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138-676: In historical records the village was first mentioned in 1332. The village contains the Radoľa Manor House, one of the oldest monuments in Kysuce, Slovakia . The municipality lies at an altitude of 300 metres and covers an area of 6.722 km². It has a population of about 1,521 people. This Žilina Region geography article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . History History (derived from Ancient Greek ἱστορία ( historía )  'inquiry; knowledge acquired by investigation')

276-442: A n c e r | s m o k i n g ) {\displaystyle P(cancer|smoking)} , and interventional probabilities , as in P ( c a n c e r | d o ( s m o k i n g ) ) {\displaystyle P(cancer|do(smoking))} . The former reads: "the probability of finding cancer in a person known to smoke, having started, unforced by

414-767: A Western and an Eastern bloc , which later reunified to form the European Union . In the history of the Americas , the first anatomically modern humans arrived around 20,000 to 15,000 years ago. The Americas were home to some of the earliest civilizations, like the Norte Chico civilization in South America and the Maya and Olmec civilizations in Central America. Over the next millennia, major empires arose beside them, such as

552-438: A collective identity through a shared past, helping to cultivate and preserve cultural heritage and values across generations. History is sometimes used for political or ideological purposes, for instance, to justify the status quo by making certain traditions appear respectable or to promote change by highlighting past injustices. Pushed to extreme forms, this can result in pseudohistory or historical denialism when evidence

690-506: A progression of events following one after the other as cause and effect. Incompatibilism holds that determinism is incompatible with free will, so if determinism is true, " free will " does not exist. Compatibilism , on the other hand, holds that determinism is compatible with, or even necessary for, free will. Causes may sometimes be distinguished into two types: necessary and sufficient. A third type of causation, which requires neither necessity nor sufficiency, but which contributes to

828-470: A research question to define the scope of the inquiry. Some research questions focus on a simple description of what happened. Others aim to explain why a particular event occurred, refute an existing theory, or confirm a new hypothesis. To answer research questions, historians rely on various types of evidence to reconstruct the past and support their conclusions. Historical evidence is usually divided into primary and secondary sources . A primary source

966-501: A sedentary lifestyle supported by early forms of agriculture . The absence of written documents from this period presents researchers with unique challenges. It results in an interdisciplinary approach relying on other forms of evidence from fields such as archaeology , anthropology , paleontology , and geology . Ancient history, starting roughly 3500 BCE, saw the emergence of the first major civilizations in Mesopotamia , Egypt,

1104-512: A 'why' question". Aristotle categorized the four types of answers as material, formal, efficient, and final "causes". In this case, the "cause" is the explanans for the explanandum , and failure to recognize that different kinds of "cause" are being considered can lead to futile debate. Of Aristotle's four explanatory modes, the one nearest to the concerns of the present article is the "efficient" one. David Hume , as part of his opposition to rationalism , argued that pure reason alone cannot prove

1242-425: A broad scope, the amount of primary sources is often too extensive for an individual historian to review. This forces them to either narrow the scope of their topic or rely on secondary sources to arrive at a wide overview. Chronological division is a common approach to organizing the vast expanse of history into more manageable segments. Different periods are often defined based on dominant themes that characterize

1380-511: A causal ordering. The system of equations must have certain properties, most importantly, if some values are chosen arbitrarily, the remaining values will be determined uniquely through a path of serial discovery that is perfectly causal. They postulate the inherent serialization of such a system of equations may correctly capture causation in all empirical fields, including physics and economics. Some theorists have equated causality with manipulability. Under these theories, x causes y only in

1518-501: A cause and its effect can be of different kinds of entity. For example, in Aristotle's efficient causal explanation, an action can be a cause while an enduring object is its effect. For example, the generative actions of his parents can be regarded as the efficient cause, with Socrates being the effect, Socrates being regarded as an enduring object, in philosophical tradition called a 'substance', as distinct from an action. Since causality

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1656-429: A cause is incorrectly identified. Counterfactual theories define causation in terms of a counterfactual relation, and can often be seen as "floating" their account of causality on top of an account of the logic of counterfactual conditionals . Counterfactual theories reduce facts about causation to facts about what would have been true under counterfactual circumstances. The idea is that causal relations can be framed in

1794-435: A cause of, or causal factor for, many other effects, which all lie in its future . Some writers have held that causality is metaphysically prior to notions of time and space . Causality is an abstraction that indicates how the world progresses. As such it is a basic concept; it is more apt to be an explanation of other concepts of progression than something to be explained by other more fundamental concepts. The concept

1932-579: A definite time. Such a process can be regarded as a cause. Causality is not inherently implied in equations of motion , but postulated as an additional constraint that needs to be satisfied (i.e. a cause always precedes its effect). This constraint has mathematical implications such as the Kramers-Kronig relations . Causality is one of the most fundamental and essential notions of physics. Causal efficacy cannot 'propagate' faster than light. Otherwise, reference coordinate systems could be constructed (using

2070-408: A known causal effect or to test a causal model than to generate causal hypotheses. For nonexperimental data, causal direction can often be inferred if information about time is available. This is because (according to many, though not all, theories) causes must precede their effects temporally. This can be determined by statistical time series models, for instance, or with a statistical test based on

2208-403: A mathematical definition of "confounding" and helps researchers identify accessible sets of variables worthy of measurement. While derivations in causal calculus rely on the structure of the causal graph, parts of the causal structure can, under certain assumptions, be learned from statistical data. The basic idea goes back to Sewall Wright 's 1921 work on path analysis . A "recovery" algorithm

2346-443: A metaphysical account of what it is for there to be a causal relation between some pair of events. If correct, the analysis has the power to explain certain features of causation. Knowing that causation is a matter of counterfactual dependence, we may reflect on the nature of counterfactual dependence to account for the nature of causation. For example, in his paper "Counterfactual Dependence and Time's Arrow," Lewis sought to account for

