critical thinking consortium continuity and change

Historical Significance

Cause & consequence, continuity & change, historical perspective.

The past consists of everything that ever happened to everyone everywhere, but you cannot remember or learn it all. Critical Thinking Consortium

This way of thinking focuses on impact. You’ll look at historical events, trends, persons, or issues to explain why people today still care about them.

What was significant?

The study of history depends on deciding which events and people from the past we should remember. In other words, which events and people have historical significance?

What will be remembered?

• how notable / memorable / attention-getting was it at the time?
• how widespread and enduring was the impact?
• how many people were affected? for how long?

Nothing happens in isolation. One thing inevitably leads to another. Critical Thinking Consortium

This way of thinking focuses on cause and effect. You'll ask questions and find evidence to explain how certain conditions and actions led to other events in history.

What conditions and actions led to this? What happened in consequence? How? Why? What next? These are questions that help us understand causes and consequences.

To answer those questions you need to look at the conditions and the context, as well as the actions and reactions of people around an event.

Causes can be complex or many-layered. Consequences are the ripple effects that follow which, in turn, may become the causes of new events.

The factors you study and the perspective you take will also affect how you see causes and consequences.

Continuity gives us roots; change gives us branches. P.R. Kezer

This way of thinking focuses on what has changed and what has remained the same over a time period. It can be applied to an issue, theme, or group.

What changed and what stayed the same over the time period?

At any point in time, some things are changing while others remain more or less the same.

Looking at history as a mixture of continuity and change gives a richer view of the ebb and flow and interconnections of events over time. It can help you find patterns and make comparisons between different points in time.

A good strategy to see these connections is to look for change where you may think there was none, and to look at what continued during times of great change.

The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there. L. P. Hartley

This way of thinking focuses on seeing the past from its own perspective. You gather evidence in order to develop a sense of what it was like to live in a particular place and time.

How did people at the time see the events, actions and people involved?

Judging history from today’s point of view and standards is tricky. Actions and customs that were the norm in the past (like slavery) may now seem unreasonable. But to apply our ‘modern’ standards to history can prevent us understanding the people and events of the past.

Instead, at times historians must put their own points of view on hold, and make an effort to understand what people thought and believed at the time.

This is called taking historical perspective. You use evidence from historical sources to make judgments about how people thought at the time.

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The Critical Thinking Consortium resources

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Ideas in time.

Chapter 8. Continuity and Change

Gadamer, collingwood, bakhtin, texte intégral.

1 Up to this point, the major portion of this project has been concerned with discontinuity in intellectual history. It is now time to turn to theories of continuity and gradual change. The models of continuity and change appraised in this chapter derive from a diversity of sources and disciplines, including philosophy, philosophy of science, anthropology, literary criticism, theories of technology, and various specialisations in history, such as art history. I am interested in how they conceptualise – within their various disciplines – change as a long, gradual process; and, indeed, whether they allow for any unchanging, trans-historical elements.

2 By considering a range of theoretical models, I hope to clarify distinctions sometimes obscured within the rubric ‘continuity and change’: the two terms, after all, mean quite different things. There are several degrees of difference within non-discontinuous theories of history: chronological frameworks, as Robert Bekhofer remarks, may privilege ‘small shifts, continuity as growth, or transformation’ (Berkhofer 1995: 272). While disentangling some of these strands of history, I investigate in this chapter the relevance of these models of continuity and change for intellectual history, and for the tracing of individual ideas through time.

3 Some of the theories considered here provide alternative viewpoints on subjects – including the history of science – already discussed. Some of the theorists under consideration have explicitly responded to the discontinuist perspective on intellectual and cultural history developed in the 1960s. Part of the motivation for this chapter, then, is an investigation of theoretical developments that have emerged since the 1970s, and which may be deemed an attempt to counter the emphasis on temporal discontinuity in intellectual and cultural history. My primary aim in this chapter, however, is to assess the various theoretical elaborations of the persistence or gradual modification of thought; my intention is to determine their significance for a refigured history of ideas.

4 While the twentieth century in the West was the age of Modernism and its ‘shock of the new’, it nevertheless produced thinkers attuned to the persistence of the past in the present. This notion was conceptualised in numerous ways: as an enframing tradition (Gadamer); as the survival of the past in historical thought (Collingwood); as the coexistence of past and present (Bergson). These three influential philosophers all emphasise continuity with the past. Instead of a conception of history defined by radical breaks and discontinuities, they propose – as Martin Jay has observed of Gadamer – ‘the possibility of fusing past and present’ (Jay 1982: 96).

5 In this chapter I deal with Gadamer and Collingwood; I mention Bergson only as his thought impinges on Collingwood’s notion of historical thinking. Although Bergson’s philosophy is not concerned specifically with intellectual history, its influence can be felt in much twentieth century musing on the endurance of the past in the present, in fields as diverse as philosophy (Collingwood), literature (Proust) and performance art. Bergson’s idea of ‘pure duration’ as an ‘intensive magnitude’ perceived by consciousness had a significant impact in particular on Modernist authors including Proust and Faulkner (Potts 2015: 33-37); its influence endures in contemporary performance works by Marina Abramovic and Mike Parr, works of extremely long duration which alter the audience’s experience of time (155-157). I briefly consider the representation of time or duration in contemporary art in the next chapter.

