
Why Study History? - georgecmu
http://www.historians.org/pubs/free/WhyStudyHistory.htm
======
petercooper
Half way through high school in the UK, you choose your subjects that you want
to do until the end of high school and which you get your qualifications in.
Being a bit weird, I chose subjects I didn't know much about so I wouldn't get
bored, and chose history despite never giving it a second thought before.

And.. it's probably the one subject that really stands out from high school
for me now. It wasn't so much learning about facts and figures but learning
about the _art_ of studying history, the difference between primary and
secondary sources, the importance of good sources, and similar general
principles that have continued to be useful to me as an adult.

I guess none of this would be surprising to anyone with a good liberal arts
education, but approaching history as a math and science geek, it was a real
eye opener for me as a teenager.

~~~
triplesec
I never appreciated history until I became a grad psych/soc researcher into
tech/media and grokked method (and how most researchers don't, and if you
think you do, you probably don't). In high school it was all facts and figured
and then I gave up the boring "learn stories" stuff up for A-level maths
physics and chemistry. I wish they taught history and humanities at school in
the way they teach physics and chemistry practicals. I'd have loved it then,
and clever nerds would understand its value!

~~~
rplacd
I have the luck of going through one of those analytical history courses right
now - but they do one thing differently: they don't even _want_ to stoop down
to prescribe on that level. Instead they give a higher-level question: "to
what extent would you consider Mao's contribution to the development of modern
China over-rated?" - and ask for a good argument. That inevitably that means
considering counterpoints, placing them in context (and you can't go far with
that if you don't understand a mite of historiography and how _that_ in turn
arises from "mainline" history), shooting them down. It's done wonders to my
writing.

In fact, it's been the _only_ opportunity in my high school program to
consider and create arguments of such _depth_ \- so there's your intrinsic
value.

~~~
triplesec
That's really impressive. Was it your teacher, or the school that initiated
this?

I do think that some students might need more handholding than you in this
particular question, however... (hell, I might get lost in that) but there is
room for creating experimental learning with the ability to get in flow for
all skill levels. But that's what good teaching is about.

~~~
rplacd
You're in luck - your guesses are just a bit too pessimistic! It's the method
prescribed by my school's curriculum - they take the thing whole from a
standards body. You're entirely right, though, to figure that isn't the
baseline - there are plenty of "list the Xes" question that pay only lip
service to considering an A line of thought versus a B line of thought.

Of course, the subject's so subjectively graded that no one's guaranteed that
work is proportional to the resultant grade at the highest levels - so there's
remarkably little pressure and far more experimentation done than you'd expect
from a high-school programme. It's a strange arrangement, but I'm lucky to
have fell into it.

------
bcoates
History doesn't need to justify itself any more than Literature or Dance does.

But trying to turn it into something it's not -- a way of discovering new
facts about the world -- is incredibly dangerous. Most educated people are
aware that there are limits of reason, such as situations where the facts are
so thin that the only honest answer is "I don't know". They are aware of the
limits of science, where there is no practical experiment to falsify a claim
and you have to fall back on tentative strategies like Popper's.

But then these people look at history, and see this giant pile of anecdotes,
and all the sudden it's the Middle Ages again and we can hermenutic our way to
wisdom by staring at it _really hard_ , or as this website puts it, "having
repeated experience in historical inquiry". But I don't get it; if there's a
heuristic for knowing when trying to solve problems with history is worse than
nothing, I've missed it. Until I figure that out I'm going to have to stick
with "always", and this webpage doesn't give me a lot of reason to think
otherwise.

How can history possibly be harmful? The OP makes the case repeatedly:

"History Helps Us Understand People and Societies", but it doesn't give us any
basis for knowing if that understanding is based on broad stereotype or
outright lies, or worse yet, someone else's interpretation of history: a game
of telephone stretching back to the dawn of communication. Merely becoming an
experienced historian so that you're less likely to fall into that trap isn't
sufficient; you're starting at worse than zero so you have to assume you've
just gotten less terrible until you have some solid reason to think otherwise.

"History Provides Identity." Identity, of course, being an organized system
for dehumanizing other people. That history, true or false, is an incredibly
powerful tool for doing this does it no favors as something you should
voluntarily poison your mind with.

