Historical & Temporal Inputs
category
Historical and temporal inputs encompass the deliberate engagement with different periods of human history, with the structure of historical change, with the lives of historical figures in their full contextual complexity, and with the specific ways in which past human arrangements and thought systems differ from present ones — providing the temporal perspective that dissolves the assumption of the current arrangement's naturalness and necessity.
Role
Historical and temporal inputs are the corrective to the parochialism of the present — the systematic overvaluation of contemporary knowledge, contemporary aesthetic sensibilities, and contemporary social arrangements at the expense of the accumulated wisdom, different solutions, and alternative frameworks that the full historical record contains. The present moment is one brief point in the temporal depth of human civilization, and the creator who draws only from it is working with a vanishingly small sample of human creative possibility.
Subtopics
- Primary Source Engagement Primary source engagement involves direct contact with original historical documents, artifacts, ima…
- Comparative History Comparative history — the systematic comparison of how different societies have addressed similar hi…
- History of Ideas The history of ideas — the specific study of how concepts, theories, values, and frameworks have dev…
- Micro-History Micro-history — the intensive study of a small, specific, apparently minor historical event or perso…
- Future Studies Future studies and speculative design as creative inputs provide the methodology for systematically …
- Social Movement History Social movement history — the study of how significant social changes have been achieved through org…
- Technological History Technological history — the study of how specific technologies were developed, adopted, adapted, res…
- Economic History Economic history — the study of how economies have been organized and have changed across time and a…
- Art History Art history as creative input provides the most comprehensive available survey of how human beings a…
- Counterfactual History Counterfactual history — the disciplined imaginative exploration of how history might have unfolded …