The Past in the Present: Gadamer and Tradition

1 The reference is to Said’s Beginnings: Intention and Method (Baltimore 1975) p. 324.

6 Edward Said has remarked that many structuralists and post-structuralists emphasise the ‘characteristic violent gesture of découpage or rupture’ (cited by Jay 1982: 96); 1 by stark contrast, Gadamer argues not for ruptures or breaks but for an enfolding continuous process, by which the past lives in and informs the present. As one would expect, the metaphors used to convey this sense of continuity diverge from the vocabulary employed by the 1960s discontinuists discussed in Chapter Six. Frank Lentricchia notes that Gadamer uses metaphors of ‘a hugely inclusive totality, of a never-ending river’, in order to suggest ‘the reciprocal involvement of past and present.’ (Lentricchia 1980: 150)

7 Gadamer delineated his theory of ‘historical thinking’ in Truth and Method , published in 1960. Acknowledging his debt to Heidegger, who forged the notion of the ‘fore-structure of understanding’, Gadamer goes much further than his mentor in developing a hermeneutics that ‘can do justice to the historicality of understanding.’ (Gadamer 1984: 235) Central to this aspect of Gadamer’s philosophy is his notion of tradition. Gadamer credits the thought of the Romantic period for its ‘correction of the enlightenment’, in positing a tradition that ‘has power over our attitudes and behaviour’ (249). Tradition has an authority that is not justified by ‘the arguments of reason’, as the ‘abstract’ Enlightenment would demand; nevertheless Gadamer follows the Romantics in defending tradition as the factor that ‘in large measure determines our institutions and our attitudes’ (249). For Gadamer, tradition is not a constricting force, nor is it a dead weight or ‘inertia’. It is, he declares, ‘preservation, such as is active in all historical change.’ (250) It needs to be ‘affirmed, embraced, cultivated.’ (250)

8 This affirming act of preservation transcends even revolutionary change, because in such cases ‘far more of the old is preserved in the supposed transformation of everything than anyone knows’ (250). This idea of preservation across supposed discontinuities is similar to the ‘preservation of a heritage’ in the wake of a scientific revolution argued by Canguilhem, and – to a lesser extent – Bachelard, in the philosophy of science. For Gadamer, preservation is the process that ensures the continuity of tradition. He asserts – contrary to the bias of Enlightenment and revolutionary thought – that preservation is ‘as much a freely-chosen action as revolution and renewal.’ (250) Through this act of preservation across even the most severe of disruptions, the old ‘combines with the new to create a new value.’ (250)

9 Gadamer insists that tradition should be given ‘its full value’ in the hermeneutics of the human sciences. Rather than objectifying the past and separating ourselves from ‘what has been transmitted’, we should recognise that tradition ‘is always part of us’ (250). Such a perspective opens us to the continuity of thought contained within tradition. Gadamer points to the fact that ‘the great achievements in the human sciences hardly ever grow old’ (252): we continue to read and admire the classic works of philosophy, history and literature. We are linked to the past by the medium of classic texts that mirror ‘the present in the past and the past in the present’ (Gadamer 1976: 6, cited by How 1995: 51). Our ‘historical consciousness’ is always ‘filled with a variety of voices in which the echo of the past is heard.’ (Gadamer 1984: 252)

10 Gadamer forestalls, as do Bachelard and Canguilhem, the teleological imperative in historical analysis. Just as Canguilhem conceptualises the history of science as a continuously developing process, with no endpoint in ‘the immutable adequacy of the present’ (Gutting 1989: 40), so Gadamer emphasises the ‘historical movement’ within which any analysis must occur. We share and have a part in ‘a living, ongoing tradition’ (How 1995: 51). Our historical research is itself ‘the transmission of tradition.’ Yet any such research is ‘based on the historical movement in which life itself stands’ and therefore ‘cannot be understood teleologically in terms of the object into which it is enquiring.’ (253) There is no ‘perfect knowledge of history’: no aspect of the past can be known in positivist terms. Equally, there can be no position in the present from which a full or objective understanding of the past is possible. This is because our very act of interpretation becomes part of the tradition, which then moves forward, having been subtly altered by its engagement with the present. Alan How comments that for Gadamer, tradition is ‘changed and sustained through the ongoing circular process of interpretation and reinterpretation.’ (How 1995: 50)

11 In Gadamer’s terms, ‘effective-history’ as a form of understanding entails a conversation with the past. In this conversation, we must expose the prejudices conditioning our interpretation; Gadamer gives the name ‘horizon’ to the limitations on understanding implicit in any finite present. The hermeneutical method involves the attempt to find the ‘right horizon of enquiry’ for the ‘encounter with tradition’ (269). Gadamer’s ‘effective historical consciousness’ requires that the right questions be asked in this encounter with tradition. The perpetual process of conversation means that horizons continually alter. Thus, the horizon of the past, out of which all human life lives and which exists in the form of tradition, is always in motion. (271)

12 Tradition for Gadamer ‘embraces everything contained in historical consciousness’ (271); this includes the horizon of the present, which perpetually ‘recombines’ with ‘continuing tradition’ (273).

13 The eminent twentieth-century composer Igor Stravinsky spoke publicly of the power of tradition in his Harvard lectures of 1939. Stravinsky’s remarks echoed Bergson’s philosophy of duration, in which the past ‘gnaws into the future’; they also prefigured the role of tradition in Gadamer’s philosophy: Real tradition is not the relic of a past that is irretrievably gone. It is a living force that animates and informs the present. (Stravinsky 1970: 57)

14 Respect for tradition may seem a surprising attitude for the Modernist composer of The Rite of Spring , whose radical approach to rhythm shocked audiences in 1913. Yet even in that revolutionary work, Stravinsky drew on the force of folk music, while his later Neo-Classical works resulted from Stravinsky’s ‘gleeful examination of the past for models of form and gesture which might be used in original music.’ (Griffiths 1978: 69-70). For Stravinsky, tradition remained a ‘living force’ in the present.

