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Historian's Fallacy
The historian's fallacy is an informal fallacy that occurs when one assumes that decision makers of the past viewed events from the same perspective and having the same information as those subsequently analyzing the decision. It is not to be confused with presentism, a similar but distinct mode of historical analysis in which present-day ideas (such as moral standards) are projected into the past. The idea was first articulated by British literary critic Matthew Arnold in 1880 and later named and defined by American historian David Hackett Fischer in 1970. Concept The idea that a critic can make erroneous interpretations of past works because of knowledge of subsequent events was first articulated by Matthew Arnold. In his 1880 essay ''The Study of Poetry,'' he wrote: The course of development of a nation’s language, thought, and poetry, is profoundly interesting; and by regarding a poet’s work as a stage in this course of development we may easily bring ourselves to make it ...
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Informal Fallacy
Informal fallacies are a type of incorrect argument in natural language. The source of the error is not just due to the ''form'' of the argument, as is the case for formal fallacies, but can also be due to their ''content'' and ''context''. Fallacies, despite being incorrect, usually ''appear'' to be correct and thereby can seduce people into accepting and using them. These misleading appearances are often connected to various aspects of natural language, such as ambiguous or vague expressions, or the assumption of implicit premises instead of making them explicit. Traditionally, a great number of informal fallacies have been identified, including the fallacy of equivocation, the fallacy of amphiboly, the Fallacy of composition, fallacies of composition and Fallacy of division, division, the false dilemma, the fallacy of begging the question, the ad hominem fallacy and the appeal to ignorance. There is no general agreement as to how the various fallacies are to be grouped into cate ...
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Hindsight Bias
Hindsight bias, also known as the knew-it-all-along phenomenon or creeping determinism, is the common tendency for people to perceive past events as having been more predictable than they were. After an event has occurred, people often believe that they could have predicted or perhaps even known with a high degree of certainty what the outcome of the event would be before it occurred. Hindsight bias may cause distortions of memories of what was known or believed before an event occurred and is a significant source of overconfidence in one’s ability to predict the outcomes of future events. Examples of hindsight bias can be seen in the writings of historians describing the outcomes of battles, in physicians’ recall of clinical trials, and in criminal or civil trials as people tend to assign responsibility on the basis of the supposed predictability of accidents. In some countries, 20/20 indicates normal visual acuity at 20 feet, from which derives the idiom " hindsight is 20 ...
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Informal Fallacies
Informal fallacies are a type of incorrect argument in natural language. The source of the error is not just due to the ''form'' of the argument, as is the case for formal fallacies, but can also be due to their ''content'' and ''context''. Fallacies, despite being incorrect, usually ''appear'' to be correct and thereby can seduce people into accepting and using them. These misleading appearances are often connected to various aspects of natural language, such as ambiguous or vague expressions, or the assumption of implicit premises instead of making them explicit. Traditionally, a great number of informal fallacies have been identified, including the fallacy of equivocation, the fallacy of amphiboly, the fallacies of composition and division, the false dilemma, the fallacy of begging the question, the ad hominem fallacy and the appeal to ignorance. There is no general agreement as to how the various fallacies are to be grouped into categories. One approach sometimes found ...
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Harper Torchbooks
Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins, based in New York City. Founded in New York in 1817 by James Harper and his brother John, the company operated as J. & J. Harper until 1833, when it changed its name to Harper & Brothers, reflecting the inclusion of Joseph and Fletcher Harper. Harper began publishing ''Harper's Magazine'', ''Harper's Weekly'', and other periodicals beginning in the 1850s. From 1962 to 1990, the company was known as Harper & Row after its merger with Row, Peterson & Company. Harper & Row was purchased in 1987 by News Corporation and combined with William Collins, Sons, its United Kingdom counterpart, in 1990 to form HarperCollins, although the Harper name has been used in its place since 2007. History J. & J. Harper (1817–1833) James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishing business, J. & J. Harper, in New York City in 1817. Their two brothers, Joseph Wesle ...
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George Washington
George Washington (, 1799) was a Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. As commander of the Continental Army, Washington led Patriot (American Revolution), Patriot forces to victory in the American Revolutionary War against the British Empire. He is commonly known as the Father of the Nation for his role in bringing about American independence. Born in the Colony of Virginia, Washington became the commander of the Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War (1754–1763). He was later elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, and opposed the perceived oppression of the American colonists by the British Crown. When the American Revolutionary War against the British began in 1775, Washington was appointed Commanding General of the United States Army, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. He directed a poorly organized and equipped force against disciplined British troops. Wa ...
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Robert E
The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' () "fame, glory, honour, praise, renown, godlike" and ''berht'' "bright, light, shining"). It is the second most frequently used given name of ancient Germanic origin.Reaney & Wilson, 1997. ''Dictionary of English Surnames''. Oxford University Press. It is also in use as a surname. Another commonly used form of the name is Rupert. After becoming widely used in Continental Europe, the name entered England in its Old French form ''Robert'', where an Old English cognate form (''Hrēodbēorht'', ''Hrodberht'', ''Hrēodbēorð'', ''Hrœdbœrð'', ''Hrœdberð'', ''Hrōðberχtŕ'') had existed before the Norman Conquest. The feminine version is Roberta. The Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish form is Roberto. Robert is also a common name in many Germanic languages, including En ...
