Genealogy

Not a family tree, and not a timeline. In this course a genealogy is a chain of causes in which each link carries a date, a mechanism stated in one sentence, and the named scholar who owns that link in the published literature.

The distinction from a timeline is load-bearing. A timeline lists what happened in order, and a reader can only believe it or not. A genealogy can be attacked link by link, which means it can also be defended link by link, which is the only form an argument can take if it is going to survive being put on screen.

The Level 1 capstone is a genealogy of Philippine corruption in eight links, running from 1594 to the present, and it is built by the reader rather than handed over.

Source: Course usage, defined for this build. The eight-link chain it names is set out in the history research map, which assigns each link its owner in the literature: Scott, Anderson, Schurz, McCoy, Teehankee, Landé, Hutchcroft, Salonga. The word is used in the ordinary sense of tracing descent, applied to mechanisms rather than to people.

First used in: 0.3 · The whole board, before we walk it