15 Gadamer’s philosophy has sustained numerous criticisms; most pertinent here are those criticisms directed at his concept of tradition. Lentricchia remarks that the linking in Gadamer’s theory of the terms ‘authority’ and ‘tradition’ constitutes ‘its ultimate (and somewhat frightening) weakness.’ (Lentricchia 1980: 152) For many commentators, Gadamer’s uncritical appreciation of tradition is untenable, particularly in the context of critical theory’s focus on the power relations embedded in institutions, discourse and knowledge. As a result, Gadamer’s hermeneutics has been accused of an intrinsic political conservatism. For Paul Ricoeur, Gadamer perpetuated a ‘hermeneutics of faith, or the recovery of tradition’ whereas the more critical approach of Jurgen Habermas represented a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ (cited in How 1995: 17).

16 How’s account of the Habermas-Gadamer debate focuses on the disputed status of tradition. From Habermas’ perspective, Gadamer’s hermeneutics, ‘in its willingness to assert the ultimate validity of tradition’, does not recognise that tradition is also ‘the site for social domination.’ (How 1995: 142) Furthermore, Habermas claims that Gadamer underestimates ‘the profound impact’ of science and its related modes of thought in ‘breaking up the continuity of tradition.’ (140) Habermas’ promulgation of Enlightenment values – as the ‘incomplete project’ of Modernity – here clashes with Gadamer’s post-Enlightenment re-valuation of tradition. Whereas Gadamer finds the ongoing conversation with tradition a nurturing experience, Habermas associates tradition, in part, with the ‘repressive and superstitious’ beliefs opposed by Enlightenment self-determination (How 1995: 144). Reflection challenges tradition in that it ‘breaks dogmatic forces’ linking authority and knowledge (Habermas 1988: 170 cited in How 1995: 144).

17 Gadamer responds by criticising Habermas’ dichotomy of Enlightenment reason versus tradition. For Gadamer, the over-valuation of the power of reflection easily slips into a scientistic world-view, in which reason has an independent force that proceeds to objectify and dominate the world. Gadamer resists the reason/tradition antithesis by emphasising an ambivalent relationship between tradition and authority. He argues that tradition is continually explored, so that on reflection, individuals may accept its authority, or they may not (How 1995: 171-173). Indeed, Gadamer had been explicit on this point in Truth and Method . Authority, he states, ‘has nothing to do with obedience, but rather with knowledge.’ (Gadamer 1984: 248)

18 The Habermas-Gadamer debate need not concern us further. Its merit lies in its questioning of the political significance of theories elevating the role of tradition. It is more important here to ascertain the relevance of theories such as Gadamer’s for intellectual history. It can readily be accepted that Gadamer’s model of change is one of continuity through growth; yet apart from references to classic texts, his philosophy of history is general and lacking in detail. However, he makes an explicit connection with the earlier philosophy of history of R.G. Collingwood. In attempting to formulate ‘the logic of question and answer’ within the structure of conversation, he turns to Collingwood as ‘ [a] lmost the only person I find a link with’ (Gadamer 1984: 333).

Collingwood’s ‘Idea of History’

• 2 Gadamer notes that Croce (a significant influence on Collingwood) had already understood ‘every def (...)

19 Collingwood’s philosophy of history is intriguing in its ramifications for intellectual history, in that it subsumes past experience into past thought. In effect, the past becomes intellectual history. Collingwood, who regarded his life’s work as an attempted ‘rapprochement between philosophy and history’ (Collingwood 1970: 77), sought to establish the means by which historians could understand the thought of the past. Opposing the ‘realist’ notion of universality in behaviours and attitudes, he proposed that a logic of question and answer should be applied to texts of the past. 2 By this he meant that ‘any one can understand any philosophy’s doctrines if he can grasp the questions which they are intended to answer.’ (1970: 55)

20 To think historically about philosophies means ‘getting inside other people’s heads’, to determine whether the way they tackled problems was the right way, given the conditions of the time (58). And for Collingwood, the concepts and problems of one period will of necessity be different to those of another. Thus political philosophy is not the study of succeeding philosophers asking themselves the same sets of questions, with different answers as the result. Plato and Hobbes both theorised the ‘state’ – but their works do not represent ‘two different theories of the same thing’, since Plato’s state is the Greek polis , while Hobbes’ is ‘the absolutist state of the seventeenth century.’ (61)

21 In the context of the aims of my project, Collingwood’s philosophy of history represents an ambitious synthesis of continuity and discontinuity in intellectual history. As the above remarks make clear, Collingwood recognised discontinuities in the history of thought. For him there was no unchanging essence in Western philosophy; the thought of one period was marked by its difference from other periods. Yet the distance between Plato and Hobbes was for Collingwood not an unbridgeable chasm: their ‘essentially different’ ideals of the State were nevertheless ‘related by a traceable historical process, whereby one has turned into the other’ (62). Collingwood maintained a continuist overview of intellectual history: for him ‘our philosophical tradition goes back in a continuous line to sixth century Greece’ (1946: 4). Given such a perspective, difference is assimilated into a continuous and dynamic line of thought. Hence the history of political theory is for Collingwood

not the history of different answers to one and the same question, but the history of a problem more or less constantly changing, whose solution was changing with it. (1970: 62)