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Douglas Southall Freeman
Douglas Southall Freeman (May 16, 1886 – June 13, 1953) was an American historian, biographer, newspaper editor, radio commentator, and author. He is best known for his multi-volume biographies of Robert E. Lee and George Washington, for both of which he was awarded Pulitzer Prizes. Early life Douglas Southall Freeman was born May 16, 1886, in Lynchburg, Virginia, to Bettie Allen Hamner and Walker Burford Freeman, an insurance agent who had served four years in Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. From childhood, Freeman exhibited an interest in Southern history. In Lynchburg, his family lived at 416 Main Street, near the home of Confederate general Jubal Early. The family moved to the former Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, in 1892 at the height of the monument commemoration movement that memorialized Virginia's Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. In 1904, Freeman was awarded an A.B. from Richmond College, where he had been a ...
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Fog Of War
The fog of war is the uncertainty in situational awareness experienced by participants in military operations. The term seeks to capture the uncertainty regarding one's own capability, adversary capability, and adversary Intent (Military), intent during an engagement, operation, or campaign. Military forces try to reduce the fog of war through military intelligence and friendly force tracking systems. The term has become commonly used to define uncertainty mechanics in war gaming, wargames. Origin The word "fog" (), but not the exact phrase, in reference to 'uncertainty in war' was introduced by the Prussian military analyst Carl von Clausewitz in his posthumously published book, ''Vom Kriege'' (1832), the English translation of which was published as ''On War'' (1873): It has been pointed out that von Clausewitz does not use the exact phrase "fog of war", and also uses multiple similar metaphors, such as "twilight" and "moonlight", to describe a 'lack of clarity'. The fi ...
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Military History
Military history is the study of War, armed conflict in the Human history, history of humanity, and its impact on the societies, cultures and economies thereof, as well as the resulting changes to Politics, local and international relationships. Professional historians normally focus on military affairs that had a major impact on the societies involved as well as the aftermath of conflicts, while amateur historians and hobbyists often take a larger interest in the details of battles, equipment, and uniforms in use. The essential subjects of military history study are the causes of war, the social and cultural foundations, Doctrine#Military usage, military doctrine on each side, the logistics, leadership, technology, strategy, and military tactics, tactics used, and how these changed over time. On the other hand, just war theory explores the moral dimensions of warfare, and to better limit the destructive reality caused by war, seeks to establish a doctrine of military ethics. ...
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Roberta Wohlstetter
Roberta Morgan Wohlstetter (August 22, 1912 – January 6, 2007) was an American historian of U.S. military intelligence. In 1962 she authored ''Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision'The book was based on a several-year study of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and is still considered the foundational study of military surprises. The Presidential Medal of Freedom was awarded to her in 1985 by Ronald Reagan, President Ronald Reagan. Early life and education Wohlstetter was born Roberta Mary Morgan, in 1912 in Duluth, Minnesota. Her mother Elsie Morgan, and her father Edmund Morris Morgan, a professor at Harvard Law School helped simplify the federal rules of civil procedure and update the Uniform Code of Military Justice, U.S. code of military justice. Her brother, Edmund Morgan, was a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. Wohlstetter received her bachelor's degree from Vassar College, New York State in 1933. She earned two master's degrees from Columbia Universi ...
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Presentism (historical Analysis)
In literary and historical analysis, presentism is a term for the introduction of present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. Some modern historians seek to avoid presentism in their work because they consider it a form of cultural bias, and believe it creates a distorted understanding of their subject matter. The practice of presentism is regarded by some as a common fallacy when writing about the past. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' gives the first citation for ''presentism'' in its historiographic sense from 1916, and the word may have been used in this meaning as early as the 1870s. The historian David Hackett Fischer identifies presentism as a fallacy also known as the "fallacy of '' nunc pro tunc''" (lit. "now for then"). He has written that the "classic example" of presentism was the so-called "Whig history", in which certain 18th- and 19th-century British historians wrote history in a way that used the past to validate their own p ...
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Attack On Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Empire of Japan on the United States Pacific Fleet at Naval Station Pearl Harbor, its naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Territory of Hawaii, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. At the time, the U.S. was a Neutral powers during World War II, neutral country in World War II. The air raid on Pearl Harbor, which was launched from Aircraft carrier, aircraft carriers, resulted in the U.S. entering the war on the side of the Allies of World War II, Allies on the day following the attack. The Imperial General Headquarters, Japanese military leadership referred to the attack as the Hawaii Operation and Operation AI, and as Operation Z during its planning. The attack on Pearl Harbor was preceded by months of negotiations between the U.S. and Japan over the future of the Pacific Ocean, Pacific. Japanese demands included that the U.S. ABCD line, end its sanctions against Japan, cease aidi ...
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