2484-404: A narrative. The selection, analysis, and criticism of sources result in the validation of a large collection of mostly isolated statements about the past. As a next step, sometimes termed historical synthesis , historians examine how the individual pieces of evidence fit together to form part of a larger story. Constructing this broader perspective is crucial for a comprehensive understanding of

2622-438: A number of related meanings. Firstly, it can refer to how history has been produced: the story of the development of methodology and practices (for example, the move from short-term biographical narrative toward long-term thematic analysis). Secondly, it can refer to what has been produced: a specific body of historical writing (for example, "medieval historiography during the 1960s" means "Works of medieval history written during

2760-448: A particular culture, but not supported by external sources (such as the tales surrounding King Arthur ), are usually classified as cultural heritage or legends . History differs from myth in that it is supported by verifiable evidence . However, ancient cultural influences have helped create variant interpretations of the nature of history, which have evolved over the centuries and continue to change today. The modern study of history

2898-411: A process and a pseudo-process . As an example, a ball moving through the air (a process) is contrasted with the motion of a shadow (a pseudo-process). The former is causal in nature while the latter is not. Salmon (1984) claims that causal processes can be identified by their ability to transmit an alteration over space and time. An alteration of the ball (a mark by a pen, perhaps) is carried with it as

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3036-418: A real number. One has to be careful in the use of the word cause in physics. Properly speaking, the hypothesized cause and the hypothesized effect are each temporally transient processes. For example, force is a useful concept for the explanation of acceleration, but force is not by itself a cause. More is needed. For example, a temporally transient process might be characterized by a definite change of force at

3174-412: A single coherent narrative or a series of competing narratives. The historical method is a set of techniques historians use to research and interpret the past, covering the processes of collecting, evaluating, and synthesizing evidence. It seeks to ensure scholarly rigor, accuracy, and reliability in how historical evidence is chosen, analysed, and interpreted. Historical research often starts with

3312-431: A specific time frame and significant events that initiated these developments or brought them to an end. Depending on the selected context and level of detail, a period may be as short as a decade or longer than several centuries. A traditionally influential approach divides human history into prehistory , ancient history , post-classical history , early modern history , and modern history . Prehistory started with

3450-723: A state chronicle , the Spring and Autumn Annals , was reputed to date from as early as 722 BCE, though only 2nd-century BCE texts have survived. The title "father of history" has also been attributed, in their respective societies, to Sima Qian , Ibn Khaldun , and Kenneth Dike . As an academic discipline , history is the study of the past. It conceptualizes and describes what happened by collecting and analysing evidence to construct narratives . These narratives cover not only how events unfolded but also why they happened and in which contexts, providing an explanation of relevant background conditions and causal mechanisms. History also examines

3588-671: A state was organized internally , like factions , parties , leaders, and other political institutions. It also examines which policies were implemented and how the state interacted with other states. Political history has been studied since antiquity, making it the oldest branch of history, while other major subfields have only become established branches in the past century. Diplomatic and military history are closely related to political history. Diplomatic history examines international relations between states. It covers foreign policy topics such as negotiations, strategic considerations, treaties , and conflicts between nations as well as

3726-402: A triangle. Nonetheless, even when interpreted counterfactually, the first statement is true. An early version of Aristotle's "four cause" theory is described as recognizing "essential cause". In this version of the theory, that the closed polygon has three sides is said to be the "essential cause" of its being a triangle. This use of the word 'cause' is of course now far obsolete. Nevertheless, it

3864-404: A window and it breaks. If Alice hadn't thrown the brick, then it still would have broken, suggesting that Alice wasn't a cause; however, intuitively, Alice did cause the window to break. The Halpern-Pearl definitions of causality take account of examples like these. The first and third Halpern-Pearl conditions are easiest to understand: AC1 requires that Alice threw the brick and the window broke in

4002-439: Is a process that is varied from occasion to occasion. The occurrence or non-occurrence of subsequent bubonic plague is recorded. To establish causality, the experiment must fulfill certain criteria, only one example of which is mentioned here. For example, instances of the hypothesized cause must be set up to occur at a time when the hypothesized effect is relatively unlikely in the absence of the hypothesized cause; such unlikelihood

4140-457: Is a secondary source on slavery and a primary source on the historian's opinion. Consistency with available sources is one of the main standards of historical works. For instance, the discovery of new sources may lead historians to revise or dismiss previously accepted narratives. Source criticism is the process of analysing and evaluating the information a source provides. Typically, this process begins with external criticism, which evaluates

4278-462: Is a smoker") probabilistically causes B ("The person has now or will have cancer at some time in the future"), if the information that A occurred increases the likelihood of B s occurrence. Formally, P{ B | A }≥ P{ B } where P{ B | A } is the conditional probability that B will occur given the information that A occurred, and P{ B } is the probability that B will occur having no knowledge whether A did or did not occur. This intuitive condition

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4416-399: Is a source that originated during the period that is studied. Primary sources can take various forms, such as official documents, letters, diaries, eyewitness accounts, photographs, and audio or video recordings. They also include historical remains examined in archeology , geology , and the medical sciences , such as artifacts and fossils unearthed from excavations . Primary sources offer

4554-505: Is a subtle metaphysical notion, considerable intellectual effort, along with exhibition of evidence, is needed to establish knowledge of it in particular empirical circumstances. According to David Hume , the human mind is unable to perceive causal relations directly. On this ground, the scholar distinguished between the regularity view of causality and the counterfactual notion. According to the counterfactual view , X causes Y if and only if, without X, Y would not exist. Hume interpreted

4692-536: Is an influence by which one event , process , state, or object ( a cause ) contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an effect ) where the cause is at least partly responsible for the effect, and the effect is at least partly dependent on the cause. The cause of something may also be described as the reason for the event or process. In general, a process can have multiple causes, which are also said to be causal factors for it, and all lie in its past . An effect can in turn be

