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READINGS
IN
PHILIPPINE
HISTORY
LESSON 1
 LESSON 1
Introduction to History:
 Meaning of History
 History as an Academic Discipline
 Philosophy and Methodology of History
 Importance of Studying History
 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
By the end of this lesson, students will have completed the
following objectives:
1. Understand the meaning of history as an academic
discipline;
2. Analyze the underlying philosophy and methodology of
historical discipline;
3. Assess critically the different historical evidences and
sources; and
4. Appreciate the importance of history in the social and
national life of the Philippines.
 COURSE CONTENT
People live in the present. They plan for and worry
about the future. History, however, is the study of the past.
Given all the demands that press in from living in the
present and anticipating what is yet to come, why bother
with what has been? Given all the desirable and available
branches of knowledge, why insist—as most American
educational programs do—on a good bit of history? And
why urge many students to study even more history than
they are required to?
 Any subject of study needs justification: its
advocates must explain why it is worth attention. Most
widely accepted subjects—and history is certainly one
of them—attract some people who simply like the
information and modes of thought involved. But
audiences less spontaneously drawn to the subject
and more doubtful about why to bother need to know
what the purpose is.
 Historians do not perform heart transplants,
improve highway design, or arrest criminals. In a
society that quite correctly expects education to serve
useful purposes, the functions of history can seem
more difficult to define than those of engineering or
medicine. History is in fact very useful, actually
indispensable, but the products of historical study are
less tangible, sometimes less immediate, than those
that stem from some other disciplines.
 In the past, history has been justified for reasons
we would no longer accept. For instance, one of the reasons
history holds its place in current education is because earlier
leaders believed that a knowledge of certain historical facts
helped distinguish the educated from the uneducated; the
person who could reel off the date of the Norman conquest
of England (1066) or the name of the person who came up
with the theory of evolution at about the same time that
Darwin did (Wallace) was deemed superior—a better
candidate for law school or even a business promotion.
 Knowledge of historical facts have been used as a
screening device in many societies, from China to the United
States, and the habit is still with us to some extent.
Unfortunately, this use can encourage mindless
memorization—a real but not very appealing aspect of the
discipline. History should be studied because it is essential to
individuals and to society, and because it harbours beauty.
There are many ways to discuss the real functions of the
subject—as there are many different historical talents and
many different paths to historical meaning.
 0ne of the famous song line “Bulag, Pipi At
Bingi”…….. Ano sa ‘yo ang musika sa ‘yo ba’y
mahalaga.

What is the Meaning of History ?

