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.
History is a crucial discipline to learn about and infer from our past. Even though it would be misleading to deny history its objectivity, it is most certainly true that the road leading to an objective historical study requires creativity and imagination.
It is true that we can never know the past directly. However, this implies that we have access to the present. Do we? Knowledge and depiction of reality is always subjective. Even in the present one can only observe an event from its own point of view. Only through a variance of additional documents (e.g. newspapers, listening to another person’s version of a certain event, speeches or interviews) one can construct a qualified picture of an objective reality. To do this, we need to creatively put together different information like a puzzle to construct a bigger picture. For example, watching a speech from a political leader can be insightful but grants by no means direct access to objective knowledge, and therefore reality. The absorbed impressions need to be processed and construed. To understand what the politician said we need to grasp and account for the context of the speech and contrast the language with the corresponding action. Simply put, knowledge is constructed through a creative process of combining and interpreting documents, artifacts or contemporary accounts. Accordingly, this logic expands to historical events as well. To understand a reality that is long gone, we cannot include our own point of view but rely solemnly on historical documents. Therefore, we construct the past reality through the same process by which we construct our present.
In addition to the stated argument that the present is as constructed as the past and, thus, the past needs as much interpretation as the present, it can be said that creating context in the past requires a very difficult creative process. Different to the present, we have less access to the societal, economic, political and geographical context of the past. Since context is necessary to construe an objective examination of historical events it is indispensable to creatively build the context to understand a historic event in its full complexity. After this context has been constructed, the historical artefacts like letters, official documents, books and even the climate have to be considered and interpreted to learn more about history. This whole process can justifiably be considered creative.
Of course, interpretation and creativity always leaves room for different opinions and undermines an irrefutable objectivity that is wished. Science, as always, is always provisional, never completely objective and not immune to assails. However, this does not alter its validity as long as we regard history as dynamic, complex and colored with different shades.
In summary, knowledge in general requires a creative process. Realities are constructed through the interpretation of various documents and artifacts that are accessed from a subjective point of observation. This is true for the present and, therefore, as well for the past. Additionally, historical events need to be seen in the context of its time. Constructing this context requires imagination, creativity and interpretation. Following from those arguments it can be concluded that history, despite is rightful claim to be objective, requires a strong creative process to accumulate and create knowledge of historic events.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
flaws:
the conclusion is relatively wordy. It doesn't need to paraphrase the arguments again.
----------------------
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 30 15
No. of Words: 538 350
No. of Characters: 2833 1500
No. of Different Words: 234 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.816 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.266 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.024 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 228 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 197 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 136 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 102 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.933 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.959 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.4 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.276 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.439 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.136 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 362, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “Since” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...l and geographical context of the past. Since context is necessary to construe an obj...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
accordingly, but, e.g., however, if, so, therefore, thus, well, for example, in addition, in general, in summary, of course, it is true
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.5258426966 128% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.4196629213 105% => OK
Conjunction : 24.0 14.8657303371 161% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 11.3162921348 88% => OK
Pronoun: 42.0 33.0505617978 127% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 77.0 58.6224719101 131% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 12.9106741573 101% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2915.0 2235.4752809 130% => OK
No of words: 538.0 442.535393258 122% => OK
Chars per words: 5.41821561338 5.05705443957 107% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.81610080973 4.55969084622 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.13341720296 2.79657885939 112% => OK
Unique words: 248.0 215.323595506 115% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.460966542751 0.4932671777 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 913.5 704.065955056 130% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59117977528 107% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 12.0 6.24550561798 192% => OK
Article: 3.0 4.99550561798 60% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 3.10617977528 161% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.77640449438 56% => OK
Preposition: 9.0 4.38483146067 205% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 28.0 20.2370786517 138% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 23.0359550562 82% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 58.7662897699 60.3974514979 97% => OK
Chars per sentence: 104.107142857 118.986275619 87% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.2142857143 23.4991977007 82% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.82142857143 5.21951772744 92% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 4.97078651685 101% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 7.80617977528 13% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 17.0 10.2758426966 165% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 5.13820224719 39% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 10.0 4.83258426966 207% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.289692807802 0.243740707755 119% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0859297066178 0.0831039109588 103% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0701249584421 0.0758088955206 93% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.173099763175 0.150359130593 115% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0548139915865 0.0667264976115 82% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.7 14.1392134831 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 48.8420337079 90% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.92365168539 111% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.1743820225 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.16 12.1639044944 116% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.75 8.38706741573 104% => OK
difficult_words: 142.0 100.480337079 141% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 7.0 11.8971910112 59% => Linsear_write_formula is low.
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.2143820225 86% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.7820224719 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.