 Hi, I'm Gene Preuss, and in this presentation, I'm going to show how historians think about the past using critical thinking skills. This is important because this process helps us develop thesis statements, which are the answers we arrive at when studying a specific aspect about the past. I'm going to base this presentation on categories of critical analysis in the historical process identified by Thomas Andrew and Flannery Burke in their essay, What Does It Mean to Think Historically? Published in January 2007 in the American Historical Association's Magazine Perspectives on History, it's available online and you can click the link for more information if you'd like to read it for yourself. In their article, Andrew and Burke observe that historians look at change over time, causation, context, complexity in history, and contingent factors. While this is a rather basic introduction to historical thinking, it serves as a good model for students. In this presentation, I'll expand on these five concepts and demonstrate that by using them, you'll get a deeper understanding of the past by developing questions that will lead you to research using primary and secondary sources and that that search for an answer will then help you develop a thesis. So let's get started. When most people think about history and about the past, they think about somebody doing something that leads to a result. Let's call this an event. At its most basic level, we can develop questions about this event by using the five W's. This is a method that dates back to Aristotle some 2400 years ago. And those five W's that we've been using ever since are who, what, where, when, why, and how. Beyond this basic historical analysis, we want to investigate further and look at other events that happened around the same time as the event we're studying. By looking at these surrounding events, we get an idea of context of the period we're studying. We might want to investigate the changes that occurred because of this event. The action or event we're researching might have led to changes in the way people do something or changes in the process. They might have even led to changes in the way that a group or society is organized or a change in structure. Often, events may lead to changes that weren't expected or caused other problems. It could also be that the actions resulted in no change at all or that the causes that led to the events continued and the status quo remained. These are unintended consequences. Another more complex analysis includes causation. This might include investigating the steps that were necessary for the action to happen in the first place. You might also think about looking into what factors or conditions allowed the action or event to take place or made the results possible or the change to happen or not happen. And this includes relationships and interactions between the people or agents of change involved in the event. We might also look at the relationship between the factors that contributed to the event and the steps required. As you can see, the process of historical inquiry is not as simple as it looks. Historians also try to understand what Andrews and Burke called complexity. Historians don't only research and write about what people said or did or about events, their causes and changes. Historians want to look at the people, events, causes and changes within the context they occurred. This is especially true in popular histories, biographies, films and documentaries. For Andrews and Burke, complexity is the idea, the culture, the society and structures that are among the motivations that may lead people to take action. There are also other influences, including other people, ideas and events both inside and outside of the immediate context that may lead people to take certain actions. We might consider the psychological, cultural, sociological and other influences and motivation, thoughts and ideas that were popular at the time and how they may have influenced the people into doing the actions. These complex motivations and influences are often entertaining topics for popular histories, films and novels. But historians can never really know the exact motivations or influences that drove a person to take an action, simply because we cannot read their minds. We might have evidence from primary sources about what a person says influenced them to do something, but it's impossible to know if that's accurate, or understand why someone with the same motivation and influences under similar circumstances might not do the same thing or might do something quite different. Finally, there's an old proverb that goes back at least 100 years called for want of a nail that reminds us that there is rarely one cause or one factor and that many events have long consequences. For want of a nail, the poem goes, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse and rider were lost. For want of a horse and rider, the battle was lost. For loss of the battle, the kingdom was lost. All for the want of a nail. Historians consider the contention factors that may have influenced or affected the person, their action, the events or the outcomes. Contingency is the interrelationship between all of the other ideas, changes, causation, complexity, events, and the context. People often think of history as just one list of many events over time, each of those events being a turning point or catalyst, but in fact there are many contingent events that have to take place without which the elements of the event itself may not have been possible. These include the actions of others that affected the event. It could have been certain conditions that made the event possible like the weather or natural disasters or political turmoil that led someone to take action. Finally, there are other actions that had to happen in order for the event we're studying to have happened and for the outcomes to have happened or for the people who were involved to be there in the first place. Here we can see that there are many intertwined causes and effects that combine to produce the past we study. And as we evaluate the past and reflect upon the importance of all these factors, we see that history is often about informed speculation based upon the available information. And that brings us to the final question we consider and that is significance. Of course no one can possibly learn about all these factors about any past event, so historians will usually focus on one or two areas. They choose those questions to follow based upon why they think those questions are important or significant. Some think that this is perhaps the most important question in any historical analysis. In explaining why an event, its causes, actions, outcomes, and the people involved are important is how we develop a thesis statement. In this presentation we've gone over the many possible questions that can be asked about any historical event. Your thesis statement is the answer to the question you ask based upon your research in the primary and secondary sources. Remember in any academic writing whether it is a parent or not, a thesis is either implied, inferred, or clearly stated. And in most student papers professors expect them to clearly state their thesis at the beginning of the paper, usually in the first paragraph. I hope that this presentation helps you understand how the five concepts that Andrew and Burke identified change over time, causation, context, complexity, and contingency can help you think critically about history and lead you to a deeper understanding of the past that helps you develop questions which will lead you to research those questions, searching for an answer, or the thesis for your research. Remember if you have any questions please check with your professor. Thank you for watching.