Hayden V. White, an influential scholar whose ideas on history and how it is shaped have fueled discussions in academic circles for half a century, died on Monday at his home in Santa Cruz, Calif. He was 89.

His wife, Margaret Brose, confirmed his death. She did not give a cause.

Dr. White began garnering attention in 1966 with his essay “The Burden of History,” which suggested that history was being relegated to a sort of second-class citizenship by advances in other disciplines.

“Both science and art have transcended the older, stable conceptions of the world which required that they render a literal copy of a presumably static reality,” he wrote. He urged historical scholarship to do the same.

“The historian serves no one well by constructing a specious continuity between the present world and that which preceded it,” he wrote. “On the contrary, we require a history that will educate us to discontinuity more than ever before; for discontinuity, disruption and chaos is our lot.”