There are different ways of defining "history", but the definition that I am using is the disciplined study of the ways of human being throughout time. This is admittedly an abstract definition, but it captures some of the complexities of world history. First, history is a detailed and disciplined investigation, not a casual examination. Second, the object of the study is certainly human beings, but more than that it is the ways human beings live and act and thrive. Thirdly, the object of history is not any given snap shot of humanity. Rather, it is the study of the extended actions of humans in time. In other words, the object of history is the process of human activity in order to discover the logic of their existence.
The logic of nature is discoverable from the study of history. It is a curious fact that from between 8000 and 5000 BCE civilizations began to emerge all around the world. While we may never discover why they all emerged around the same time, we can examine how they emerged. Another curious fact is that they all emerged relatively the same way. The consistency and regularity with which civilization emerged seems to have more to do with who we are as human beings, our nature, than any other factor. Therefore, a study of the rise of civilizations will lead to an understanding to the logic of nature, our nature.
The goal of history for our purposes is to discover as much as we can about this logic of nature and apply it to an understanding of our present conditions, particularly to our role in a now globalized world.
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