"Studying History Is Essential for Good Citizenship." Here we're getting back
around to a better excuse for studying history: If it really is unavoidable,
and history is somehow part of us that we cannot destroy, then maybe we need
to fill that hunger with a nice pablum like the US civics curriculum. It's a
harm minimization strategy, like giving opiate addicts a supply of quality
morphine so they don't stick whatever they find on the street into their
veins.

~~~
agwa
Your comment is based on a very flawed understanding of what the study of
history is.

First, while it is true that historical evidence is imperfect, it is extremely
uncharitable and frankly unjustifiable to call it a "pile of anecdotes,"
"based on broad stereotype or outright lies," and "worse than zero."
Historical research is centered around primary sources, and while no primary
source gives you a complete picture or has a single interpretation, they are
not mere anecdotes or outright lies.

Second, no serious historian thinks you should use specific events from the
past to draw grand conclusions about the present. The past loses potency when
taken out of context. But the study of history still has applications to the
present. When you have worked with incomplete evidence and conflicting
interpretations of the past, you start to realize that your view of the
present is similarly imperfect. Any one person only has an incomplete picture
of what is happening in the world, but despite this, I encounter many people
who think events or trends have only _one_ cause and they know _exactly_ what
it is. As another example, people often expect the future to work out a
particular way, and fail to appreciate the effects of other, unseen forces. It
is easier to realize these fallacies when you have studied history, where
information is more obviously imperfect and you have the benefit of being
detached.

You are right about the limits of reason, but you are wrong to say that
history is harmful: to the contrary it is one of the best ways for us to
realize those limits.

~~~
bcoates
I'm basing my comment on the implied definition of history being presented in
the article. I think it's trying to move history from the category of study
for the sake of study, for "people who simply like the information and modes
of thought involved", into that category of things that are essential for
everyone to study. I think that's unfair to the other liberal arts and an
exaggeration of the universal utility of historical study.

You're taking "based on broad stereotype or outright lies," and "worse than
zero." out of context, but I'll defend "pile of anecdotes", because that's
what even good primary sources are: a non-representative data point of
something that happened in an uncontrolled environment.

I appreciate what you're saying about the study of history being able to open
your mind to the complexity of the world, but that's such a different goal for
history than the article presents that I think you're defending a different
thing entirely, and not the idea I'm attacking.

------
afarrell
Growing up, I've always had a passion for history. This was inspired by games
such as Caesar, Civilization, Age of Empires, Dynasty Warriors, and Pirates.
This led me to educate myself on military and geopolitical history. While this
makes for interesting conversation, and understanding of foreign policy, and
some insights into the nature of leadership and group loyalty, it has become
increasingly obvious that it is less useful for understanding humans and
organizations and their day-to-day conflicts and pathologies. It is far too
high-level and besides, most interactions do not happen under the stresses of
anarchy found on the campaign field or international stage. Can anyone
recommend any histories that they have found that go into detail about the
history of more mundane sorts of events we are likely to find in our lives?

I'll start: Therac-25: A history of a deadly medical device design error and
the organizational failure that accompanied it
<http://sunnyday.mit.edu/papers/therac.pdf>

~~~
bokonist
Outre Mer by Paul Bourget <http://books.google.com/books?id=5lQTAAAAYAAJ>

It is the account of a French man traveling around the United States in the
1890's It's not about organizations so much, but is a wonderful book about the
general life of the times. It is the closest thing I have found to a time
machine that let's you experience turn of the century America.

Democracy and the Party System in the United States: A study in extra
constitutional government (1910) by Moisei Ostrogorski
[http://books.google.com/books?id=HmkPAAAAYAAJ&dq=democra...](http://books.google.com/books?id=HmkPAAAAYAAJ&dq=democracy%20and%20the%20american%20party%20system%20in%20the%20united%20states%20harvard&pg=PP7#v=onepage&q&f=false)
This is a very colorful political history of the United States. A lot of
information about how the democratic institutions worked in practiced and
evolved away from their formal and intended structures. Definitely a great
antidote to the traditional civics class view of American democracy.

~~~
ljlolel
Question: how different is it from today?

------
meerita
And that day came. It was boring to read books on design, crime fiction and I
bought a history book. It was about the life of Julius Caesar, I knew who he
was and I knew what he had done, but I wanted to read it and refresh my
memory.