22 In his book The Idea of History (1946), Collingwood elaborated his concept of ‘historical thinking’. He assimilated Benedetto Croce’s entreaty that past events should ‘vibrate in the historian’s mind’ (1946: 202) into his own philosophy of history. In opposition to the empiricist dependence on documents and authorities that he derided as ‘scissors and paste’ historiography, Collingwood elaborated his theory of history as an intellectual ‘re-enactment’. The historian is urged to engage his/her own thought with the thought of the past: ‘The history of thought, and therefore all history, is the re-enactment of past thought in the historian’s own mind.’ (215)

23 Collingwood’s philosophy of history calls for historical interpretation to be grounded in as thorough a knowledge of the intellectual climate of specific periods as possible. The historian’s re-thinking of past thought must be informed by a knowledge of that thought’s context. In approaching a previous thinker’s writings, ‘we must come to the reading of them prepared with an experience sufficiently like his own to make those thoughts organic to it.’ (300) The historian’s project, as advocated by Collingwood, is thus

not a passive surrender to the spell of another’s mind; it is a labour of active and therefore critical thinking. The historian not only re-enacts past thought, he re-enacts it, criticises it, forms his own judgement of its value, corrects whatever errors he can discern in it. (215)

24 This critical assessment is only possible if the historian is equipped with a working knowledge of the intellectual and cultural context in which the previous thought was expressed.

25 Collingwood’s notion of the historian’s conversation with the past through the logic of question and answer – incorporated later by Gadamer’s hermeneutics – was itself partly inspired by the philosophy of Bergson. Collingwood was attracted by Bergson’s conception of mental life as a succession of mental states, in which ‘one does not cease to exist when the next begins’ (Collingwood 1946: 187). Rather, succeeding states

interpenetrate one another, the past living on in the present, fused with it, and present in the sense that it confers upon it a peculiar quality derived from the fact of the fusion. (187)

26 Collingwood applied this Bergsonian concept to the study of history. For him, the historical process is itself ‘a process of thought’ (226), in which the past, ‘so far as it is historically known, survives in the present.’ (225) Greek mathematics, as an example, is the foundation of our mathematics: it is ‘the living past of our own mathematical inquiries’ (225-226). Yet the process of thought is dynamic: it is a form of continuity through growth, continually assimilating the thought of the past. Hence the historical past is

a living past, kept alive by the act of historical thinking itself, the historical change from one way of thinking to another is not the death of the first, but its survival integrated in a new context involving the development and criticism of its own ideas. (226)

27 In this process, previous systems of thought represent not ‘a dead past’, but a heritage available to be developed for our own ‘advancement’ (230). Accordingly, Collingwood’s interpretation of the history of science is continuist, even concerning the Einsteinian physics celebrated as a radical disjuncture by Bachelard, Kuhn and others. For Collingwood, Newton stands for a theory ‘reigning during a certain period of scientific thought’ (334). Einstein must know that theory to ‘make an advance upon it’. Newton

thus lives in Einstein in the way in which any past experience lives in the mind of the historian… but re-enacted here and now together with a development of itself that is partly constructive or positive and partly critical or negative. (334)

28 For Collingwood, apparent discontinuities are absorbed into a grand intellectual continuity of growth and perpetual modification. This process occurs at the level of thought, in which the past is integrated into the present in the continuous act of ‘historical thinking’.

29 Collingwood’s ‘empathetic’ conception of historiography has been criticised for its vagueness, and for its implication of ‘a kind of magical clairvoyance’ necessary for a re-living of previous thought (Burns and Rayment-Pickard 2000: 21). Gadamer was critical of Collingwood for elevating the intentions of a past author over the historical text, and for dallying with a ‘mere reconstruction’ of past thought rather than a ‘fusion of horizons’ (Gadamer 1984: 337). Yet Collingwood’s ‘idea of history’ – or rather divergent interpretations of it – has been influential in historiography and in intellectual history. Despite his criticisms, Gadamer recognised Collingwood’s logic of question and answer – ‘the nerve of all historical knowledge for Collingwood’ (Gadamer 1984: 334) – as ‘an axiom of all hermeneutics’ (334). Historical inquiry must discover the question if it is to understand the answer. This conception has also been applied productively in the domain of the history of ideas.

Bakhtin’s ‘Dialogism’

30 There is an element of controversy, and not a little mystery, surrounding the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin. His prolific output in the 1920s and 1930s – when he wrote significant works of literary criticism, studies of Marx and Freud, and a major work on the philosophy of language – fell victim to the turbulence engulfing Russia in those decades. Very little of this output was published under his name; controversy remains concerning the authorship of works published during this period. As a result of this confusion, commentators often refer to ‘Bakhtin and colleagues’ or the ‘Bakhtin circle’ or ‘group’, which included the linguist V.N. Voloshinov and the literary critic P.N. Medvedev. The members of this group shared a wide range of knowledges and interests; they valued debate and diversity; they probably collaborated and used each other’s names for publication. Much of their work was suppressed by Soviet authorities; many of Bakhtin’s major works were not published until the 1960s. Translations of these works appeared in the West in the ensuing decades, where they influenced a diverse field of literary, cultural and linguistic theory. Michael Holquist has championed Bakhtin as ‘one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century’ (Holquist 1981: xv); Michael Green likewise considers Bakhtin’s works ‘highly influential’ in the West, pointing to their contribution to theories of language and culture emphasising intertextuality and ‘heteroglossia’ (Green 1997: 43).

