This thesis explores the question of history’s future as a research discipline in the academy and the question of the discipline’s function in ‘pure’ inquiry. Central to the notion of research is the notion of discovery of new knowledge, but what constitutes new historical knowledge rather than simply more historical information is not clear. As the idea of research (which is understood to mean the discovery and creation of new knowledge) is central to the idea of the modern university, the future of history as a research discipline in the research university would seem to depend on the discipline being clear on its research function. Further complicating resolution of this question is the fact that the funding of research is informed by science and technology paradigms where research is defined as ‘pure basic research’, ‘strategic basic research’, ‘applied research’, and ‘experimental development’. / Curiously, what these classifications mean for the humanities generally and history in particular, remains unexamined—despite the fact that professional survival depends on the academic convincing sceptical funders of the relevance of humanist research. Do historians do basic research? If basic research is inquiry at the edge of understanding, how, and by whom, is the edge defined? In the first decades of the University of Berlin—the institution that formed the model for the modern research-university—the edge was defined through philosophy and history. Hegelian systematic philosophy, Fichtean philosophy of the subject, and the philosophical historicism of such thinkers as Ranke, Niebuhr, Ast and Boeckh was concerned with the subject’s knowledge of knowledge: there lay the edge. By the end of the nineteenth century no discipline was foundational. Epistemological ‘advance’ had resulted in not only the split of knowledge into that derived from humanities or ‘spirit’ studies (Geisteswissenschaften) and that from science studies (Naturwissenschaften), but also the proliferation of disciplinary specialization that further entrenched the dichotomy. / In the twenty-first century, inquiry’s edge has moved on. Climate change, environmental degradation and biological and genetic engineering have posed wholly new existential questions. The Archimedean point from where the edge is viewed is no longer anthropocentric. Society and nature are inextricably connected. The physical and the spiritual can no longer be considered separately. When ‘we’ can either be manufactured or artificially enhanced the notion of autonomy and self-fashioning takes on a different hue in postmodernity than in modernity. There is now an increasing but unsatisfied need for more interdisciplinary and holistic knowledge. Unfortunately, no effective models or processes exist to enable this need to be met. This thesis explores ways in which the deficiencies might be overcome and explores academic history’s possible location within a future integrated-knowledge schema.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/245584 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Sulman, R. A. |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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