Claim: Though often considered an objective pursuit, learning about the historical past requires creativity.
Reason: Because we can never know the past directly, we must reconstruct it by imaginatively interpreting historical accounts, documents, and artifacts.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim and the reason on which the claim is based.
Do we really need to be creative to learn about our historic past? The author claims so, by giving the reason that since we can never fully know the direct past completely, we can re-interpret it by creatively interpreting the historic accounts, artifacts etc. I mostly concede that without creative imagination it will be difficult to understand our historic accounts. However, I contend that objective analysis still has its value in some aspects of historical analysis.
First, our attempt to understand the past only by objective analysis becomes severely hindered without any imagination, as we are faced with a lack of sufficient evidence and conclusive data in this situation. Then, one inevitably requires acumen and creativity to join the dots and form a comprehensive story that could depict the history. For instance, in the study of African history, archeological evidence is a popular tool for reconstructing the past. Yet, on several occasions, one is bound to use much guesswork in the process, as many artifacts found are anonymous and lack the sequence of daily life. Makers and users of such artifacts are usually not known. These scenarios force the historians to resort to creative imagination for obtaining a clear picture of the past incidents and civilization. Again, historians today are not so much concerned with the when’s and how’s but with the reasons for a particular work, and this is the point where the objectivity of history comes to an end. It is a well-known fact in which year Bram Stoker composed his famous horror novel “Dracula”, but if we ask that why did the Irish writer created this fascinating literary piece, then, we must rely on our guesswork, as the existing evidence does not lead to any definite conclusion in this regard. As far as the motivation of someone in history is concerned, there will always be guesswork involved.
Even if we can gather enough data about the past, we can not ignore the role of imagination altogether. Often the obtained historical documents or writing, the primary means of analysis, are intentionally perverted or changed to suit the need of the previous writer or author . For instance, in the history of ancient China, when the emperors started a new dynasty, usually the first thing they did was to burn all the historical documents and to kill the historiographers, followed by rewriting what had happened in order to glorify their actions. Once the present-day historian is able to detect such distortions in the past documents, he or she must discard this sort of faulty sources, and rely on his or her creative power for recollecting what exactly happened in the past, especially if there are no other alternate reliable source of gathering proper information about the past.
However, I do not refute the fact that there is no place for objective pursuit in history. On many occasions, the objective study provides valuable information about the past history. For instance, the complete history of the British Empire is not just a construction of the imagination of historians with a couple of pieces of evidence, but it is after collecting as much evidence as possible from the British empire as well as its colonies that its history has taken shape. There has been evidence in form of a written account of British lords as well as others, newspaper articles, letters, and many such unavoidable proofs that help in establishing the facts. Also, in present days, our utilization of sophisticated technology like library-supported databases, online archives, and digital cameras has made the objective studies of historical events more comfortable . Nevertheless, this objective study does not take away the value of creative thinking in understanding and knowing about our pasts.
In conclusion, it can be said that even though historical analysis is predominantly an imaginative work, one should not totally ignore the significance of objective analysis. After trying to consider all possible facts and evidence, if essential, we should judiciously couple our creative thinking with the available data to interpret the past events in the most effective way.
Comments
An objective reconstruction…
An objective reconstruction of past events is by far one of the most challenging tasks that historians have to face in their job. Since there is no other way other than interpreting and studying the old documents and artifacts found by archeologists, one might think that creativity is a fundamental skill that every historian should have. Nevertheless, based on the reasons I am going to present, I think that nowadays learning about the historical past requires analytical thought and adequate reasoning rather than creativity.
In the first place, it is important to underline how the work of past historians has changed the way of learning about historical events. Thanks to years and years of findings such as old documents, artifacts, historical accounts and so forth, we now have such a big database of information that creativity is not that useful.
Instead, an acute reasoning and the ability to find connections between different documents or artifacts would represent some of the best skills a historian should have.
Is there any way to edit or…
Is there any way to edit or delete the already submitted essays??
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 276, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Don't put a space before the full stop
Suggestion: .
...he need of the previous writer or author . For instance, in the history of ancient...
^^
Line 5, column 833, Rule ID: THERE_RE_MANY[3]
Message: Possible agreement error. Did you mean 'sources'?
Suggestion: sources
...f there are no other alternate reliable source of gathering proper information about t...
^^^^^^
Line 6, column 870, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Don't put a space before the full stop
Suggestion: .
...es of historical events more comfortable . Nevertheless, this objective study does...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, nevertheless, really, so, still, then, well, as to, for instance, in conclusion, sort of, as well as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.5258426966 113% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.4196629213 113% => OK
Conjunction : 22.0 14.8657303371 148% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 11.3162921348 115% => OK
Pronoun: 50.0 33.0505617978 151% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 96.0 58.6224719101 164% => OK
Nominalization: 24.0 12.9106741573 186% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3496.0 2235.4752809 156% => OK
No of words: 673.0 442.535393258 152% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.19465081724 5.05705443957 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.09335287823 4.55969084622 112% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.0030312989 2.79657885939 107% => OK
Unique words: 339.0 215.323595506 157% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.503714710253 0.4932671777 102% => OK
syllable_count: 1128.6 704.065955056 160% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59117977528 107% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 14.0 6.24550561798 224% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 4.0 4.99550561798 80% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 3.10617977528 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 5.0 1.77640449438 281% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 8.0 4.38483146067 182% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 20.2370786517 124% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 23.0359550562 113% => OK
Sentence length SD: 73.7353754991 60.3974514979 122% => OK
Chars per sentence: 139.84 118.986275619 118% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.92 23.4991977007 115% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.24 5.21951772744 100% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 4.97078651685 101% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 7.80617977528 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 16.0 10.2758426966 156% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 5.13820224719 136% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.83258426966 41% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.411413902916 0.243740707755 169% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.104044878411 0.0831039109588 125% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0951672208411 0.0758088955206 126% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.237179388036 0.150359130593 158% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.113629765362 0.0667264976115 170% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.5 14.1392134831 117% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 36.63 48.8420337079 75% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.92365168539 141% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.6 12.1743820225 120% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.12 12.1639044944 108% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.96 8.38706741573 107% => OK
difficult_words: 172.0 100.480337079 171% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 11.8971910112 101% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.2143820225 111% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.7820224719 102% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.