31 Although Bakhtin is known in the West primarily as a literary theorist, as the author of influential works on Dostoevsky, Rabelais and the novel, he himself characterised his wide-ranging pursuits as a form of ‘philosophical anthropology’ (Clark and Holquist 1984: 3). His theory of the novel as a ‘dialogized system’ (Bakhtin 1981: 49) is founded on his philosophy of language, which emphasises polyphony and the ‘plenitude of differences’ within language and communication (Clark and Holquist: 1). The significance of Bakhtin’s work for my project resides in a number of factors. One is his emphasis on the ‘social qualities’ of language, thought and ideologies (Green 1997: 42). For Bakhtin, utterance takes place in a continuous process rooted in the social. Meaning is forged in this social process, which includes not only the acts of dialogue within communication, but also the ‘contextual layers’ (Clark and Holquist: 13) enfolding all forms of discourse within any cultural system.

32 Bakhtin’s particular perspective on the ‘worldliness’ of language may be summarised by the word ‘heteroglossia’, which characterises the world as ‘made up of a roiling mass of languages’ (Holquist 1990: 69). This trope incorporates other important terms in Bakhtin’s corpus, such as ‘polyphony’ and ‘carnivalisation’; it emphasises the ‘immense plurality of experience’ which for Bakhtin contextualises all forms of communication (Holquist 1981: xix-xx). Bakhtin was drawn to the novel as a literary form because of its polyglot nature: novelistic discourse assimilates the great diversity of discourses circulating within a particular culture:

To a greater or lesser extent, every novel is a dialogized system made up of the images of ‘languages’, styles and consciousnesses that are concrete and inseparable from language. (Bakhtin 1981: 49)

33 Dialogism in the novel ensues when a particular discourse is brought into the text, in the forms of parody, ironic or comic deployment, ‘refracted discourse’ in the voice of narrator or characters, or wholesale incorporation. This appropriated discourse, which serves to ‘express authorial intentions but in a refracted way’ (324), enters into a form of dialogue with the authorial voice: These two voices are dialogically interrelated, they – as it were – know about each other… it is as if they actually hold a conversation with each other. (Bakhtin 1981: 324)

34 For Bakhtin, all communication is dialogic in nature; the principle of ‘dialogism’ animates all of his concerns. Bakhtin’s dialogic conception of language, thought and communication contains both synchronic and diachronic dimensions. On the one hand, he asserts that ‘individual languages, their roles and their actual historical meaning are fully disclosed only within the totality of an era’s heteroglossia’ (1981: 412). On the other hand, each language extends beyond its era, entering into dialogue with those discourses of another time. Bakhtin gives the name ‘re-accentuation’ to this process, in which a language is ‘creatively transformed’ in different historical periods. In the context of the novel,

great novelistic images continue to grow and develop even after the moment of their creation; they are capable of being creatively transformed in different eras, far distant from the day and hour of their original birth. (1981: 422)

35 This historical principle applies to Bakhtin’s general theory of language and communication. In his commentary on Bakhtin, Tzvetan Todorov identifies the historical dimension within dialogism: all discourse is in dialogue with prior discourses on the same subject, as well as discourses yet to come, whose reactions it foresees and anticipates. (Todorov 1984: x)

36 Dialogism proposes a temporal ‘open-endedness’, an ongoing historical sequence that ‘has no necessary telos built into it.’ (Holquist 1990: 75) Bakhtin’s most eloquent statement on the persistence and shaping power of past discourses was made in the last words he wrote, a fragment from 1974:

3 This fragment, here translated by Clark and Holquist, was published in Moscow in 1979, after earlie (...) The contexts of dialogue are without limit. They extend into the deepest past and the most remote future. Even meanings born in dialogues of the remotest past will never be finally grasped once and for all, for they will always be renewed in later dialogue. At any present moment of the dialogue there are great masses of forgotten meanings, but these will be recalled again at a given moment in the dialogue’s later course when it will be given new life. For nothing is absolutely dead: every meaning will someday have its homecoming festival. (quoted in Clark and Holquist 1984: 349-350) 3

37 Bakhtin’s ideas are among the most subtle and illuminating in all of cultural and social theory, fusing historical, cultural and linguistic horizons of explanation. His work insists that the language of the present represents accretions and transformations of previous discourses and practices, so that they exist within a single cultural sphere. Bakhtin’s idea of language differs from those articulated earlier in this book by Braudel and Wittgenstein, in that he proposes more than the simple endurance of previous thought within the system of language. Past discourses are ‘re-accentuated’ in the present; they are ‘creatively transformed’; earlier meanings are ‘recuperated’ in a new context. Bakhtin’s value to intellectual history derives from his sophisticated model of continuity and change within the history of discourse. Bakhtin allows for both continuity, as the languages and thought of the past inhere in the present, and change, as meanings are ‘creatively transformed’.

