Open Thread Thursday: The Importance of Asking the Right Question
One of the many things that I worked to instill in my students was the importance of asking the right question or set of questions as a gateway to studying the past.
There is no history or historical narrative without a question. At its most basical level we approach history with the questions of what happened, why it happened, and what it means that it happened.
Historians work hard to frame their research around a question or set of questions only to find that they have to be revised significantly throughout the process.
Thinking through the right set of questions is partly an analytical process, but it also involves exercising one’s imagination. It’s one of the reasons why history is constantly being written and revised. There is no limit to the types of questions we can pose to the past.
A good historical question isn’t easily answered. Historians often arrive at two different interpretations of the same event based on the specific questions posed.