Politics 4: How is new knowledge created about politics?

Quotes
Our modern world, though infinitely more complex than that of ancient Greece, is also far more superficial. Where the
Greeks offered simple psychological training, we live in an age of style and spin in which perceptions of good and evil
slither and shift with the political view of the moment.
David Gemmell 

“The science of politics is the one science that is deposited by the streams of history, like the grains of gold in the sand
of a river; and the knowledge of the past, the record of truths revealed by experience, is eminently practical, as an
instrument of action and a power that goes to making the future.
John Dalberg-Acton

“Our politics are our deepest form of expression: they mirror our past experiences and reflect our dreams and
aspirations for the future.
Paul Wellstone

Questions on the quotes and thinkers

1. According to David Gemmell, how have politics changed?

2. How does Wellstone’s quote contradict this – and which do you think is more valid?

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Knowledge Questions

 What impact has technology and social media made on the way we acquire political knowledge?
 To what extent are our political affiliations formed by the way we identify with historical events?
 Is political knowledge produced solely to consolidate power?

There is just one resource for this week. It is the article from Nick Bryant on the presidency of George Bush. You could
write on this material or better still you could find your own material. The first knowledge question is a really good one as
it asks you to think about how technology shapes political knowledge. You could well answer this question from your own
knowledge of the way Social media works.

Media sources

Outline of the media source Key terms Also links to Unpacking this source

Nick Bryant at the BBC
considers how our judgement
of George HW Bush’s
presidency – particularly in
terms of foreign policy – has
undergone a reassessment by
historians and political writers.
Political legacies, History, human “Bush offers a prime example of how presidential
Posterity, Pre- sciences reputations evolve over the passing years, how legacies are
polarised politics reassessed and how traits characterised contemporaneously
as weaknesses can be judged by future generations as
virtues.” To what extent is this caused by the setting in
which historians and political writers work? In other
words, is our evaluation of the past always dictated by the
situation in the present? Compare also to story 4 about how
history gets re-written. How and why do the reputations of
political and historical figures change over time? Is our
reading of history more a reflection of our times than the

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times we are looking at?

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