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Linear View of History

The document discusses two views of history: 1) The linear view, which sees history as progressive and moving forward rather than cyclical. Figures like Augustine, Voltaire, and Marxists viewed history linearly, though in different contexts. H.G. Wells saw it as a race between education and disaster. 2) The great God view, which was one of the earliest attempts to explain the origins of the world through creation myths found in preliterate societies. This view saw the wills and plans of gods as the ultimate causes of historical events, as elaborated by ancient societies like the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Egyptians.

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744 views

Linear View of History

The document discusses two views of history: 1) The linear view, which sees history as progressive and moving forward rather than cyclical. Figures like Augustine, Voltaire, and Marxists viewed history linearly, though in different contexts. H.G. Wells saw it as a race between education and disaster. 2) The great God view, which was one of the earliest attempts to explain the origins of the world through creation myths found in preliterate societies. This view saw the wills and plans of gods as the ultimate causes of historical events, as elaborated by ancient societies like the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Egyptians.

Uploaded by

maryani
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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a.

Linear View of History


The linear view of history implies the acceptance or subscription to linear
time. It views that history is progressive, moving forward and not having a cyclical
return.
Augustine (350-430 BCE) saw history as being the unfolding of the plan of
God, a process that would end in the Final Judgement.
Voltaire (1694-1788) saw history as being linear, but in a more secular way.
He envisioned four great ages of man culminating in the scientific enlightenment of
Newton.
Marxist historians also subscribe to a linear view of history, in the sense that
they see history as a series of class struggles that inevitably ends in a workers'
revolution.
H.G. Wells (1866-1946) described history as a race between education and
disaster, either as world cataclysm or a world state.

b. The Great God View of History


The most primitive attempts to explain the origin and development of the
world and man are the creation myths to be found among preliterate peoples. We
are best acquainted with the one in Genesis which ascribes the making of heaven
and earth with all its features and creatures to a Lord God who worked on a six-day
schedule. These fanciful stories do not have any scientific validity.
Just as the royal despots dominated the city states and their empires, so the
will, passions, plans and needs of the gods were the ultimate causes of events.
The king is the agent who maintains the world in being by means of an annual
contest with the powers of chaos. This theological theory was elaborated by the
Sumerians, Babylonians and Egyptians before it came down to the Greeks and
Romans. It was expounded in the Israelite scriptures whence it was taken over and
reshaped by the Christian and Mohammedan religions and their states. (Novack,
n.d.)

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