4830-597: Is attested early on in Homeric Hymns , Heraclitus , the Athenian ephebes ' oath, and in Boeotic inscriptions (in a legal sense, either "judge" or "witness", or similar). The Greek word was borrowed into Classical Latin as historia , meaning "investigation, inquiry, research, account, description, written account of past events, writing of history, historical narrative, recorded knowledge of past events, story, narrative". History

4968-431: Is based on the idea that an understanding of the past can guide decision-making , for example, to avoid repeating previous mistakes. A related perspective focuses on a general understanding of the human condition , making people aware of the diversity of human behaviour across different contexts—similar to what one can learn by visiting foreign countries. History can also foster social cohesion by providing people with

5106-435: Is dedicated to the institutional production of this discourse. All events that are remembered and preserved in some authentic form constitute the historical record. The task of historical discourse is to identify the sources which can most usefully contribute to the production of accurate accounts of past. Therefore, the constitution of the historian's archive is a result of circumscribing a more general archive by invalidating

5244-397: Is intentionally ignored or misinterpreted to construct a misleading narrative serving external interests. The word history comes from historía ( Ancient Greek : ἱστορία , romanized :  historíā , lit.   'inquiry, knowledge from inquiry, or judge' ). It was in that sense that Aristotle used the word in his History of Animals . The ancestor word ἵστωρ

5382-460: Is like those of agency and efficacy . For this reason, a leap of intuition may be needed to grasp it. Accordingly, causality is implicit in the structure of ordinary language, as well as explicit in the language of scientific causal notation . In English studies of Aristotelian philosophy , the word "cause" is used as a specialized technical term, the translation of Aristotle 's term αἰτία, by which Aristotle meant "explanation" or "answer to

5520-459: Is more basic than causal interaction. But describing manipulations in non-causal terms has provided a substantial difficulty. The second criticism centers around concerns of anthropocentrism . It seems to many people that causality is some existing relationship in the world that we can harness for our desires. If causality is identified with our manipulation, then this intuition is lost. In this sense, it makes humans overly central to interactions in

5658-409: Is not adequate as a definition for probabilistic causation because of its being too general and thus not meeting our intuitive notion of cause and effect. For example, if A denotes the event "The person is a smoker," B denotes the event "The person now has or will have cancer at some time in the future" and C denotes the event "The person now has or will have emphysema some time in the future," then

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5796-405: Is possible for historians to concern themselves with both the very specific and the very general, though the trend has been toward specialization. The area called Big History resists this specialization, and searches for universal patterns or trends. History has often been studied with some practical or theoretical aim, but may be studied out of simple intellectual curiosity. Historiography has

5934-744: Is specifically characteristic of quantal phenomena that observations defined by incompatible variables always involve important intervention by the experimenter, as described quantitatively by the observer effect . In classical thermodynamics , processes are initiated by interventions called thermodynamic operations . In other branches of science, for example astronomy , the experimenter can often observe with negligible intervention. The theory of "causal calculus" (also known as do-calculus, Judea Pearl 's Causal Calculus, Calculus of Actions) permits one to infer interventional probabilities from conditional probabilities in causal Bayesian networks with unmeasured variables. One very practical result of this theory

6072-407: Is still used to mean both "history" and "story". Historian in the sense of a "researcher of history" is attested from 1531. In all European languages , the substantive history is still used to mean both "what happened with men" and "the scholarly study of the happened" or the word historiography . The adjective historical is attested from 1661, and historic from 1669. Historians write in

6210-406: Is that cause and effect are of one and the same kind of entity, causality being an asymmetric relation between them. That is to say, it would make good sense grammatically to say either " A is the cause and B the effect" or " B is the cause and A the effect", though only one of those two can be actually true. In this view, one opinion, proposed as a metaphysical principle in process philosophy ,

6348-426: Is that every cause and every effect is respectively some process, event, becoming, or happening. An example is 'his tripping over the step was the cause, and his breaking his ankle the effect'. Another view is that causes and effects are 'states of affairs', with the exact natures of those entities being more loosely defined than in process philosophy. Another viewpoint on this question is the more classical one, that

6486-718: Is the characterization of confounding variables , namely, a sufficient set of variables that, if adjusted for, would yield the correct causal effect between variables of interest. It can be shown that a sufficient set for estimating the causal effect of X {\displaystyle X} on Y {\displaystyle Y} is any set of non-descendants of X {\displaystyle X} that d {\displaystyle d} -separate X {\displaystyle X} from Y {\displaystyle Y} after removing all arrows emanating from X {\displaystyle X} . This criterion, called "backdoor", provides

6624-529: Is the marker that separates history from what comes before. Archaeology is especially helpful in unearthing buried sites and objects, which contribute to the study of history. Archeological finds rarely stand alone, with narrative sources complementing its discoveries. Archeology's methodologies and approaches are independent from the field of history. "Historical archaeology" is a specific branch of archeology which often contrasts its conclusions against those of contemporary textual sources. For example, Mark Leone,

6762-462: Is the systematic study and documentation of the human past . History is an academic discipline which uses a narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyse past events, and investigate their patterns of cause and effect. Historians debate which narrative best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians debate the nature of history as an end in itself, and its usefulness in giving perspective on

6900-421: Is the use of periodization . It divides a timeframe into different periods, each organized around central themes or developments that shaped the period. For example, the three-age system divides early human history into Stone Age , Bronze Age , and Iron Age based on the predominant materials and technologies during these periods. Another methodological tool is the examination of silences, gaps or omissions in

7038-500: Is to be established by empirical evidence. A mere observation of a correlation is not nearly adequate to establish causality. In nearly all cases, establishment of causality relies on repetition of experiments and probabilistic reasoning. Hardly ever is causality established more firmly than as more or less probable. It is most convenient for establishment of causality if the contrasting material states of affairs are precisely matched, except for only one variable factor, perhaps measured by

