| Topic |
Summary |
| The 'uses and abuses' of
History. |
'The past is
always / knocking incessant / Trying to break through / into the
present' - Billy Bragg. A consideration of how the past gives
meaning to the present. |
| The
'epistemological fragility' of History. |
'I am
beginning to believe that nothing can ever be proved... slow, lazy,
sulky, the facts adapt themselves at a pinch to the order I wish to
give them' Antoine Roquentin in Nausea JP Sartre |
| Defending
History and Doing History |
I
used to think that the profession of history, unlike that of, say,
nuclear physics, could at least do no harm. Now I know it can. Our
studies can turn into bomb factories like the workshops in which the
IRA has learned to transform chemical fertilizer into an
explosive… Eric
Hobsbawm |
| What
is Social Science? |
There is no such thing as society.
Thereare individual men and women and there are families. Margaret
Thatcher |
| Verstehen |
There's nothing like eavesdropping to
show that the world outside your head is different from the world
inside your head. Thornton Wilder |
| Free Will and Determinism |
|
| Experimentation and Alternatives |
|
| Doing Social Science |
|