38 Bakhtin’s ability to balance continuity with change within a theoretical framework is related to his central principle of dialogism. Clark and Holquist declare that Bakhtin eschews all forms of binary opposition, preferring ‘dialogic or relational thinking’ (1984: 7). Instead of the ‘dialectical either/or’, Bakhtin proposes the ‘dialogic both /and’ (7). Todorov concurs on this point, noting Bakhtin’s distaste for what he termed ‘Hegel’s monological dialectic’ (Todorov 1984: 104). The play of opposites was for Bakhtin an impoverished substitute for ‘the openness of dialogue’ (Clark and Holquist: 7); a ‘dialogics of culture’ is much more sensitive to the plurality of life and language than a ‘dialectics of nature’ (Todorov: 104). Within his dialogic model, Bakhtin found room for both the worldliness and the historicity of language. He also accommodated both continuity and change of meaning and thought. This ‘and/or’ approach is one of the most attractive aspects of Bakhtin’s method; it has influenced later work on intellectual and cultural history, as reflected in the next chapter; it has influenced my own approach in this book, which will return to a consideration of Bakhtin’s historical dialogism.

2 Gadamer notes that Croce (a significant influence on Collingwood) had already understood ‘every definition as an answer to a question and hence historical’, in Croce’s Logic as Science of the Pure Concept (Gadamer 1984: 527, n. 273).

3 This fragment, here translated by Clark and Holquist, was published in Moscow in 1979, after earlier partial publication in 1975 (Todorov 1984: 123). Todorov, who complains of the inaccuracies of the translations of Bakhtin in the West (1984: xii), renders the last sentence: ‘Nothing is absolutely dead: every meaning will celebrate its rebirth.’ (110)

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The longue durée in Intellectual History

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• Teacher's Material
• Colonial Despatches
• British Columbia History
• Canadian History
• British North American Colonial History
• Daily life in the Crown Colony of Vancouver Island around 1858
• Important events in the historical development of British Columbia
• Primary and secondary source analysis including visual sources
• Continuity and change in history

Author : Lindsay Gibson Editors : Roland Case, John Lutz and Jenny Clayton Historical Researcher : Jenny Clayton Developed by : The Critical Thinking Consortium (TC 2 ) www.tc2.ca

CURRICULUM CHALLENGES

• What Were the Real Reasons for Creating the Colony of British Columbia?
• Were the Douglas Treaties and the Numbered Treaties Fairly Negotiated?
• Did the Gold Rush Radically Change Daily Life in Victoria?
• Did Governor James Douglas Deserve to be Knighted?

Daily Life in Victoria before and after the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush

Introduction.

By 1857 the Hudson Bay Company could no longer hide the fact that it was purchasing gold from Nlaka'pamux people a few miles upstream from where the Fraser River joins the Thompson River (near present-day Lytton). This discovery sparked the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush (1858) which attracted tens of thousands of prospectors, outfitters, speculators and land agents from around the world, making it one of the largest migrations of mining populations in North American history. As many as 20,000 people arrived in Victoria, the capital of the British Crown Colony of Vancouver Island, which until this time had a population of 562 Europeans. Victoria became the place to obtain mining licenses, buy provisions and gather information before beginning the journey to the Fraser Canyon.

In this critical thinking lesson, students analyze various textual and visual sources to determine what aspects of daily life in Victoria were changed by the gold rush, and what aspects changed very little. Students learn to make observations and draw inferences from a visual and then a text source, and to identify change and continuity over the history of Colonial British Columbia. They examine various historical sources to draw conclusions about daily life in Victoria prior to the gold rush in 1858. They then examine a parallel set of textual and visual sources to learn about daily life in Victoria after the gold rush. Finally, students identify and rate the degree of continuity and change in daily life between the two time periods.

Suggested Activities

• > Introduction
• > Step 1: Introduce drawing inferences about daily life
• > Step 2: Set the historical context
• > Step 3: Introduce the tools for text analysis
• > Step 4: Analyze pre-gold rush images and texts
• > Step 5: Analyze post-gold rush images and texts
• > Step 6: Identify continuity and change in Colonial Victoria
• > Extension Activities
• > Support Materials
• Printer Friendly Version of Lesson Plan
• Teacher's Material |
• Colonial Despatches |

• Provincial Historical Thinking Projects
• Historical Thinking Concept Templates
• Blog Archive
• Demonstrations and Discussions
• Other Classroom Materials

In this volume, leading European and North American scholars and practitioners tackle one of the most important, yet most neglected, topics in the field - assessment. History educators at all levels will benefit from the wide range of practical, thought-provoking, and cutting-edge insights into "how we know" what students know and how they reason in history. More than a work only about assessment, this book maps out a landscape of competing ideas about it means to think historically.

For more information and to order, please download the flyer .

Seixas, Peter, and Tom Morton.  The Big Six Historical Thinking Concepts . Toronto: Nelson, 2012.

This beautiful and thought-provoking PD resource will help educators to better understand historical thinking and to integrate six historical thinking concepts into classrooms through model activities and teaching strategies.

Each chapter begins with a discussion of how a prominent Canadian author has engaged one of the six concepts while writing a work of history or historical fiction. The second half of each chapter provides practical teaching strategies for working with the concepts at different grade levels, and levels of sophistication. 

Table of Contents:

• Historical Significance
• Continuity and Change
• Cause and Consequence
• Historical Perspectives
• The Ethical Dimension

DVD-ROM includes:

• Modifiable Blackline Masters
• Graphics, photographs, and illustrations from the text
• Additional teaching support

Order information:  Nelson Education

Conçu de facture élégante pour inspirer la réflexion, le livre propose des modèles d’activités et des stratégies d’enseignement afin d’aider les enseignants à mieux comprendre la pensée historique et à intégrer les six concepts de la pensée historique dans leur enseignement.

