History, its greatest virtue is uncompromising complexity

In 2017 the ACT Book of the Year was The Art of Time Travel: Historians and Their Craft by Tom Griffiths. This book also won the Ernest Scott Prize and was short listed for a number of other awards. It is a wonderful read — an exploration into the “art and craft of history” in Australia since the Second World War as practiced by some of Australia’s key history thinkers. Especially appreciated is Tom Griffiths’ emphasis on the challenges of history making the claim it is the “most demanding of scholarly pursuits”. Here is a taste:

History is essential to meaning and identity and it is a powerful disciplinary tool in the search for truth. But its greatest virtue is uncompromising complexity. As we study the past it changes before our eyes, affected by our gaze and eluding definitive capture, like the electrons that orbit a nucleus. No matter how practised we are at history, it always humbles us. No matter how often we visit the past, it always surprises us. The art of time travel is to maintain critical poise and grace in this dizzy space. There is a further hazard: we never return to exactly the same present from which we left, for time cycles on remorselessly even when we seek to defy it. And in the course of our quest we find that we, too, have changed.
Tom Griffiths, The Art of Time Travel: Historians and Their Craft

Acknowledgement: Photo by Thomas Kelley on Unsplash

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