Together with philosopher Nicolas Bullot from Charles Darwin University, who has been a visiting researcher at LCE, we develop a theory of historical thinking which is thinking about the past. Such thinking is ubiquitous not only in expert historians but also in everyday life where individuals and groups without academic training reason about the past. Such thinking can be observed in tracing genealogies, determining inheritance and ownership, jury decision making, cooperation, and causal reasoning about past events. Historical thinking is also ubiquitous in fictional narratives where a storyworld is built on events that qualify as historical records that later are taken up in the text and elicit historical thinking in readers.
The project also examines biases in historical thinking and ways to improve reasoning about past events in everyday life. The end product will be a theory about the processes that guide historical thinking in everyday life, as compared to historical thinking in historiography.
- Rolf Reber is Professor in Cognitive Psychology at The University of Oslo
- Nicolas Bullot (researchers.cdu.edu.au) is Lecturer in Philosophy at Charles Darwin University