Chacun des chapitres débute par un exposé sur la façon dont un auteur canadien de renom s’est inspiré d’un des six concepts lors de la rédaction d’une recherche ou d’une fiction historique. La seconde partie offre des stratégies pratiques d’enseignement pour utiliser les concepts, et ce, à divers niveaux d’enseignement et de complexité.

Table des matières :

• La pertinence historique

• La continuité et le changement

• Les causes et les conséquences
• La perspective historique
• La dimension éthique

Le DVD inclut :

• Des fiches reproductibles modifiables
• Des graphiques, des photographies et des illustrations en lien avec le texte
• Du soutien pédagogique additionnel

​Informations de commande: Modulo

A professional resource to help teach six interrelated concepts central to students' ability to think critically. Edited by Peter Seixas, Penney Clark. Jointly published by The Vancouver Foundation and The Critical Thinking Consortium. 

Order here: TC2

French version: Lévesque, Stéphane.  Enseigner la pensée historique .  Vancouver : TC2, 2013. Enseigner la pensée historique est axé sur six concepts interdépendants et essentiels à développer la capacité des élèves à réfléchir dans le domaine de l’histoire. La nature et l’importance de chaque concept ainsi que les problèmes associés à aider les élèves à les comprendre font l’objet de discussions. On suggère dans cette ressource comment présenter des concepts aux élèves et comment les intégrer au curriculum en histoire. Un échantillon élargi d’enseignement démontre comment ces concepts agissent dans l’apprentissage de la pensée critique en histoire. Le livre offre aussi des exemplaires de feuilles d’activités pour créer des leçons stimulantes en histoire. Pour commander : TC2

© Centre for the Study of Historical Consciousness

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Leading Companies Launch Consortium to Address AI's Impact on the Technology Workforce

The Consortium aims to provide actionable insights and identify new opportunities for reskilling and upskilling

News Summary:

• The AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium is led by Cisco and joined by Accenture, Eightfold, Google, IBM, Indeed, Intel, Microsoft and SAP. It will assess AI's impact on technology jobs and identify skills development pathways for the roles most likely to be affected by artificial intelligence.
• The formation of the Consortium is catalyzed by the work of the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council Talent for Growth Task Force, Cisco Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins’ participation in the Task Force, and input from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
• Advisors include the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, CHAIN5, Communications Workers of America, DIGITALEUROPE, the European Vocational Training Association, Khan Academy, and SMEUnited.

Leuven, Belgium, April 4, 2024 - Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) and a group of eight leading companies including Accenture, Eightfold, Google, IBM, Indeed, Intel, Microsoft and SAP as well as six advisors today announced the launch of the AI-Enabled Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Workforce Consortium focused on upskilling and reskilling roles most likely to be impacted by AI. The Consortium is catalyzed by the work of the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council’s (TTC) Talent for Growth Task Force, with the goal of exploring AI’s impact on ICT job roles, enabling workers to find and access relevant training programs, and connecting businesses to skilled and job-ready workers.

Working as a private sector collaborative, the Consortium is evaluating how AI is changing the jobs and skills workers need to be successful. The first phase of work will culminate in a report with actionable insights for business leaders and workers. Further details will be shared in the coming months. Findings will be intended to offer practical insights and recommendations to employers that seek ways to reskill and upskill their workers in preparation for AI-enabled environments.

Consortium members represent a cross section of companies innovating on the cutting edge of AI that also understand the current and impending impact of AI on the workforce. Individually, Consortium members have documented opportunities and challenges presented by AI. The collaborative effort enables their organizations to coalesce insights, recommend action plans, and activate findings within their respective broad spheres of influence.

The Consortium’s work is inspired by the TTC’s Talent for Growth Task Force and Cisco Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins’ leadership of its skills training workstream, and input from the U.S. Department of Commerce. The TTC was established in June 2021 by U.S. President Biden, European Commission President von der Leyen, and European Council President Michel to promote U.S. and EU competitiveness and prosperity through cooperation and democratic approaches to trade, technology, and security.

“At the U.S. Department of Commerce, we’re focused on fueling advanced technology and deepening trade and investment relationships with partners and allies around the world. This work is helping us build a strong and competitive economy, propelled by a talented workforce that’s enabling workers to get into the good quality, high-paying, family-sustaining jobs of the future. We recognize that economic security and national security are inextricably linked. That’s why I’m proud to see the efforts of the Talent for Growth Task Force continue with the creation of the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. “I am grateful to the consortium members for joining in this effort to confront the new workforce needs that are arising in the wake of AI’s rapid development. This work will help provide unprecedented insight on the specific skill needs for these jobs. I hope that this Consortium is just the beginning, and that the private sector sees this as a call to action to ensure our workforces can reap the benefits of AI.”

“AI is accelerating the pace of change for the global workforce, presenting a powerful opportunity for the private sector to help upskill and reskill workers for the future,” said Francine Katsoudas, Executive Vice President and Chief People, Policy & Purpose Officer, Cisco. “The mission of our newly unveiled AI-Enabled Workforce Consortium is to provide organizations with knowledge about the impact of AI on the workforce and equip workers with relevant skills. We look forward to engaging other stakeholders—including governments, NGOs, and the academic community—as we take this important first step toward ensuring that the AI revolution leaves no one behind.”

The AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium’s efforts address a business critical and growing need for a proficient workforce that is trained in various aspects of AI, including the skills to implement AI applications across business processes. The Consortium will leverage its members and advisors to recommend and amplify reskilling and upskilling training programs that are inclusive and can benefit multiple stakeholders – students, career changers, current IT workers, employers, and educators – in order to skill workers at scale to engage in the AI era.