FOR YOU?
 The Meaning of History
American inventor Henry Ford famously said that
history is “more or less bunk.” Others have characterized
history differently:
• as the essence of innumerable biographies
• as a picture of human crimes and misfortunes
• as nothing but an agreed upon fable
• as something that is bound to repeat itself.
 The short version is that the term history has
evolved from an ancient Greek verb that means “to
know,” says the Oxford English Dictionary’s Philip
Durkin. The Greek word “historia” originally meant
inquiry, the act of seeking knowledge, as well as the
knowledge that results from inquiry. And from there it’s
a short jump to the accounts of events that a person
might put together from making inquiries — what we
might call stories.
 The words story and history share much of their
lineage, and in previous eras, the overlap between them was
much messier than it is today. “That working out of distinction,”
says Durkin, “has taken centuries and centuries.” Today, we
might think of the dividing line as the one between fact and
fiction. Stories are fanciful tales woven at bedtime, the plots of
melodramatic soap operas. That word can even be used to
describe an outright lie. Histories, on the other hand, are records
of events. That word refers to all time preceding this very
moment and everything that really happened up to now.
 History as an Academic Discipline
When we talk about History as an Academic Discipline,
we are talking about the branch of knowledge that deals with
the interpretation of the past, especially by experts in history.
These are people who research, study, and then expound
upon their findings of the past. More broadly speaking, history
can be thought of as the study of the past by everyone from
professors and researchers to amateur scholars to the public at
large. You can become, if you methodically study the past, a
historian as well.
 As an academic discipline, history and thus
historical studies have one key element to them.
There is, no matter the research, a level of
interpretation to the study of past events. This
means that the study of a single past event can take
on different meanings when construed by historians
coming at the event from various angles and
possible biases.
 Such historians can study everything from
people to events to time periods to civilizations and
much more. They can even study specific
subsections of the past, like the economics of a
civilization, the relationship between two people, or
the political landscape in a time period. There is no
limit to what can be studied and researched.
 Philosophy of History
The concept of history plays a fundamental role in human
thought. It invokes notions of human agency, change, the role
of material circumstances in human affairs, and the putative
meaning of historical events. It raises the possibility of
“learning from history.” And it suggests the possibility of
better understanding ourselves in the present, by understanding
the forces, choices, and circumstances that brought us to our
current situation.
 It is therefore unsurprising that philosophers have
sometimes turned their attention to efforts to examine history itself
and the nature of historical knowledge. These reflections can be
grouped together into a body of work called “philosophy of
history.” This work is heterogeneous, comprising analyses and
arguments of idealists, positivists, logicians, theologians, and
others, and moving back and forth over the divides between
European and Anglo-American philosophy, and between
hermeneutics and positivism.
 Given the plurality of voices within the
“philosophy of history,” it is impossible to give one
definition of the field that suits all these
approaches. In fact, it is misleading to imagine that
we refer to a single philosophical tradition when
we invoke the phrase, “philosophy of history,”
because the strands of research characterized here
rarely engage in dialogue with each other.
 Still, we can usefully think of philosophers' writings about
history as clustering around several large questions, involving
metaphysics, hermeneutics, epistemology, and historicism:
(1) What does history consist of—individual actions, social structures,
periods and regions, civilizations, large causal processes, divine
intervention?
(2) Does history as a whole have meaning, structure, or direction, beyond
the individual events and actions that make it up?
(3) What is involved in our knowing, representing, and explaining
history?
(4) To what extent is human history constitutive of the human present?
 Methodology of History

 History is more complex than many people realize.

It is so much more than memorizing names, dates,
and places.
 History is very much 'scientific.’
It involves critical thinking. It involves formulating
hypotheses based on evidence and testing them.
 Historical Methodology
- the process by which historians gather evidence and
formulate ideas about the past
- the framework through which an account of the past is
constructed
Historical Evidence
Historical evidence can be classified between primary
and secondary sources. The classification of sources
between these two categories depends on the historical
subject being studied.
 Primary Sources
Primary sources consist of original documents,
artifacts, or other pieces of information that were created
at the time under study. So, if we are studying World War
II, primary sources would include everything from letters
written by soldiers to girlfriends and wives back home to
government documents to photographs to physical
uniforms and equipment.
 Primary sources can be wide-ranging.
Battlefield film footage is a primary source because it
was filmed right then and there, at that moment in
history.
Primary sources are usually more valued than
secondary sources.
Examples: Archival documents, artifacts, letters, census,
government records
 Secondary Sources
Secondary Sources are those sources which were
produced by an author who used primary sources to produce the
material.
Secondary Sources are historical sources, which studied a
certain historical subject.

