Central Characters of History
Stephen Davies wrote a thought-provoking article on how history is written and taught. History, he says, focuses on one kind of events – the political ones. “(It) implies that the driving force in history, the thing that shapes and determines the world we are in and that is crucial for our future, is politics and political power. The dates given are all about political power: Who has it, who contests it, and who wins it.” An unintended side-effect of this is that it influences us, consciously or unconsciously, into “what we should see as important here and now”: “This story is of the growth and development of government, the forms it has taken, and in particular the historical evolution of particular states or political entities.” As an alternative, he says, consider these events. The publication of Newton’s Principia Mathematica . Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations . Darwin’s On the Origin of Species : “These are all landmarks in a quite different kind of stor...