In its first phase of work, the Consortium will evaluate the impact of AI on 56 ICT job roles and provide training recommendations for impacted jobs. These job roles include 80% of the top 45 ICT job titles garnering the highest volume of job postings for the period February 2023-2024 in the United States and five of the largest European countries by ICT workforce numbers (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands) according to Indeed Hiring Lab. Collectively, these countries account for a significant segment of the ICT sector, with a combined total of 10 million ICT workers.

Consortium members universally recognize the urgency and importance of their combined efforts with the acceleration of AI in all facets of business and the need to build an inclusive workforce with family-sustaining opportunities. Consortium members commit to developing worker pathways particularly in job sectors that will increasingly integrate artificial intelligence technology. To that end, Consortium members have established forward thinking goals with skills development and training programs to positively impact over 95 million individuals around the world over the next 10 years.

Consortium member goals include:

• Cisco to train 25 million people with cybersecurity and digital skills by 2032.
• IBM to skill 30 million individuals by 2030 in digital skills, including 2 million in AI.
• Intel to empower more than 30 million people with AI skills for current and future jobs by 2030.
• Microsoft to train and certify 10 million people from underserved communities with in-demand digital skills for jobs and livelihood opportunities in the digital economy by 2025.
• SAP to upskill two million people worldwide by 2025.
• Google has recently announced EUR 25 million in funding to support AI training and skills for people across Europe.

“Helping organizations identify skills gaps and train people at speed and scale is a major priority for Accenture, and this consortium brings together an impressive ecosystem of industry partners committed to growing leading-edge technology, data and AI skills within our communities. Reskilling people to work with AI is paramount in every industry. Organizations that invest as much in learning as they do in the technology not only create career pathways, they are well positioned to lead in the market.” - Ellyn Shook, Chief Leadership & Human Resources Officer, Accenture

“The dynamics of work and the very essence of work are evolving at an unprecedented pace. Eightfold examines the most sought-after job roles, delving into the needs for reskilling and upskilling. Through its Talent Intelligence Platform, it empowers business leaders to adapt swiftly to the changing business environment. We take pride in contributing to the creation of a knowledgeable and responsible resource that assists organizations in preparing for the future of work.” - Ashutosh Garg, CEO and Co-Founder, Eightfold AI

“Google believes the opportunities created by technology should truly be available to everyone. We’re proud to join the AI-Enabled Workforce Consortium, which will advance our work to make AI skills training universally accessible. We’re committed to collaborating across sectors to ensure workers of all backgrounds can use AI effectively and develop the skills needed to prepare for future-focused jobs, qualify for new opportunities, and thrive in the economy.” - Lisa Gevelber, Founder, Grow with Google

“IBM is proud to join this timely business-led initiative, which brings together our shared expertise and resources to prepare the workforce for the AI era. Our collective responsibility as industry leaders is to develop trustworthy technologies and help provide workers—from all backgrounds and experience levels—access to opportunities to reskill and upskill as AI adoption changes ways of working and creates new jobs.” - Gian Luigi Cattaneo, Vice President, Human Resources, IBM EMEA

“Indeed’s mission is to help people get jobs. Our research shows that virtually every job posted on Indeed today, from truck driver to physician to software engineer, will face some level of exposure to GenAI-driven change. We look forward to contributing to the Workforce Consortium’s important work. The companies who empower their employees to learn new skills and gain on-the-job experience with evolving AI tools will deepen their bench of experts, boost retention and expand their pool of qualified candidates.” - Hannah Calhoon, Head of AI Innovation at Indeed

“At Intel, our purpose is to create world-changing technology that improves the lives of every person on the planet, and we believe bringing AI everywhere is key for businesses and society to flourish. To do so, we must provide access to AI skills for everyone. Intel is committed to expanding digital readiness by collaborating with 30 countries, empowering 30,000 institutions, and training 30 million people for current and future jobs by 2030. Working alongside industry leaders as part of this AI-enabled ICT workforce consortium will help upskill and reskill the workforce for the digital economy ahead.” – Christy Pambianchi, Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer at Intel Corporation

“As a global leader in AI innovation, Microsoft is proud to join the ICT Workforce Consortium and continue our efforts to shape an inclusive and equitable technology future for all. As a member of the consortium, we will work with industry leaders to share best practices, create accessible learning opportunities, and collaborate with stakeholders to ensure that workers are equipped with the technology skills of tomorrow,” - Amy Pannoni, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, HR Legal at Microsoft

“SAP is proud to join this effort to help prepare our workforce for the jobs of the future and ensure AI is relevant, reliable, and responsible across businesses and roles. As we navigate the complexities of our ever-evolving world, AI has the potential to reshape industries, revolutionize problem-solving, and unlock unprecedented levels of human potential, enabling us to create a more intelligent, efficient, and inclusive workforce. Over the years, SAP has supported many skills building programs, and we look forward to driving additional learning opportunities, innovation, and positive change as part of the consortium.”  - Nicole Helmer, Vice President & Global Head of Development Learning at SAP

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide technology leader that securely connects everything to make anything possible. Our purpose is to power an inclusive future for all by helping our customers reimagine their applications, power hybrid work, secure their enterprise, transform their infrastructure, and meet their sustainability goals. Discover more on The Newsroom and follow us on X at @Cisco .

Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco's trademarks can be found at www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company.

Executive Vice President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Competition Margaret Vestager and US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo join Consortium members in Belgium

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