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Is there any kind of science studying what History does not record?

Hi! In the process of an artistic work, I am asking myself this question : how is scientifically perceived the fact that ALL of the events that happened cannot be known? Is there somehow a series of theories or a discipline studying those holes in History as it is known, since it could have a certain influence on the vision of some/many events?

Of course I am interested to hear about the visions of different cultures of the matter, even religious points of view about what i would call "the unavoidable lack of knowledge".

Thank you in advance for your answers.

julien.

Update:

(oh, and I am also opened to obscure/non-scientifically valued theories, as long as it is not on the line of conspiracy since it is not really the subject of my work)

Update 2:

Peter, what I am asking is if there is a scientific method to consider informations that are not known. Maybe it goes beyond the field of History, it is somewhat more philosophical i guess.

I don't know at what level you teach History, but I was wondering if this matter was somehow evoked in university, since the lack of informations about one event could completely change the reality of this event, thus not being as it is told.

Update 3:

Fishlakeguy, I believe crypto-history is something else - it's more about works that have not been done following the scientific methodology, therefore considered false/incomplete. What I intend to find is one or several points of view about how to handle the fact that History cannot bring complete informations about the real events it is depicting.

5 Answers

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  • 8 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    The closest science which looks for more history as yet undiscovered falls into the category of anthropology.

    There are two major branches to anthropology: Physical Anthropology and Social/Cultural Anthropology.

    You may want to begin reading about this endeavour by researching the work of Margaret Meade.

  • Anonymous
    5 years ago

    There is this organism called "salmonella". This organism has been responsible for countless cases of food poisoning and even death over the centuries. The history of how this bug is responsible for so much suffering and of how mankind learned to avoid salmonella is pretty doggone important - because salmonella is still around and people still occasionally get sick because of it. Would you rather your parents followed you through life hollering at you to wash your hands and only eat well-cooked chicken and fish, or would you prefer to learn the history involved and why that's necessary for your good health and then be left alone to run your own life? Yo, there's hundreds of nasty little germs like that, and wouldn't you rather know the history of how people learned to keep from getting sick rather than experience those illnesses yourself? THAT's why history is important: you don't want to repeat it and learn the important stuff the hard way! One of those germs, which is still around and which still makes some people sick every single day, killed a third of the population of the world only a few hundred years ago. In fact, it did that more than once - it's the germ that causes Plague, the "Black Death". Or how about the ones that cause Malaria, the oldest known disease, which is still around? Or Hansen's Disease, also called "Leprosy"? Didn't know Leprosy's still around, did ya? The United States Public Health Service still runs a leprosarium - a hospital just for victims of Leprosy - in Carville, Louisiana. Wanna visit? I thought not. So study history and learn how to avoid catching Leprosy! How's them for good reasons to study history, dude?

  • ?
    Lv 7
    8 years ago

    If you want to know about what is not known in history, then the subject to study is history. For example, we don't know much about the Estruscans, so the thing to do is study Etruscan history more and find something new about them. It could be done partly through archeology and by deciphering the Etruscan language, which we have not been able to understand. Doing research into the holes in history is simply doing historical research. For example, Evans changed our understanding of early civilization in the Mediterranean by his excavations on Crete.

    Finding out what is not known is called research. People do it all the time, especially scientists.

  • 8 years ago

    Maybe I don't understand what you are asking, but History is a field that requires documents as evidence to find answers. If it isn't written down, historians can't talk about it. History is sometimes viewed as a social science, but it is often grouped with the humanities, as it is here on Yahoo.

    Source(s): I am a history teacher
  • 8 years ago

    crypto-history

    If you are looking for some biblical times history, look into "Apocrypha". These were books written at the same time as the ones in the common bible, but weren't accepted as mainstream to the people who put together the cannon we have today because of the viewpoints of the authors.

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