The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to history:
History – discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented (the beginning of recorded history).
Nature of history
History can be described as all of the following:
Academic discipline – body of knowledge given to – or received by – a disciple (student); a branch or sphere of knowledge, or field of study, that an individual has chosen to specialise in.
one of the humanities – academic discipline that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences.
Field of science – widely recognized category of specialized expertise within science, and typically embodies its own terminology and nomenclature. Such a field will usually be represented by one or more scientific journals, where peer-reviewed research is published. There are many sociology-related scientific journals.
Social science – field of academic scholarship that explores aspects of human society.
Past – totality of events which occurred before a given point in time. The past is contrasted with and defined by the present and the future. The concept of the past is derived from the linear fashion in which human observers experience time, and is accessed through memory and recollection. The past is the domain of history.
Time – measure in which events can be ordered from the past through the present into the future, and also the measure of durations of events and the intervals between them. Time is often referred to as the fourth dimension, along with the three spatial dimensions. History describes what happened where, but also when (in time) those events took place.
Historical disciplines
Archaeology – study of past human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains and environmental data
Archontology – study of historical offices and important positions in state, international, political, religious and other organizations and societies
Art history – study of changes in and social context of art
Environmental history – study of natural history and the human relationship with the natural world
Futurology – study of the future: researches the medium to long-term future of societies and of the physical world
Historiography – both the study of the methodology of historians and development of history as a discipline, and also to a body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians have studied that topic using particular sources, techniques, and theoretical approaches.
History painting – painting of works of art having historical motifs or depicting great events
Urban history – historical nature of cities and towns, and the process of urbanization
Women's history – study of the roles of women throughout history
World history – study of global or transnational historical patterns
Auxiliary sciences of history
Auxiliary sciences of history – scholarly disciplines which help evaluate and use historical sources and are seen as auxiliary for historical research.[1] Auxiliary sciences of history include, but are not limited to:
Prosopography – a methodological tool for the collection of all known information about individuals within a given period
Historical revisionism – traditionally used in a completely neutral sense to describe the work or ideas of a historian who has revised a previously accepted view of a particular topic
Historical revisionism – reinterpretation of orthodox views on evidence, motivations, and decision-making processes surrounding a historical event. Though the word revisionism is sometimes used in a negative way, constant revision of history is part of the normal scholarly process of writing history.
Historical thinking – scholastic reasoning skills applied to historical content, including chronological thinking, historical comprehension, historical analysis and interpretation, historical research capabilities, and historical issues analysis and decision making.
