Throughout time, the question of what is history has been asked by many people. I believe that history is everything and everyone that has happened or come before us. Many people look at history and base it simply off of the great world leaders, war battles, political conflicts, etc, but to me history includes everyone everywhere. Simple artifacts in history can tell us more about the time than people really think. History can be analyzed in many ways. Four of the more popular ways are Hegelian’s theory, the vortex theory, linear, or cyclical. Hegelian’s theory consist of the idea that there is a thesis and an antithesis which then leads to the synthesis. Linear theory is basically a timeline. The vortex theory is that things start large like a great empire or nation which then fall into something small, and then come back to being large again. Cyclical is based on everything being a cycle(Wikipedia/cyclical history). The concept of history is very interesting and there has never been a true answer that everyone has agreed on. I feel that out of the four examples of the ways to look at history from above, that the vortex is the best way.
Throughout history, people have always used basic ideas and base history around them but in reality history is not just the big factors everything that happen on every as trivial as a car accident in China to large events like World War II. I feel that history can never be described as a single idea History is the summary of events dating back to the start of time.
Linear history is the most commonly used way to show history. It is used every day in timelines, but I don’t think it is the most effective. I feel that for an overview of what history is, a timeline is the best way to look, but for more advanced ways to look at history I don’t see it as that because linear history highlights certain events and not all and cannot be applied to every situation (Infotrac/Timeline). Linear history is a key example of how most people look at history because it doesn’t give the full respect to certain events for a period of time, instead in highlights key figures and battles which to me is only half of the story. An example of how linear history is used is shown here:
Cyclical history is another way to study history. Cyclical refers to a cycle which indicates that history will just keep on repeating itself overtime. This is an inappropriate way to look at history as well because history will not continuously repeat itself forever, ideas, leaders, tactics, and technologies will always be changing which will throw the cycle off. The idea that history repeats itself has been brought up by historians for many years, and in some aspects I believe that history can, but it is the people in the era that decide what is going to happen, it is not just a continuous cycle that no one can break.
The third of the 4 most popular ways to look at history is the Hegelian theory. This is a simple concept but I think that it is the second best way to look at history. It is based on the concept of thesis plus antithesis result in the synthesis. For example, a boy leaves his clothes around the hours (thesis) + He is looking where he is going and these two would lead to him tripping on some of his clothes and broke his arm(synthesis). Hegel's theory is kind of like a cause and effect but there two events which lead to the events synthesizing and creating the end result(Wikipedia/Hegelian Theory). I think that this is a good way to analyze history because it can be applied to many events and makes a lot of sense. Hegelian’s theory is a good way to analyze a single event at a time but it cannot summarize very large events or more than one event at a time which I think limits it.
A fourth way is the vortex theory. I think that this is the best way to analyze history. The vortex theory is based on the theory that things will start out large then go to small and then back to large or vice verse. I think that in this aspect, history does repeat itself. It has been proved many times throughout history with some of the great civilizations in the world. It has been proved the civilizations of Harappa which was the most advanced civilization of its time which fell and essentially vanished from the Earth, The Persian Empire which was massive but fell to Alexander the Great, then when Alexander died, his empire of Greece fell. Another example would be the Roman Empire controlling a good part of Europe which fell, of the entire continent of Europe going into the Dark Ages and then coming out into the Renaissance. All of these examples back up the vortex theory because they have all happened in different time periods but are all relatively the same. There are countless examples of this even in your own life. The phrase “life has its ups and downs” is a very good way to sum up the vortex theory and people say that without even realizing it.
History is a very complicated study of everything that has happened before right now. I think the truth is that the little things all make the large parts of history possible so everything plays its role in the world. There is no one master way to view history that will allow you to see all aspects, but in reality all of these ways to look at history combined create the best way to look at history from key events of a timeline to simple situations analyzed by Hegel’s theory. History cannot be summed up by key events in the past but it is the summary of everything that happens before us that can then help us understand more about ourselves and learn from the past.
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