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7176-399: Is wide-ranging, and includes the study of specific regions and certain topical or thematic elements of historical investigation. History is taught as a part of primary and secondary education, and the academic study of history is a major discipline in universities. Herodotus , a 5th-century BCE Greek historian , is often considered the "father of history", as one of the first historians in

7314-497: Is within the scope of ordinary language to say that it is essential to a triangle that it has three sides. A full grasp of the concept of conditionals is important to understanding the literature on causality. In everyday language, loose conditional statements are often enough made, and need to be interpreted carefully. Fallacies of questionable cause, also known as causal fallacies, non-causa pro causa (Latin for "non-cause for cause"), or false cause, are informal fallacies where

7452-638: The Indus Valley , China, and Peru. The new social, economic, and political complexities necessitated the development of writing systems . Thanks to advancements in agriculture, surplus food allowed these civilizations to support larger populations, accompanied by urbanization , the establishment of trade networks, and the emergence of regional empires. Meanwhile, influential religious systems and philosophical ideas were first formulated, such as Hinduism , Buddhism , Confucianism , Judaism , and Greek philosophy . In post-classical history, beginning around 500 CE,

7590-458: The Lorentz transform of special relativity ) in which an observer would see an effect precede its cause (i.e. the postulate of causality would be violated). Causal notions appear in the context of the flow of mass-energy. Any actual process has causal efficacy that can propagate no faster than light. In contrast, an abstraction has no causal efficacy. Its mathematical expression does not propagate in

7728-552: The Mongol Empire became a dominant force during the 13th and 14th centuries. In early modern history, starting roughly 1500 CE, European states rose to global power. As gunpowder empires , they explored and colonized large parts of the world. As a result, the Americas were integrated into the global network, triggering a vast biological exchange of plants, animals, people, and diseases. The Scientific Revolution prompted major discoveries and accelerated technological progress. It

7866-504: The Teotihuacan , Aztec , and Inca empires . Following the arrival of the Europeans from the late 15th century onwards, the spread of newly introduced diseases drastically reduced the local population. Together with colonization and the massive influx of African slaves, it led to the collapse of major empires as demographic and cultural landscapes were reshaped. Independence movements in

8004-449: The counterfactual conditional , has a stronger connection with causality, yet even counterfactual statements are not all examples of causality. Consider the following two statements: In the first case, it would be incorrect to say that A's being a triangle caused it to have three sides, since the relationship between triangularity and three-sidedness is that of definition. The property of having three sides actually determines A's state as

8142-516: The humanities , other times part of the social sciences . It can be seen as a bridge between those two broad areas, incorporating methodologies from both. Some historians strongly support one or the other classification. In the 20th century the Annales school revolutionized the study of history, by using such outside disciplines as economics , sociology , and geography in the study of global history. Traditionally, historians have recorded events of

8280-450: The invention of writing , leaving prehistory to other fields, such as archeology . Today, history has a broader scope that includes prehistory, starting with the earliest human origins several million years ago. It is controversial whether history is a social science or forms part of the humanities . Like social scientists, historians formulate hypotheses , gather objective evidence, and present arguments based on this evidence. At

8418-415: The skeletons (the graphs stripped of arrows) of these three triplets are identical, the directionality of the arrows is partially identifiable. The same distinction applies when X {\displaystyle X} and Z {\displaystyle Z} have common ancestors, except that one must first condition on those ancestors. Algorithms have been developed to systematically determine

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8556-512: The (mentioned above) regularity, probabilistic , counterfactual, mechanistic , and manipulationist views. The five approaches can be shown to be reductive, i.e., define causality in terms of relations of other types. According to this reading, they define causality in terms of, respectively, empirical regularities (constant conjunctions of events), changes in conditional probabilities , counterfactual conditions, mechanisms underlying causal relations, and invariance under intervention. Causality has

8694-445: The 12th century), chronicle, account of events as relevant to a group of people or people in general (1155), dramatic or pictorial representation of historical events ( c.  1240 ), body of knowledge relative to human evolution, science ( c.  1265 ), narrative of real or imaginary events, story ( c.  1462 )". It was from Anglo-Norman that history was brought into Middle English , and it has persisted. It appears in

8832-505: The 13th-century Ancrene Wisse , but seems to have become a common word in the late 14th century, with an early attestation appearing in John Gower 's Confessio Amantis of the 1390s (VI.1383): "I finde in a bok compiled | To this matiere an old histoire, | The which comth nou to mi memoire". In Middle English, the meaning of history was "story" in general. The restriction to the meaning "the branch of knowledge that deals with past events;

8970-628: The 18th and 19th centuries led to the formation of new nations across the Americas. In the 20th century, the United States emerged as a dominant global power and a key player in the Cold War. The history of Oceania starts with the arrival of anatomically modern humans about 60,000 to 50,000 years ago. They established diverse regional societies and cultures , first in Australia and Papua New Guinea and later also on other Pacific Islands . The arrival of

9108-400: The 1960s"). Thirdly, it may refer to why history is produced: the philosophy of history . As a meta-level analysis of descriptions of the past, this third conception can relate to the first two in that the analysis usually focuses on the narratives, interpretations, world view , use of evidence, or method of presentation of other historians. Historians debate whether history can be taught as

9246-504: The 7th century CE and became the dominant faith in many empires. Meanwhile, trade along the trans-Saharan route intensified. Beginning in the 15th century, millions of Africans were enslaved and forcibly transported to the Americas as part of the Atlantic slave trade . Most of the continent was colonized by European powers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among rising nationalism , African states gradually gained independence in

9384-513: The Americas, and Oceania. The history of Africa stands at the dawn of human history with the evolution of anatomically modern humans about 200,000 years ago. The invention of writing and the establishment of civilization happened in ancient Egypt in the 4th millennium BCE. Over the next millennia, other notable civilizations and kingdoms formed in Nubia , Axum , Carthage , Ghana , Mali , and Songhay . Islam began spreading across North Africa in