Example: textbook
 Both primary and secondary sources are useful
in writing and learning the history. However, historians
and students need to thoroughly scrutinize these historical
sources to avoid deception and to come up with the
historical truth. Various forms of historical evidence
allow historians and other experts to gain insight into the
past and propose theories. That doesn't, however, always
mean their theories are necessarily correct, as we shall
see.
 Importance of Studying History
Why study history? The answer is because we virtually
must, to gain access to the laboratory of human experience.
When we study it reasonably well, and so acquire some
usable habits of mind, as well as some basic data about the
forces that affect our own lives, we emerge with relevant
skills and an enhanced capacity for informed citizenship,
critical thinking, and simple awareness. The uses of history
are varied.
 Studying history can help us develop some literally
"salable" skills, but its study must not be pinned down to the
narrowest utilitarianism. Some history—that confined to
personal recollections about changes and continuities in the
immediate environment—is essential to function beyond
childhood. Some history depends on personal taste, where one
finds beauty, the joy of discovery, or intellectual challenge.
Between the inescapable minimum and the pleasure of deep
commitment comes the history that, through cumulative skill in
interpreting the unfolding human record, provides a real grasp
of how the world works.
Other importance of studying history are as follows:
1. History Helps Us Understand People and Societies
Understanding the operations of people and societies is difficult, though a
number of disciplines make the attempt. An exclusive reliance on current
data would needlessly handicap our efforts. How can we evaluate war if
the nation is at peace—unless we use historical materials? How can we
understand genius, the influence of technological innovation, or the role
that beliefs play in shaping family life, if we don't use what we know about
experiences in the past? Some social scientists attempt to formulate laws or
theories about human behaviour. But even these resources depend on
historical information, except for in limited, often artificial cases in which
experiments can be devised to determine how people act.
 Major aspects of a society's operation, like mass
elections, missionary activities, or military alliances, cannot be set up
as precise experiments. Consequently, history must serve, however
imperfectly, as our laboratory, and data from the past must serve as
our most vital evidence in the unavoidable quest to figure out why
our complex species behaves as it does in societal settings. This,
fundamentally, is why we cannot stay away from history: it offers the
only extensive evidential base for the contemplation and analysis of
how societies function, and people need to have some sense of how
societies function simply to run their own lives.
2. History Helps Us Understand Change and How the Society We
Live in Came to Be
The second reason history is inescapable as a subject of serious
study follows closely on the first. The past causes the present, and so
the future. Any time we try to know why something happened—
whether a shift in political party dominance in the American
Congress, a major change in the teenage suicide rate, or a war in the
Balkans or the Middle East—we have to look for factors that took
shape earlier. Sometimes fairly recent history will suffice to explain a
major development, but often we need to look further back to
identify the causes of change.
 Only through studying history can we grasp how things
change;
 only through history can we begin to comprehend the factors that
cause change;
 and only through history can we understand what elements of an
institution or a society persist despite change.
3. History Contributes to Moral Understanding
History also provides a terrain for moral contemplation.
Studying the stories of individuals and situations in the past allows a
student of history to test his or her own moral sense, to hone it
against some of the real complexities individuals have faced in
difficult settings. People who have weathered adversity not just in
some work of fiction, but in real, historical circumstances can
provide inspiration. "History teaching by example" is one phrase that
describes this use of a study of the past—a study not only of
certifiable heroes, the great men and women of history who
successfully worked through moral dilemmas, but also of more
ordinary people who provide lessons in courage, diligence, or
constructive protest.
4. History Provides Identity
History also helps provide identity, and this is unquestionably
one of the reasons all modern nations encourage its teaching in some
form. Historical data include evidence about how families, groups,
institutions and whole countries were formed and about how they have
evolved while retaining cohesion. For many Americans, studying the
history of one's own family is the most obvious use of history, for it
provides facts about genealogy and (at a slightly more complex level)
a basis for understanding how the family has interacted with larger
historical change.
 Family identity is established and confirmed.
Many institutions, businesses, communities, and social
units, such as ethnic groups in the United States, use history
for similar identity purposes. Merely defining the group in
the present pales against the possibility of forming an
identity based on a rich past. And of course nations use
identity history as well—and sometimes abuse it. Histories
that tell the national story, emphasizing distinctive features
of the national experience, are meant to drive home an
understanding of national values and a commitment to
national loyalty.
5. Studying History Is Essential for Good Citizenship
A study of history is essential for good citizenship.
This is the most common justification for the place of
history in school curricula. Sometimes advocates of
citizenship history hope merely to promote national
identity and loyalty through a history spiced by vivid
stories and lessons in individual success and morality.
But the importance of history for citizenship goes beyond
this narrow goal and can even challenge it at some
points.
6. History Is Useful in the World of Work
History is useful for work. Its study helps create good
businesspeople, professionals, and political leaders. The number of
explicit professional jobs for historians is considerable, but most
people who study history do not become professional historians.
Professional historians teach at various levels, work in museums and
media centers, do historical research for businesses or public agencies,
or participate in the growing number of historical consultancies. These
categories are important—indeed vital—to keep the basic enterprise
of history going, but most people who study history use their training
for broader professional purposes.