Does History Exist?

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Does history exist? To determine if or not history exists, we must stop for a moment to examine what we truly mean by the term, to wit, how we define history. Is history simply the passage of time – an infinitely grand umbrella enveloping all past events? Or is it limited but to the account of past events? To attempt to define history is an epistemological concern. Do we know that history exists? For all practical purposes, we see history as the study of the past, documented or otherwise, and how it affects us. One may justifiably argue that the past is not merely a chronological point in time. It represents change and evolution. Events appear to flow in a causally meaningful manner. The present, as we know it, even as we experience it, is doubtless a consequence of past events that have meaningful import and have collectively brought us to ‘here and now’. Our forays into the investigation of the past have yielded us with plenty of information upon which much of our current choices and attitudes rest. History is our attempt to make sense of what really happened, if at all it really did happen. It urges us to interpret the past and explore all evidence of its veracity. To truly understand if history exists, we need to ask ourselves if time exists. Though it has always been a polemical consideration, I am inclined to believe that the passage of time is in fact a constant. The present is forever updating itself. We exist in time which continually elapses and becomes the past – a period that no longer exists but in memory or in record. However, events occur regardless of whether or not they have been recorded. To limit history to the set of those events that have been remembered and recorded is, in my opinion, reductionistic. History is not a simple construct we create to rationalize the present and speculate the future. It is an unfinished jigsaw puzzle that allows
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