9522-514: The Europeans in the 16th century prompted significant transformations. By the end of the 19th century, most of the region had come under Western control. Oceania was dragged into various conflicts during the world wars and experienced decolonization in the post-war period . Historians often limit their inquiry to a specific theme belonging to a particular field. Some historians propose a general subdivision into three major themes: political history , economic history , and social history . However,

9660-465: The Western tradition, though he has been criticized as the "father of lies". Along with his contemporary Thucydides , he helped form the foundations for the modern study of past events and societies. Their works continue to be read today, and the gap between the culture-focused Herodotus and the military-focused Thucydides remains a point of contention or approach in modern historical writing. In East Asia

9798-404: The absence of firefighters. Together these are unnecessary but sufficient to the house's burning down (since many other collections of events certainly could have led to the house burning down, for example shooting the house with a flamethrower in the presence of oxygen and so forth). Within this collection, the short circuit is an insufficient (since the short circuit by itself would not have caused

9936-473: The actual work. AC3 requires that Alice throwing the brick is a minimal cause (cf. blowing a kiss and throwing a brick). Taking the "updated" version of AC2(a), the basic idea is that we have to find a set of variables and settings thereof such that preventing Alice from throwing a brick also stops the window from breaking. One way to do this is to stop Bob from throwing the brick. Finally, for AC2(b), we have to hold things as per AC2(a) and show that Alice throwing

10074-534: The aftermath of World War II , a period that saw economic progress, rapid population growth, and struggles for political stability. In the history of Asia , anatomically modern humans arrived around 100,000 years ago. As one of the cradles of civilization, Asia was home to some of the first ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and China, which began to emerge in the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE. In

10212-467: The antecedent to precede or coincide with the consequent in time, whereas conditional statements do not require this temporal order. Confusion commonly arises since many different statements in English may be presented using "If ..., then ..." form (and, arguably, because this form is far more commonly used to make a statement of causality). The two types of statements are distinct, however. For example, all of

10350-478: The asymmetry of the causal relation is unrelated to the asymmetry of any mode of implication that contraposes. Rather, a causal relation is not a relation between values of variables, but a function of one variable (the cause) on to another (the effect). So, given a system of equations, and a set of variables appearing in these equations, we can introduce an asymmetric relation among individual equations and variables that corresponds perfectly to our commonsense notion of

10488-405: The authenticity of a source. It addresses the questions of when and where the source was created and seeks to identify the author, understand their reason for producing the source, and determine if it has undergone some type of modification since its creation. Additionally, the process involves distinguishing between original works, mere copies, and deceptive forgeries. Internal criticism evaluates

10626-419: The ball goes through the air. On the other hand, an alteration of the shadow (insofar as it is possible) will not be transmitted by the shadow as it moves along. These theorists claim that the important concept for understanding causality is not causal relationships or causal interactions, but rather identifying causal processes. The former notions can then be defined in terms of causal processes. A subgroup of

10764-493: The beginning of globalization . Various social revolutions challenged autocratic and colonial regimes, paving the way for democracies . Many developments in fields like science, technology, economy, living standards, and human population accelerated at unprecedented rates. This happened despite the widespread destruction caused by two world wars , which rebalanced international power relations by undermining European dominance. Areas of historical study can also be categorized by

10902-406: The boundaries between these branches are vague and their relation to other thematic branches, such as intellectual history , is not always clear. Political history studies the organization of power in society, examining how power structures arise, develop, and interact. Throughout most of recorded history, states or state-like structures have been central to this field of study. It explores how

11040-434: The brick breaks the window. (The full definition is a little more involved, involving checking all subsets of variables.) Interpreting causation as a deterministic relation means that if A causes B , then A must always be followed by B . In this sense, war does not cause deaths, nor does smoking cause cancer or emphysema . As a result, many turn to a notion of probabilistic causation. Informally, A ("The person

11178-503: The case that one can change x in order to change y . This coincides with commonsense notions of causations, since often we ask causal questions in order to change some feature of the world. For instance, we are interested in knowing the causes of crime so that we might find ways of reducing it. These theories have been criticized on two primary grounds. First, theorists complain that these accounts are circular . Attempting to reduce causal claims to manipulation requires that manipulation

11316-442: The conceptual frame of the scientific method , an investigator sets up several distinct and contrasting temporally transient material processes that have the structure of experiments , and records candidate material responses, normally intending to determine causality in the physical world. For instance, one may want to know whether a high intake of carrots causes humans to develop the bubonic plague . The quantity of carrot intake

11454-415: The content of a source, typically beginning with the clarification of the meaning within the source. This involves disambiguating individual terms that could be misunderstood but may also require a general translation if the source is written in an ancient language. Once the information content of a source is understood, internal criticism is specifically interested in determining accuracy. Critics ask whether

11592-442: The context of their own time, and with due regard to the current dominant ideas of how to interpret the past, and sometimes write to provide lessons for their own society. In the words of Benedetto Croce , "All history is contemporary history". History is facilitated by the formation of a "true discourse of past" through the production of narrative and analysis of past events relating to the human race. The modern discipline of history

11730-428: The derivation of a cause-and-effect relationship from observational studies must rest on some qualitative theoretical assumptions, for example, that symptoms do not cause diseases, usually expressed in the form of missing arrows in causal graphs such as Bayesian networks or path diagrams . The theory underlying these derivations relies on the distinction between conditional probabilities , as in P ( c

11868-499: The development of artistic activities, styles , and movements . Environmental history studies the relation between humans and their environment. It seeks to understand how humans and the rest of nature have affected each other in the course of history. Other thematic branches include constitutional history , legal history , urban history , business history , history of technology , medical history , history of education , and people's history . Causality Causality

12006-412: The disinterested pursuit of truth is an end in itself , while external purposes, associated with ideology or politics , threaten to undermine the accuracy of historical research by distorting the past. In this role, history also challenges traditional myths lacking factual support. A different perspective suggests that the main value of history lies in the lessons it teaches for the present. This view

