which ~stocks cells~ has been discovered? I'm really not sure about the english word... but in french we call them "cellules souches". I've search a bit on google but couldn't find anything.
Edit: Okay I found the correct english word...
"It changed the course of history"
No... It didn't change the course of history, it simply added to course of history, just like every other event. Changed implies a pre-destined course of history that was altered by an event.
What other turns of phrase just don't make any sense to you...
What were the main disagreements between Galvani and Volta with respect to the origins of electric current?
Whats some of the problems associated with large scaled power stations?
I am wondering if anyone knows the history of the mathematical study of simple harmonic motion. Who first set up the equation:
\frac{d^2X(t)}{dt^2} +\frac{k}{m} X(t) = 0
Was it Newton? Hooke? Did they know about uniqueness of solutions?
The trig functions occupy such a cetral role...
http://www.nwhp.org/whm/themes/themes.html
I heard an interesting story on the radio -
JAMES BARRY/MIRANDA STUART
(1795?-1865) THE GOOD DOCTOR WORE THREE-INCH LIFTS IN HIS SHOES, CARRIED A PARASOL, AND TRAVELED THE WORLD WITH A MILK GOAT. AND HE HAD A LOUSY TEMPER. BUT JAMES BARRY...
not sure if this has aired before, but it mentioned Gumble/SC Fi's (in 2003,forget when)
This was excellent--at least Cosmos 96 was debunked (James Oberg even reaches this 'conclusion',yet begins his own 'conspiricy theory' ---mindboggling; perhaps his 'balloon solutions' should be...