MANUYAG, ELDRIAN LOUIE B.

BSED – 1A (FILIPINO)

DEFINITION OF HISTORY FROM DIFFERENT HISTORIANS

1. Thomas Charlyle
- According to him, world history is a biography of great men.

Reference: https://www.historydiscussion.net/history/what-are-the-important-definitions-of-
history-answered/636

2. Prof. Carl G. Gustavson

- “History is a mountain top of human knowledge from whence the doings of our own
generation may be scanned and fitted into proper dimensions. History enables a
person to see himself as part of that living process of human growth which has
emerged out of the past and will inexorably project itself out beyond our own life
time. We are the product of the past but not the complete product.”

Reference: https://www.historydiscussion.net/history/what-are-the-important-definitions-of-
history-answered/636

3. Arnold J. Toynbee
- "History not used is nothing, for all intellectual life is action, like practical life, and if
you don't use the stuff well, it might as well be dead."

Reference: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-history-collection-of-definitions-171282

4. W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman

- "History is not what you thought. It is what you remember. All other history defeats
itself." (1066 and All That)

Reference: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-history-collection-of-definitions-171282

5. John Jacob Anderson

- "History is a narration of the events which have happened among mankind, including
an account of the rise and fall of nations, as well as of other great changes which have
affected the political and social condition of the human race."

Reference: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-history-collection-of-definitions-171282

6. K. Kris Hirst
- History is the study of the human past as it is described in written documents left
behind by humans. The past, with all of its complicated choices and events,
 participants dead and history told, is what the general public perceives to be the
immutable bedrock on which historians and archaeologists stand.
- But as purveyors of the past, historians recognize that the bedrock is really quicksand,
that bits of each story are yet untold, and that what has been told is colored by the
conditions of today. While not untrue to say that history is the study of the past, here
is a collection of much more clear and accurate descriptions.

Reference: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-history-collection-of-definitions-171282

7. E.H. Carr
- “History is an unending dialogue between the present and the past and the chief
function of historian is to master and understand the past as a key to the
understanding of present.”

Reference: https://www.historydiscussion.net/history/what-are-the-important-definitions-of-
history-answered/636

8. Prof. Renier
- “History is the memories of societies.”

Reference: https://www.historydiscussion.net/history/what-are-the-important-definitions-of-
history-answered/636

9. Will Durant
- “History is a narrative of what civilized men have thought or done in past time.”

Reference: https://www.historydiscussion.net/history/what-are-the-important-definitions-of-
history-answered/636

10. Lord Acton

- “History is the unfolding story of human freedom.”

Reference: https://www.historydiscussion.net/history/what-are-the-important-definitions-of-
history-answered/636

11. Prof. A.L. Rowse

- “History is essentially the record of the life of men in societies in their geographical
and their physical environments. Their social and cultural environment arises from
the interaction of the one with the other, the society and its geographical condition.”

Reference: https://www.historydiscussion.net/history/what-are-the-important-definitions-of-
history-answered/636

12. Aristotle
- “History is an account of unchanging past.”
Reference: https://www.scribd.com/doc/270041508/History-has-been-defined-by-different-
scholars-in-different-connotations-docx

13. Voltaire
- "The first foundations of all history are the recitals of the fathers to the children,
transmitted afterward from one generation to another; at their origin, they are at the
very most probable, when they do not shock common sense, and they lose one degree
of probability in each generation." (The Philosophical Dictionary)

Reference: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-history-collection-of-definitions-171282

14. Charles Austin Beard

- "If a science of history were achieved, it would, like the science of celestial
mechanics, make possible the calculable prediction of the future in history. It would
bring the totality of historical occurrences within a single field and reveal the
unfolding future to its last end, including all the apparent choices made and to be
made. It would be omniscience. The creator of it would possess the attributes ascribed
by the theologians to God. The future once revealed, humanity would have nothing to
do except to await its doom."

Reference: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-history-collection-of-definitions-171282

15. Edward Hallett Carr

- "History is ... a dialogue between the present and the past. (originally: Geschichte
ist ... ein Dialog zwischen Gegenwart und Vergangenheit.)" (What Is History?)

Reference: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-history-collection-of-definitions-171282