Reaction Paper #1/2
... By assessing the past, critically and constructively, with an open mind and an open heart we can establish a humane present. I feel Becker’s underlying concern was with the idea of engineering society to a perfected ideal. It appears to me, Becker saw history as a process of organic human interaction that enhanced its humanity by always striving to understand its “moral complexity.” Reaction Paper #2 The American Heritage College dic.tion.ar.y defines history in sequential order to the most common understanding of its meaning and usage. I decided to take the first, second, and the last two definitions of history out of their sequential order and rearrange them as an epitaph on the tombstone of a traditional historian( who’s greatest concern was with causality; master narratives) inscribed by a postmodern historian( who’s greatest concern is with the consequences; side narratives). The tombstone reads: #4. (e)Slang: One that is no longer worth consideration. (d) An Interesting past.(c) Something that belongs to the past. #5. A drama based on historical events. # #2. (a) A chronological record of events, as of the development of a people, often including an explanation of or commentary on those events. #1. A narrative of events; a story. I do want to make notable that I left #3 and the subsequent related meanings to #2 out, because they dealt with keeping track of medical and scientific inquiry. What’s the point of this exercise? The point is to give you an effect. The effect is postmodern thought . I thought it would be fun to use the definitions of history from a dictionary to illustrate dynamically: the creativeness, the cleverness, the tenacity, and most importantly the boldness displayed by a new school of thought that has driven the older school of thought “underground;” ...