Information Systems History: What is History? What is is History? What is History? … and Why Even Bother with History?

Abstract

Prologue and preamble The views of Collingwood can be summarized as follows. The philosophy of history is concerned neither with ‘the past by itself’ nor with ‘the historian's thought about it by itself’, but with ‘the two things in their mutual relations’. (This dictum reflects the two current meanings of the word ‘history’ – the inquiry conducted by the historian and the series of past events into which he inquires.) Carr (1961: 1l)