I was originally confused about what Oakeshott was talking about when we was talking about "hunt the thimble" I understand now how can we going into history looking for something when we have no idea what we are looking for. As in the game you can not find something you do not know what it is. I feel this helps shape history since we have to look for things in history that are essential to our topic. And we can not look if we don't know where to start.
This also leads to how we look at history. As Steph used as her quote from Oakeshott we look at all pieces of history through the eyes of the present. As she also pointed out we use the events of 9/11 we will look at history from now on.
From now on we will all be trying to find the thimble through the eyes of 9/11.
I think the hunt the thimble analogy is to show that we can only find things in history that we have been alerted to from our contemporary life. For instance, historians did not find or search for the story of slaves, or women until those issues became important in the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s. So each generation provides a new thimble, one that previous generations did not see. The 'thimble' of 9/11 is an interest in history middle east / US relations, new interest in history of civil liberties and history of patriotism.
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