Why does history matter

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UoPeople in the Media. Contact Us. Why Study History: The Importance History is important to study because it is essential for all of us in understanding ourselves and the world around us. Allows You To Comprehend More 1. However obscure their causes, history, which is concerned with narrating these appearances, permits us to hope that if we attend to the play of freedom of the human will in the large, we may be able to discern a regular movement in it, and that what seems complex and chaotic in the single individual may be seen from the standpoint of the human race as a whole to be a steady and progressive though slow evolution of its original endowment.

What is the stuff of which it is made? Who is the personage of history? Man : evidently man and human nature. There are many different elements in history. What are they? Evidently again, the elements of human nature. History is therefore the development of humanity, and of humanity only; for nothing else but humanity develops itself, for nothing else than humanity is free. That experience has led him to recognize that history has many layers and is rarely black and white. Roos explained, for instance, that often a historic military leader may be judged for winning or losing a battle without consideration of extenuating circumstances, such as political pressures and other factors, a reality that caused Roos to change his college thesis, as well as the way he views both past and present events.

It is a series of moments that shapes what happened, where we are today, and where we are going. Connect with him on LinkedIn. Interested in starting a new job or advancing in your current field? An Associate of Arts AA degree can give you the broad-based education and in-demand career skills you need to reach your goals. Learn more about earning an AA degree and what you can do with one.

A communications major is a great way to prepare yourself for a career in fields ranging from media relations and journalism to marketing, corporate communications and many more. The long term of history always contributes to the immediate moment. Hence my twin maxims, the synchronic is always in the diachronic. The present moment is always part of an unfolding long term, which needs to be understood.

And vice versa. The diachronic is always in the synchronic: the long term, the past, always contributes to the immediate moment. As living creatures, humans have an instinctive synchro-mesh , that gears people into the present moment. But, in addition to that, having a perspective upon longitudinal time, and history within that, is one of the strengths of the alert human consciousness. It may be defined as a parallel process of diachro-mesh , to coin a new term.

On the strength of that experience, societies and individuals assess the long-term passage of events from past to present — and, in many cases, manage to measure time not just in terms of nanoseconds but also in terms of millennia. Humans are exceptional animals for their ability to think 'long' as well as 'immediate'; and those abilities need to be cultivated.

If educational systems do not provide a systematic grounding in the study of History, then people will glean some picture of the past and the role of themselves, their families, and their significant associations which include everything from nations and religions to local clubs and neighbourhood networks from a medley of other resources — from cultural traditions, from collective memories, from myths, rumours, songs, sagas, from political and religious teachings and customs, from their families, their friends, and from every form of human communication from gossip to the printing press and on to the web.

People do learn, in other words, from a miscellany of resources that are assimilated both consciously and unconsciously. But what is learned may be patchy or confused, leaving some feeling rootless; or it may be simplified and partisan, leaving others feeling embattled or embittered. A good educational system should help people to study History more formally, more systematically, more accurately, more critically and more longitudinally.

By that means, people will have access to a great human resource, compiled over many generations, which is the collective set of studies of the past, and the human story within that. Humans do not learn from the past, people sometimes say. An extraordinary remark! People certainly do not learn from the future. And the present is so fleeting that everything that is learned in the present has already passed into the past by the time it is consolidated.

Of course humans learn from the past — and that is why it is studied. History is thus not just about things 'long ago and far away' — though it includes that — but it is about all that makes humanity human — up close and personal.

Interestingly, Henry Ford's dictum that 'History is bunk' now itself forms part of human history. It has remained in circulation for 90 years since it was first coined. And it exemplifies a certain no-nonsense approach of the stereotypical go-ahead businessman, unwilling to be hide-bound by old ways. But Ford himself repented. He faced much derision for his apparent endorsement of know-nothingism. Some business leaders may perhaps affect contempt for what has gone before, but the wisest among them look to the past, to understand the foundations, as well as to the future, in order to build.

Indeed, all leaders should reflect that arbitrary changes, imposed willy-nilly without any understanding of the historical context, generally fail. There are plenty of recent examples as well as long-ago case-histories to substantiate this observation.

Politicians and generals in Iraq today — on all sides — should certainly take heed. After all, Ford's pioneering Model T motor-car did not arrive out of the blue in He had spent the previous 15 years testing a variety of horseless carriages. Furthermore, the Model T relied upon an advanced steel industry to supply the car's novel frame of light steel alloy, as well as the honed skills of the engineers who built the cars, and the savvy of the oil prospectors who refined petroleum for fuel, just as Ford's own novel design for electrical ignition drew upon the systematic study of electricity initiated in the 18th century, while the invention of the wheel was a human staple dating back some 5, years.

And the process by no means halted with Henry Ford I. So the next invention that followed upon his innovations provided synchro-mesh gearing for these new motorised vehicles — and that change itself occurred within the diachro-mesh process of shared adaptations, major and minor, that were being developed, sustained, transmitted and revolutionised through time.

Later in life, Henry Ford himself became a keen collector of early American antique furniture, as well as of classic automobiles. In this way, he paid tribute both to his cultural ancestry and to the cumulative as well as revolutionary transformations in human transportation to which he had so notably contributed.

Moreover, for the Ford automobile company, there was a further twist in the tale. In his old age, the once-radical Henry Ford I turned into an out-of-touch despot. He failed to adapt with the changing industry and left his pioneering business almost bankrupt, to be saved only by new measures introduced by his grandson Henry Ford II. Time and history had the last laugh — outlasting even fast cars and scoffers at History. Because humans are rooted in time, people do by one means or another pick up ideas about the past and its linkages with the present, even if these ideas are sketchy or uninformed or outright mythological.