12144-434: The effect, is called a "contributory cause". J. L. Mackie argues that usual talk of "cause" in fact refers to INUS conditions ( i nsufficient but n on-redundant parts of a condition which is itself u nnecessary but s ufficient for the occurrence of the effect). An example is a short circuit as a cause for a house burning down. Consider the collection of events: the short circuit, the proximity of flammable material, and

12282-428: The evolution of human-like species several million years ago, leading to the emergence of anatomically modern humans about 200,000 years ago. Subsequently, humans migrated out of Africa to populate most of the earth. Towards the end of prehistory, technological advances in the form of new and improved tools led many groups to give up their established nomadic lifestyle, based on hunting and gathering , in favor of

12420-548: The excavator and interpreter of historical Annapolis, Maryland , US, has sought to understand the contradiction between textual documents idealizing "liberty" and the material record, demonstrating the possession of slaves and the inequalities of wealth made apparent by the study of the total historical environment. There are varieties of ways in which history can be organized, including chronologically, culturally , territorially, and thematically. These divisions are not mutually exclusive, and significant intersections are present. It

12558-455: The experimenter, to do so at an unspecified time in the past", while the latter reads: "the probability of finding cancer in a person forced by the experimenter to smoke at a specified time in the past". The former is a statistical notion that can be estimated by observation with negligible intervention by the experimenter, while the latter is a causal notion which is estimated in an experiment with an important controlled randomized intervention. It

12696-423: The fire) but non-redundant (because the fire would not have happened without it, everything else being equal) part of a condition which is itself unnecessary but sufficient for the occurrence of the effect. So, the short circuit is an INUS condition for the occurrence of the house burning down. Conditional statements are not statements of causality. An important distinction is that statements of causality require

12834-425: The following centuries, culminating in the 19th and early 20th centuries when many parts of Asia came under direct colonial control until the end of World War II . The post-independence period was characterized by modernization, economic growth, and a steep increase in population. The history of Europe began about 45,000 years ago with the arrival of the first anatomically modern humans. The Ancient Greeks laid

12972-509: The following definition of the notion of causal dependence : Causation is then analyzed in terms of counterfactual dependence. That is, C causes E if and only if there exists a sequence of events C, D 1 , D 2 , ... D k , E such that each event in the sequence counterfactually depends on the previous. This chain of causal dependence may be called a mechanism . Note that the analysis does not purport to explain how we make causal judgements or how we reason about causation, but rather to give

13110-498: The following millennia, all major world religions and several influential philosophical traditions were conceived and spread, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism , Christianity, and Islam. The Silk Road facilitated trade and cultural exchange across Eurasia , while powerful empires rose and fell, such as the Mongol Empire, which dominated the continent during the 13th and 14th centuries CE. European influence grew over

13248-417: The following statements are true when interpreting "If ..., then ..." as the material conditional: The first is true since both the antecedent and the consequent are true. The second is true in sentential logic and indeterminate in natural language, regardless of the consequent statement that follows, because the antecedent is false. The ordinary indicative conditional has somewhat more structure than

13386-410: The following three relationships hold: P{ B | A } ≥ P{ B }, P{ C | A } ≥ P{ C } and P{ B | C } ≥ P{ B }. The last relationship states that knowing that the person has emphysema increases the likelihood that he will have cancer. The reason for this is that having the information that the person has emphysema increases the likelihood that the person is a smoker, thus indirectly increasing the likelihood that

13524-494: The form of "Had C not occurred, E would not have occurred." This approach can be traced back to David Hume 's definition of the causal relation as that "where, if the first object had not been, the second never had existed." More full-fledged analysis of causation in terms of counterfactual conditionals only came in the 20th century after development of the possible world semantics for the evaluation of counterfactual conditionals. In his 1973 paper "Causation," David Lewis proposed

13662-529: The formal record or study of past events, esp. human affairs" arose in the mid-15th century. With the Renaissance , older senses of the word were revived, and it was in the Greek sense that Francis Bacon used the term in the late 16th century, when he wrote about natural history . For him, historia was "the knowledge of objects determined by space and time", that sort of knowledge provided by memory (while science

13800-585: The foundations of Western culture , philosophy , and politics in the first millennium BCE. Their cultural heritage continued in the Roman Empire and later the Byzantine Empire . The medieval period began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century CE and was marked by the spread of Christianity . Starting in the 15th century, European exploration and colonization interconnected

13938-425: The geographic locations they examine. Geography plays a central role in history through its influence on food production , natural resources , economic activities, political boundaries, and cultural interactions. Some historical works limit their scope to small regions, such as a village or a settlement. Others focus on broad territories that encompass entire continents, like the histories of Africa, Asia, Europe,

14076-478: The globe, while cultural, intellectual, and scientific developments transformed Western societies. From the late 18th to the early 20th centuries, European global dominance was further solidified by the Industrial Revolution and the establishment of large overseas colonies. It came to an end because of the devastating effects of two world wars. In the following Cold War era, the continent was divided into

14214-634: The historical record of events that occurred but did not leave significant evidential traces. Silences can happen when contemporaries find information too obvious to document but may also occur if there were specific reasons to withhold or destroy information. Conversely, when large datasets are available, quantitative approaches can be used. For instance, economic and social historians commonly employ statistical analysis to identify patterns and trends associated with large groups. Different schools of thought often come with their own methodological implications for how to write history. Positivists emphasize

14352-413: The historical record. Often motivated by specific ideological agendas , pseudohistorians mimic historical methodology to promote misleading narratives that lack rigorous analysis and scholarly consensus. Various suggestions about the purpose or value of history have been made. Some historians propose that its primary function is the pure discovery of the truth about the past. This view emphasizes that

