KI

History KI

1.       To what extent is emotion important in historical interpretation?

2.       To what extent can history be considered true?

3.       What is the scope of the reliability of historical interpretation using only logic and reasoning?

History

Though God cannot alter the past, historians can.” - Samuel Butler

I definitely agree with tis statement because I recognize that history is extremely subjective, and a subject that depends a lot on authority. The past is the past, it is true, and what really happened is inalterable and absolute. But how we tell it and understand it afterwards is not. As history students, we rely on the interpretation of professional historians, or learned scholars to learn about the past. We trust them because they are experts and have years of studying a certain matter, so much that they can write a school text book. However, sometimes we forget that there are many things that can alter or influence a historian’s interpretation of historical events. For example, a German historian might have a slightly different take on WWII than a French one.

The way we see the past greatly affects the way we see the present, because the history of relationships between countries for example affects the individual view of people in a  country (for example, Pakistan’s and India’s history). Historians can manipulate evidence to change the way people see the past, and therefore, theoretically ‘’change the past’’, even though the actual events will not change.

Math2

To what extent is knowledge gained in mathematics different/similar than that gained in history?

Mathematics and history are very different subjects for many reasons. History is based on interpretation of facts, figures and events, and mathematics is a universal invariable system. Therefore, the knowledge that is gained in history is different from that gained in math.

For example, there are always different answers in history, and many ways to see one event and understand it. Opinion is allowed and important in the knowledge of history. I can, for example, think of Mussolini as an incompetent opportunist while somebody else might say he was a visionary leader by using different data interpretation. This is means that facts in history can be manipulated to suit an idea in particular, and that my knowledge of history might different greatly from anyone else’s’. In math, on the contrary, I can’t convince anybody that 6=1 in a natural number system, no matter how many facts I base myself on because 6=6 and that is a universal knowledge. Mathematical evidence can’t be manipulated, and it is universal, because the answer is always correct or incorrect.

All in all, mathematics and history are very different because history is based on subjective knowledge and interpretation, so the knowledge gained will depend greatly on where we learn it, whereas mathematics it is a universal system that must be the same for every mathematician in the world.

math

Is mathematics discovered or invented?

                Mathematics is both discovered and invented. Everything in the universe is independent to human control and knowledge, and the existence of all the relationships between quantities and numbers exist and have existed before men decided to use them. When humans first started to notice these relationships, they discovered them and decided to make use of them. This is why they invented a concept to pin it down: mathematics. This is the part of math that is invented, a system of numbers and ideas that we can understand universally. The symbols, ways of getting to answers and rules were invented by men, but the existence of relationships, quantities, and patterns exists independent of human invention. All we did is discover it and invent a language to understand it.