By the end of this lecture, you will know that history is made of facts that can be grouped in fundamental ways. By grouping facts, we hope to find patterns that satisfy theories about history.
History is everything that ever happened.
That includes everything from end of the Algerian independence war to the formation of a supernova in the Orion nebula, plus much more. The technique consists of learning a large number of facts and then grouping them in different ways until a pattern emerges. History is not mathematics or physics. For instance, all of the facts that have George Washington as the actor, when grouped together, yield a biography of George Washington. All of the facts from a country like England produce national history.