14490-498: The idea of Granger causality , or by direct experimental manipulation. The use of temporal data can permit statistical tests of a pre-existing theory of causal direction. For instance, our degree of confidence in the direction and nature of causality is much greater when supported by cross-correlations , ARIMA models, or cross-spectral analysis using vector time series data than by cross-sectional data . Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon and philosopher Nicholas Rescher claim that

14628-457: The influence of religions continued to grow. Missionary religions, like Buddhism, Christianity , and Islam , spread rapidly and established themselves as world religions , marking a cultural shift as they gradually replaced local belief systems. Meanwhile, inter-regional trade networks flourished, leading to increased technological and cultural exchange. Conquering many territories in Asia and Europe,

14766-495: The information is reliable or misrepresents the topic and further question whether the source is comprehensive or omits important details. One way to make these assessments is to evaluate whether the author was able, in principle, to provide a faithful presentation of the studied event and to consider the influences of their intentions and prejudices. Being aware of the inadequacies of a source helps historians decide whether and which aspects of it to trust, and how to use it to construct

14904-548: The latter as an ontological view, i.e., as a description of the nature of causality but, given the limitations of the human mind, advised using the former (stating, roughly, that X causes Y if and only if the two events are spatiotemporally conjoined, and X precedes Y ) as an epistemic definition of causality. We need an epistemic concept of causality in order to distinguish between causal and noncausal relations. The contemporary philosophical literature on causality can be divided into five big approaches to causality. These include

15042-410: The material conditional. For instance, although the first is the closest, neither of the preceding two statements seems true as an ordinary indicative reading. But the sentence: intuitively seems to be true, even though there is no straightforward causal relation in this hypothetical situation between Shakespeare's not writing Macbeth and someone else's actually writing it. Another sort of conditional,

15180-588: The meaning of historical events and the underlying human motives driving them. In a slightly different sense, history refers to the past events themselves. In this sense, history is what happened rather than the academic field studying what happened. When used as a countable noun , a history is a representation of the past in the form of a history text. History texts are cultural products involving active interpretation and reconstruction. The narratives presented in them can change as historians discover new evidence or reinterpret already-known sources. The nature of

15318-692: The modern era, available data is often limited, forcing economic historians to rely on scarce sources and extrapolate information from them. Social history is a broad field investigating social phenomena, but its precise definition is disputed. Some theorists understand it as the study of everyday life outside the domains of politics and economics, including cultural practices, family structures, community interactions, and education. A closely related approach focuses on experience rather than activities, examining how members of particular social groups, like social classes , races , genders , or age groups , experienced their world. Other definitions see social history as

15456-401: The most direct evidence of historical events. A secondary source is a source that analyses or interprets information found in other sources. Whether a document is a primary or a secondary source depends not only on the document itself but also on the purpose for which it is used. For example, if a historian writes a text about slavery based on an analysis of historical documents, then the text

15594-430: The notion of causality is metaphysically prior to the notions of time and space. In practical terms, this is because use of the relation of causality is necessary for the interpretation of empirical experiments. Interpretation of experiments is needed to establish the physical and geometrical notions of time and space. The deterministic world-view holds that the history of the universe can be exhaustively represented as

15732-426: The ordinary sense of the word, though it may refer to virtual or nominal 'velocities' with magnitudes greater than that of light. For example, wave packets are mathematical objects that have group velocity and phase velocity . The energy of a wave packet travels at the group velocity (under normal circumstances); since energy has causal efficacy, the group velocity cannot be faster than the speed of light. The phase of

15870-452: The past itself, by contrast, is static and unchangeable. Some historians focus on the interpretative and explanatory aspects to distinguish histories from chronicles , arguing that chronicles only catalog events in chronological order, whereas histories aim at a comprehensive understanding of their causes, contexts, and consequences. Traditionally, history was primarily concerned with written documents. It focused on recorded history since

16008-470: The past, either in writing or by passing on an oral tradition , and attempted to answer historical questions through the study of written documents and oral accounts. From the beginning, historians have used such sources as monuments, inscriptions, and pictures. In general, the sources of historical knowledge can be separated into three categories: what is written, what is said, and what is physically preserved, and historians often consult all three. But writing

16146-415: The person will have cancer. However, we would not want to conclude that having emphysema causes cancer. Thus, we need additional conditions such as temporal relationship of A to B and a rational explanation as to the mechanism of action. It is hard to quantify this last requirement and thus different authors prefer somewhat different definitions. When experimental interventions are infeasible or illegal,

16284-505: The problems of the present. The period of events before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory . "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of these events. Historians seek knowledge of the past using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts or traditional oral histories , art and material artifacts, and ecological markers. Stories common to

16422-441: The process theories is the mechanistic view on causality. It states that causal relations supervene on mechanisms. While the notion of mechanism is understood differently, the definition put forward by the group of philosophers referred to as the 'New Mechanists' dominate the literature. For the scientific investigation of efficient causality, the cause and effect are each best conceived of as temporally transient processes. Within

16560-473: The properties of antecedence and contiguity. These are topological, and are ingredients for space-time geometry. As developed by Alfred Robb , these properties allow the derivation of the notions of time and space. Max Jammer writes "the Einstein postulate ... opens the way to a straightforward construction of the causal topology ... of Minkowski space." Causal efficacy propagates no faster than light. Thus,

16698-419: The reality of efficient causality; instead, he appealed to custom and mental habit, observing that all human knowledge derives solely from experience . The topic of causality remains a staple in contemporary philosophy . The nature of cause and effect is a concern of the subject known as metaphysics . Kant thought that time and space were notions prior to human understanding of the progress or evolution of

16836-502: The role of gender in history, with a particular interest in the experiences of women to challenge patriarchal perspectives. History is a wide field of inquiry encompassing many branches. Some branches focus on a specific time period. Others concentrate on a particular geographic region or a distinct theme. Specializations of different types can usually be combined. For example, a work on economic history in ancient Egypt merges temporal, regional, and thematic perspectives. For topics with

