A quick blog post for today. When I was writing my post on the Historical Method, I kept typing the term as the “Historic Method.” When I double-checked the term upon editing and saw that I had gotten it wrong, I got to wondering what the difference was between “historic” and “historical.” Seems like such an easy thing that a historian/writer ought to know, but there is a slim difference between the two and it…
I had another post prepared for today, but a kerflapple* arose on Twitter this weekend about an opinion piece in The Atlantic by Andrew Ferguson that I cannot leave unremarked. The title alone should help you understand why: Historians Should Stay Out of Politics. Let me take a deep breath. I’ll try not to vibrate about the mere title alone. But the opinions expressed in the article are going to make it hard to keep…
The Scientific Method Show of hands. Who here has heard of the Scientific Method? Likely, without looking it up, most everyone could list a few of the steps involved with the Scientific Method. There’s coming up with a question and making a hypothesis and testing the hypothesis and … how many steps are there? Even if you can’t list all the steps in order, you’ve at least heard of the Scientific Method because it has…