Beware sweeping generalizations [S. Worthen | Weblog]

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As a general rule, "throughout history", "throughout time", and other sweeping phrases about the entire course of existence should be banned from history papers. They're nearly always incorrect. In fact, as a history student, you're more likely to be factually correct if you just avoid those phrases altogether.

Thus it is with some chagrin that I find myself unable to tell my current students to avoid "throughout history", because, for once, they're all using it appropriately. I'm proud and relieved - but it's still a dangerous phrase to throw around.

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There are 32 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

I remember reading once (in a book on heraldry, most likely) that in certain specific contexts, the phrase "time immemorial" does have a carefully-defined meaning - usually the period before 1066.

"Since the memory of man runneth not to the counter" goes back, if I recall, as far as the reign of Henry II

Same basic principle. "Sorry, sunshine, if you're basing your case/claim on what the situation was before Us Normans got here, forget it."

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I wonder what causes folks to use the "since the dawn of time" chestnut so often. I don't think that I ever had a high school English teacher encourage me to open an essay with it, and it was certainly never part of any undergraduate writing instruction. I'm pretty sure the same holds true of Canadian and UKan High Schools, and yet somehow, that awful cliché just keeps oozing to the surface.

When did time dawn?

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6am! duh!

(sorry)

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Yeah, I found myself v. uncomfortable when editing a recent paper, since I kept having to say things like "over time" or "through the centuries". Problem was, it WAS centuries I was talking about, and in a very specific, appropriate, unavoidable way—but my inner history professor kept going, "NO! NO! Don't do it!"

It was very interesting, when you were reading ch. 1 of my book, to see how strongly you disapproved of the phrase 'throughout history' (although I'd only used it in two or three places). The thing is that my book is doing exactly that: its scope is precisely all of history from the beginning of written records to the present, so I didn't find it objectionable. I did, however, remove or alter it, because of the potential ambiguity in its meaning 'throughout the history of written records' and 'throughout human existence'.

Yes, that ambiguity is precisely the problem: just where the boundaries of history lie. It's funny how we develop our own particular irritants; mine lie more strongly with phrasing than, say, punctuation.

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Is "history" always defined as "since written records begun", though? I guess it becomes the realm of anthropology (or even palaeontology) before that?

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Well, I'm an anthropologist by profession, and in general we don't make too many distinctions between prehistory and history except in terms of methods. In theory ours is the study of all peoples at all places and times. The specific context I was using it in was referring to 'since written records began', however.

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Missed this when I posted my latest comment. Archaeology definitely distinguishes; you can't look at charters and tithe maps when trying to work out how much farmland an Iron Age farmstead used.

Mildly puzzled by your mentioning anthropology and palaeontology but leaving out archaeology.

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That's true; sorry about the omission, just didn't jump into my head while writing the comment. It's rather out of my field (I'm a cell biologist).

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No - but the problem lies in the fact that the word "history" is used to cover multiple meanings. In certain disciplines, as

sollersuk observes, "history" has a precise and technical meaning which means "since written records began", used to distinguish it from prehistory. "Since written records began" is, again, actually shorthand for "since human beings began recording written history".

But "a history" is a chronologically-aware factually-based story. I have no other word to describe this kind of text. This is the kind of use of history which makes it acceptable to have books entitled things like "A history of the universe since the Big Bang". If history in this context could only refer to "since written records", a text on the history of the universe would be meaningless.

Further, within the discipline of history, we don't reliably distinguish in the same way that archeology does. Yes, we have moments of refering to history vs. prehistory. But equally we have subfields like "food history". To say that the history of human's consumption of food only began with the first written records is entirely arbitrary with respect to that field.

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Ummm... how about "throughout history until recent centuries around half of all children died before their fifth birthday"?

This particular book they're writing about is about the history of food - since before recorded human history to more-or-less to the present. Throughout history, people have eaten food.

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Ah, but that's reason #2 not to use it: it's banal. So people have eaten food. Yawn. So what? Find a better way to start your essay.

(Reason #1 is that most of the time it's inaccurate: "Throughout history, people have struggled with the question of what music to put on their iPods.")

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To give them credit, that's not what they're actually writing. They're observing that the author of the book deals with the subject of food throughout history. Nearly all of them have made the same observation, but that doesn't stop it from being true and accurate. (You're right about my version of it though.)

(Of COURSE people have struggled with the question of what music to put on their iPods throughout history! For most of history, it was a baffling question!)

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Is a question still a question if no one asks it? Is a question still a question if the knowledge necessary to formulate the question does not currently fall within the knowledge domain of te person seeking to formulate the question?

Sorry, wrong room... is philosophy next door?

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But in that case, if it covers prehistory as well, it's too weak! There's been a lot more time when people have eaten food than there has been history!

(sorry to get picky about "history" but when I was studying archaeology we got very pernickety about it: there's such a difference between what can tie in with history, ie written accounts, and what can't)

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Archaeology has a precise, technical meaning for the word "history" which isn't reliably shared by the discipline of history itself (although it sometimes is, depending on context). Also, the wider world's use of the term to refer to any chronologically-aware, factually-based story complicates the data. (cf. A Brief History of the Universe and the existence of the subfield of "food history".)

By extrapolation, therefore, any period covered by a history text could be thought of as being within the period of time known as history. It's an easy conflation, if not always appropriate to the discipline.

Edited Date: 2007-11-20 10:23 am (UTC)

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In the newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written, every now and then someone asks "What are the best science fiction novels of all time?"

I have fun answering such questions.

Do you try to give representative bests from each billion years?

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Yeah. Just Yeah.

Oh my gosh, I feel your pain. Why do students feel the need to start at the dawn of time??

"Throughout history" and "ever since the dawn of time" must be eradicated. We must also destroy any undergraduate sentence containing the words "human nature" or "human spirit."

I'm deeply ambivalent about permitting "interesting", myself. It's too easily abused.

(But it's only human nature to use "throughout history" in the vast majority of papers. Apparently.)

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I've also found that conventional wisdom, at least when it comes to material culture, is wrong more often than note.

Viz: patchwork did NOT start with thrifty housewives stitching their scraps together to create bedding. It started with a bunch of Serbian saints wearing pieced vestments, continued with Italian mercenaries showing their heraldry, got even worse with German aristocrats wearing patchwork wedding gowns, and was only domestic until the 18th century.

But we still see those thrifty peasant/colonial housewives popping up in textile histories over and over and over and over and over.....

Make that "only rarely domestic." *bleah*

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I love your history of patchwork. But shouldn't Italian sail makers get some credit? [If I knew how to do it I would link to an image, but what I have in mind is Paolo Veneziano's miracle of S Mark, e.g., at http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Markus-Gebeine.jpg]

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How old is the painting, and where might I find more information? This is fascinating.....

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It's 1345 (i.e.,only a decade or so later than the Guidoriccio), made as part of Paolo's cover for the pala d'oro in San Marco, Venice. Finding information on Paolo is easy. I can't help with sail design, though pieced sails remained common in Venice through the 19C, and they've been revived (http://www.cesenatico.it/mm/mm_bragozzo_san-nicolo.jpg).

I had never questioned how those dramatic black-and-white orthodox robes were made. You are surely right that they were pieced. The main examples I've known are byzantine (as in the frescoes of the kariye camii, a.k.a. church of the chora, in Istanbul: http://www.answers.com/topic/gregor-chora-jpg); did the fashion really begin in Serbia?

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Throughout history we have used that phrase in our papers! I see no reason to stop now!!!! Tradition!!

October