16974-583: The role of international organizations in these processes. Military history studies the impact and development of armed conflicts in human history. This includes the examination of specific events, like the analysis of a particular battle and the discussion of the different causes of a war. It also involves more general considerations about the evolution of warfare, including advancements in military technology , strategies, tactics, and institutions. Economic history examines how commodities are produced, exchanged, and consumed. It covers economic aspects such as

17112-589: The same time, history aligns closely with the humanities because of its reliance on subjective aspects associated with interpretation, storytelling , human experience, and cultural heritage . Some historians strongly support one or the other classification while others characterize history as a hybrid discipline that does not belong to one category at the exclusion of the other. History contrasts with pseudohistory , which deviates from historiographical standards by relying on disputed historical evidence, selectively ignoring genuine evidence, or using other means to distort

17250-612: The scientific nature of historical inquiry, focusing on empirical evidence to discover objective truths . In contrast, postmodernists reject grand narratives that claim to offer a single, objective truth. Instead, they highlight the subjective nature of historical interpretation, which leads to a multiplicity of divergent perspectives. Marxists interpret historical developments as expressions of economic forces and class struggles . The Annales school highlights long-term social and economic trends while relying on quantitative and interdisciplinary methods. Feminist historians study

17388-664: The skeleton of the underlying graph and, then, orient all arrows whose directionality is dictated by the conditional independencies observed. Alternative methods of structure learning search through the many possible causal structures among the variables, and remove ones which are strongly incompatible with the observed correlations . In general this leaves a set of possible causal relations, which should then be tested by analyzing time series data or, preferably, designing appropriately controlled experiments . In contrast with Bayesian Networks, path analysis (and its generalization, structural equation modeling ), serve better to estimate

17526-437: The study of social problems, like poverty, disease, and crime, or take a broader perspective by examining how whole societies developed. Closely related fields include cultural history , gender history , and religious history . Intellectual history is the history of ideas. It studies how concepts, philosophies, and ideologies have evolved. It is particularly interested in academic fields but not limited to them, including

17664-533: The study of the beliefs and prejudices of ordinary people. In addition to studying intellectual movements themselves, it also examines the cultural and social contexts that shaped them and their influence on other historical developments. As closely related fields, the history of philosophy investigates the development of philosophical thought while the history of science studies the evolution of scientific theories and practices. The history of art , another connected discipline, examines historical works of art and

17802-428: The time-directedness of counterfactual dependence in terms of the semantics of the counterfactual conditional. If correct, this theory can serve to explain a fundamental part of our experience, which is that we can causally affect the future but not the past. One challenge for the counterfactual account is overdetermination , whereby an effect has multiple causes. For instance, suppose Alice and Bob both throw bricks at

17940-518: The topic as a whole. It is a creative aspect of historical writing that reconstructs, interprets, and explains what happened by showing how different events are connected. In this way, historians address not only which events occurred but also why they occurred and what consequences they had. While there are no universally accepted techniques for this synthesis, historians rely on various interpretative tools and approaches in this process. One tool to provide an accessible overview of complex developments

18078-427: The usage of certain texts and documents (by falsifying their claims to represent the "true past"). Part of the historian's role is to skillfully and objectively use the many sources from the past, most often found in the archives. The process of creating a narrative inevitably generates debate, as historians remember or emphasize different events of the past. The study of history has sometimes been classified as part of

18216-432: The use of land, labour , and capital , the supply and demand of goods, the costs and means of production , and the distribution of income and wealth . Economic historians typically focus on general trends in the form of impersonal forces, such as inflation , rather than the actions and decisions of individuals. If enough data is available, they rely on quantitative methods, like statistical analysis. For periods before

18354-480: The world, and he also recognized the priority of causality. But he did not have the understanding that came with knowledge of Minkowski geometry and the special theory of relativity , that the notion of causality can be used as a prior foundation from which to construct notions of time and space. A general metaphysical question about cause and effect is: "what kind of entity can be a cause, and what kind of entity can be an effect?" One viewpoint on this question

18492-455: The world. Some attempts to defend manipulability theories are recent accounts that do not claim to reduce causality to manipulation. These accounts use manipulation as a sign or feature in causation without claiming that manipulation is more fundamental than causation. Some theorists are interested in distinguishing between causal processes and non-causal processes (Russell 1948; Salmon 1984). These theorists often want to distinguish between

18630-601: Was accompanied by other intellectual developments, such as humanism and the Enlightenment , which ushered in secularization . In modern history, beginning at the end of the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution transformed economies by introducing more efficient modes of production. Western powers established vast colonial empires , gaining superiority through industrialized military technology. The increased international exchange of goods, ideas, and people marked

18768-422: Was borrowed from Latin (possibly via Old Irish or Old Welsh ) into Old English as stær ("history, narrative, story"), but this word fell out of use in the late Old English period. Meanwhile, as Latin became Old French (and Anglo-Norman ), historia developed into forms such as istorie , estoire , and historie , with new developments in the meaning: "account of the events of a person's life (beginning of

18906-712: Was developed by Rebane and Pearl (1987) which rests on Wright's distinction between the three possible types of causal substructures allowed in a directed acyclic graph (DAG): Type 1 and type 2 represent the same statistical dependencies (i.e., X {\displaystyle X} and Z {\displaystyle Z} are independent given Y {\displaystyle Y} ) and are, therefore, indistinguishable within purely cross-sectional data . Type 3, however, can be uniquely identified, since X {\displaystyle X} and Z {\displaystyle Z} are marginally independent and all other pairs are dependent. Thus, while

19044-399: Was provided by reason , and poetry was provided by fantasy ). In an expression of the linguistic synthetic vs. analytic/isolating dichotomy, English like Chinese (史 vs. 诌) now designates separate words for human history and storytelling in general. In modern German , French , and most Germanic and Romance languages , which are solidly synthetic and highly inflected, the same word

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