Map-Like/Story-Like in History

by Jasmine on September 12, 2016

History is more story-like than map-like, as mentioned in previous blogposts, there are gaps in history that needs to be filled in by historians as there aren’t primary sources available for them, which is why historians need to use imagination and empathy to construct an event. This is one of the many reasons why I would categorize history in the story-like category, rather than being in the map-like category.

Secondly, stories can be viewed in many different perspectives, based on who is “reading” the story. This could be applied to history to, different people who have different backgrounds and personal histories, and they are going to interpret it different ways. Whereas if history is considered map like, then there would only be one way to interpret it, there won’t be different opinions no matter ones background, there also wouldn’t be the so-called “bias” which history is known have.

Finally, is that stories are supposed to be very interesting to read, including many unexpected turn of events, this is exactly what history is. History includes unpredictable events which is why historians choose to study history – there are many instances where there’s a “plot twist” in history, which makes the “story” interesting.


Empathy and Imagination in History

by Jasmine on September 5, 2016

“The value of knowledge is lost when the lines between fact and fiction are blurred.”



Knowledge is typically known to be purely or mostly facts, as one wouldn’t think of knowledge as being false or fiction. However, this quote is saying that if there is a blend between both fiction and fact, THAT is when the value of knowledge is lost. This leads to a knowledge question: Is fictional knowledge possible, if so, is it valuable/reliable?

Historians struggle with the validity of their sources as the only source they have are secondary – passed down by other historians. This creates many gaps and knowledge missing from the entire picture. They need to use imagination to fill in the empty gaps of knowledge. Imagination helps since they are making an educated guess on how an event may turn out, based on hints and details from things that happened before and after, they may see a correlation between the information. Historians use empathy as well since this gives them a chance to put themselves in other people’s shoes, relating to the event or specific person and gather knowledge about missing information about the historic event.


Certainty and Truth in History

August 28, 2016

History is unique since the only sources available are secondary sources, the lack of sources means that the sources we are relying are may include some personal bias. One of the many problems in history that may be a threat to knowledge would be that the significance of specific events may be over-estimated – due […]

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Why is History Important?

August 22, 2016

Summarising and ranking each of the seven reasons to study history. History provides us with the ability to understand the impact historical events have on the present and the way in which the outlooks of the past have influenced and shaped our ability to predict the future. Without the knowledge of the past, we are […]

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History Lesson 1

August 17, 2016

“History is simply the collection of facts about the past.” History is known as full of facts, such as dates of historical events and famous figures. However, the term “fact” is misleading since I believe that history is pretty opinion-based. As Winston Churchill says: “History is written by the victors”, this means that what history […]

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The Absurdity of Moral Relativism

April 14, 2016

Do you think it is possible for one culture to pass valid moral judgements on another culture with a different moral system? After reading that article, I don’t believe that it is possible for one culture to pass valid moral judgements on another culture with a different moral system. An example from the article is […]

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Ethics in TOK

April 12, 2016

What makes punishment fair? Do you think that someone can be “born bad” and if so is it fair to punish them before they commit a crime?  There’s a lot of thought that needs to be considered before determining a punishment for a criminal, which is why a jury is needed to make those decisions. […]

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Pythagorean Theorem Proof

March 24, 2016

There are a lot of possible ways to prove one mathematical theorem, and in class today, we explored one way to prove the pythagorean theorem. Sot this is how this theory can be proven:   Above is the diagram that will allow us to prove this theorem, we all know that the equation for the pythagorean theorem […]

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How do proofs in maths work? What does a mathematician need to do to be able to say that they “know” something?

March 16, 2016

Maths itself is such a complicated topic, let alone the countless of theories and equations by mathematicians over the years. As seen in the documentary in class, Andrew Wiles took around 7 years to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem, encountering many obstacles on the way and ultimately doing it through trial and error. Math theories and proofs require […]

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What is art for?

February 23, 2016

Many people have the first instinct of the only purpose of art is to display aesthetics, because it gives the eye pleasure by looking at the artwork with aspects like bright colours and interesting shapes. However, there are many more purposes that art takes on, other than the more obvious reasons such as allowing the […]

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