NationStates Jolt Archive

a teacher told us that history transcends time and space, race and religion and left us to think why. i don't quite understand this. i think history is an aspect of time, arising from the very concept of time and space and recording the development of race and religion.

anyone care to enlighten me?

Needs less your teacher and more jihad.

a teacher told us that history transcends time and space, race and religion and left us to think why. i don't quite understand this. i think history is an aspect of time, arising from the very concept of time and space and recording the development of race and religion.

anyone care to enlighten me?

Got me. I think you're right, and your teacher is being a little too mystical for my tastes.

Personally, I think your teacher is full of crap. Time is bunk. Linear time is an arbitrary constant used to measure in a linear way something that is not linear at all.

As for history, I think that history is nothing more than the documentation of events that have occurred. The accuracy of that history is affected by the objectivity of those reporting it as well as the passage of time.

Edit: Keep in mind that just because your teacher is full of crap doesn't mean he or she KNOWS that it's crap. Many people misunderstand the concept of time. It should probably not be held against him or her.

a teacher told us that history transcends time and space, race and religion and left us to think why. i don't quite understand this. i think history is an aspect of time, arising from the very concept of time and space and recording the development of race and religion.

anyone care to enlighten me?

History is an assemblage of narratives and has at best tenuous relation to all the events which have actually occured in the past: as such it exists not on the level of documentation of real events, but instead on the plane of the mythopoetic. However, the myths of history are incredibly strongly shaped by race, religion, space and time... sounds to me like your teacher is telling fariy sories.

a teacher told us that history transcends time and space, race and religion and left us to think why. i don't quite understand this. i think history is an aspect of time, arising from the very concept of time and space and recording the development of race and religion.

anyone care to enlighten me?

No

"Has your teacher ever looked at a lesson plan? I mean, REALLY looked at it?Woah, my hand...The only thing it can't touch is itself...oh."

Methinks long hours spent in a history class and heavy drug use doesn't mix.

this may not be wholly related to what you're talking about (i'm quite stoned at the mo :p ), but i read (and have thought about) the best way of thinking of how time and space are related, think of the 4 dimensions as like a wireframe plane/grid.

you have the 3 dimensions of x, y, and z as width, height and width; and then you have time running parralel with all the others, effectively being everywhere at once (in all 3 other dimensions), and is influenced by strong forces in the other dimensions.
that may be a little had to undersand on 3 axes, so imagine there were only height and width - 2 of the 3 'other' dimensions (not time). this would be a 2D plane. time then runs accross the whole surface of the plain.
a strong force or power, like a star or planet will disrupt the plane for the 2D dimensions of the plane - like putting a football (a round one, yanks ;) ) on a stretched sheet of rubber (this is gravity). it may cause a small change in the time axis as it and the other two are linked (parrallel).

a larger, or, more precisely, a more powerful object - denser, or just with greater mass - such as a black hole have enough force to really imact on the time axis, even causing a disruption so lage the object can both 'suck in' space AND time (and light).

then just take that and add to it the last dimension (depth, z) and thus time is everywhere.


thats what i think anyway. hope that was interesting to somebody :D

a teacher told us that history transcends time and space, race and religion and left us to think why. i don't quite understand this. i think history is an aspect of time, arising from the very concept of time and space and recording the development of race and religion.
I think your teacher was trying to say that the true study of history is objective, not subjective. Which is just absurd, since all human experience is subjective, and pretty much all history is written by the victors. And if that's not what he or she was trying to say, I think an extradimensional physics class is needed.

a teacher told us that history transcends time and space, race and religion and left us to think why. i don't quite understand this. i think history is an aspect of time, arising from the very concept of time and space and recording the development of race and religion.

anyone care to enlighten me?


History is written by humans with bias.

For example In American history you learn that Benedict Arnold was a traitor.
He is labeled as such by American history. But what of British history? Would he not be looked favorably by the British at the time? Yes.

History: All recorded past events.

This is a matter of perception and relativity. From where the person is when recording the events.

On "arising from the very concept of time and space" How do you come to know time and space? Perhaps through history? Therefore history transcends time and space.

This is a philosophical matter and there are others ways to approach it. Though this is a very simple illustration more indepth analysis can come from this.

Hope this at least gives you a starting point.

History: All recorded past events.

Nah: that's just documentation - history is a set of narratives that we build selectively out of these pieces of documentation and supposition.

Nah: that's just documentation - history is a set of narratives that we build selectively out of these pieces of documentation and supposition.


That is straight from webster the #2 definition History has several definitions. I did not want to write a novel to throughly explain every minute detail.

a teacher told us that history transcends time and space, race and religion and left us to think why. i don't quite understand this. i think history is an aspect of time, arising from the very concept of time and space and recording the development of race and religion.

anyone care to enlighten me?
Perhaps because "history" covers space, time, race and religion, dealing with all of them, and is an intellecual pursuit not subject to any of them? :confused:

Kant said

Metaphysical exposition of the Concept of Time
1. Time is not an empirical concept that has been derived from any experience. For neither coexistence nor succession would ever come within our perception, if the representation of time were not presupposed as underlying them a priori. Only on the presupposition of time can we represent to ourselves a number of things as existing at one and the same time (simultaneously) or at different times (successively).
source (http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/) (I. TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF ELEMENTS; Section 2. Time)

Does this help?

Kant said
Time is not an empirical concept that has been derived from any experience. For neither coexistence nor succession would ever come within our perception, if the representation of time were not presupposed as underlying them a priori. Only on the presupposition of time can we represent to ourselves a number of things as existing at one and the same time (simultaneously) or at different times (successively).
Does this help?
What does he mean by an "empirical concept, derived from any experience"? Does he simply mean we don't "feel" the passage of time as it happens?