Historical Method essays

Historical Method essays History is the study of the past. For historians the past dates back to 4,000 B.C., when events were first marked by writing, until present day. In its content history is everything. Historians spend their whole lives figuring out which events are more substancial than others. In order to achieve this, the historical method is put into practice. A problem solving technique using the gatheration of data, classification, interpretation and the most essential step, writing and teaching. The first step to studying the past events is gathering data. There are two types known as primary and secondary resources. Although both play an important role in gathering information, primary is the one you can not omit. In order to decipher which is primary and which is secondary there is a criteria that must be met. Person and time are the two categories under criteria. An example of primary resources would be a journal entry written by a person during that specific event. A historian could use a victim of the Holocausts diary as a primary source. Being that the victim experienced those actual events. Secondary resources would be a text book or magazine article written about a past event. The writer however, was not present at that point in time. Secondary resources eventually evolve into primary. The second step deals with classification. Every historians way of classifying is different. Their frame of reference is based on genetics and their environment. The way a person is raised to believe in certain aspects or taught by the people around them determines their point of view. The first way to classify events is chronologically. A historian might take World War II for example, and list all the events from when the war began to the final battle that ended the war. Another approach is concepts and ideas. A historian might group events according to religious aspects, social, economical, environmental, etc....