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Though history is considered a social science, the story-based nature of history allows for the inclusion of a greater or lesser degree of narration in addition to an analytical or interpretative exposition of historical knowledge. It can be divided into two subgenres: the traditional narrative and the modern narrative.
A traditionally influential approach divides human history into prehistory, ancient history, post-classical history, early modern history, and modern history. [58] [l] Depending on the region and theme, the time frames covered by these periods can vary and historians may use entirely different periodizations. [60]
In a slightly different sense, the term history refers not to an academic field but to the past itself or to individual texts about the past. History is a broad discipline encompassing many branches. Some focus on specific time periods, such as ancient history, while others concentrate on particular geographic regions, such as the history of ...
Historical method is the collection of techniques and guidelines that historians use to research and write histories of the past. Secondary sources, primary sources and material evidence such as that derived from archaeology may all be drawn on, and the historian's skill lies in identifying these sources, evaluating their relative authority, and combining their testimony appropriately in order ...
The modern academic study of history and methods of historiography were pioneered in 19th-century German universities, especially the University of Göttingen. Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886) at Berlin was a pivotal influence in this regard, and was the founder of modern source-based history.
The question of what constitutes history, and whether there is an effective method for interpreting recorded history, is raised in the philosophy of history as a question of epistemology. The study of different historical methods is known as historiography , which focuses on examining how different interpreters of recorded history create ...
"Meta" is Greek for "beyond"; "narrative" is a story that is characterized by its telling (it is communicated somehow). [6]Although first used earlier in the 20th century, the term was brought into prominence by Jean-François Lyotard in 1979, with his claim that the postmodern was characterized precisely by mistrust of the "grand narratives" (such as ideas about Progress, Enlightenment ...
A universal history is a work aiming at the presentation of a history of all of humankind as a whole. [1] Universal historians try to identify connections and patterns among individual historical events and phenomena, making them part of a general narrative. [ 2 ]