From that day, I started buying more and more books of history. Extending the
story from 44BC in all directions. After that day (11 years ago) I can say
that my life changed a lot.

Now things are different. If you're at a party or at someone's home with
friends and history appears as a topic of conversation, everyone says
something but rarely agrees with the story itself. It is normal to hear more
nonsenses than good facts or stories, and this is how you begin to tell the
history for the rest so they understand it, and they realize that you tell in
a much more attractive way than a school teacher. Everyone looks at you so
mesmerized that once you finish, never, ever, you regret having learned about
the story itself.

------
triplesec
Good points in good analytic terms, yet to persuade people I'd try to show
them an example, to make it real. For example, Here's a brilliant (data-
driven!) example of why Sociology is also worth your time:
[http://www.psmag.com/magazines/pacific-standard-cover-
story/...](http://www.psmag.com/magazines/pacific-standard-cover-story/joe-
henrich-weird-ultimatum-game-shaking-up-psychology-economics-53135)

I wish people would realise that data does come in more forms than just
numbers. Numbers are useful, but the social and human sciences have much to
teach even when their data is less statistically amenable. Some people are
afraid of anything that doesn't have stats in it, and that is their loss!

~~~
monkeyfacebag
It's not clear to me why the value of sociology would need to be defended. A
good deal of the social graph analysis that's so popular now is built directly
on the methods and works of sociologists and social psychologists (Stanley
Milgram's small world, Zachary's karate club, etc.) with the big difference
between then and now being availability of computational power and data sets.

It seems like a field that has a lot of relevance today, even if perhaps
people practice it under different guises.

~~~
triplesec
You are a thoughtful hacker, but most people don't look much outside their own
arena, which they tend to think it better than the rest, for fairly obvious
psychological reasons. HN probably contains a much more open minded sample
than the average science/hacker community! I'm an applied sociologist, a human
hacker with emphasis on method, inter alia. The number of brilliant bio /
physics and maths-oriented friends I have who believe that statistics is the
only meaningful measure of truth is not insignificant. Sad, but true, a narrow
methodological ideology assuming the primacy of cardinal measurements and
deduction over anything else. Good point, and I shall use social network
analysis as another example for such people. There are numerous examples of
this blindness in popular geek culture, such as xkcd positing an outdated
reductionism to physics or maths, which as a numberloving teenager I also
subscribed to, because it was neat and easy.

Thank you for the pushback, but you are part of an enlightened segment. It's
about time I constructed a survey to ascertain the actual values and beliefs
in this space among the HN community. I wonder if they let you do surveys
here.

------
phillmv
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme".

Know your 19th and 20th century history. It's remarkable how little gets
communicated throughout a high school education.

A good grasp of recent history really changes your perspective on the world
and how people get along with each other.

------
pfraze
A very enjoyable option for history fans is
<http://www.reddit.com/r/askhistorians>, which keeps very high standards for
the authority of their responses.

~~~
AlexDanger
I love /r/askhistorians because the questions are as fascinating as the
answers. I wish I'd been exposed to such riveting discussions during my own
history classes. I really enjoy the 'cross-cutting concerns' style questions
that span historical periods.

 _During your time period of expertise, an unwed woman finds out she's
pregnant. What are her options?_

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/165dyt/during...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/165dyt/during_your_time_period_of_expertise_an_unwed/)

 _It's year XXXX of your specialty. A dead body is discovered in the middle of
a well populated area and the overwhelming evidence suggests he was murdered.
Is anyone in charge of finding the killer? What is the attitude of the public
and is there an expectation of justice?_

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1247fn/its_ye...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1247fn/its_year_xxxx_of_your_specialty_a_dead_body_is/)

 _How common was casual sex throughout history?_

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17zztg/how_co...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17zztg/how_common_was_casual_sex_throughout_history/)

 _What is an example of humour from your period?_

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yus78/what_is...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yus78/what_is_an_example_of_humour_from_your/)

I think these types of questions would make great introductory history classes
for students, rather than the linear blocks of 'for the next 10 weeks we learn
about Ancient Egypt, then we learn Ancient Greece for 10 week' that was the
structure of my first history classes.

------
gambiting
I live in Polish town of Oswiecim - where the former Nazi Auschwitz
Concentration camp is located. There is a quote on the wall there, one that I
will remember forever.

"The ones who forget history are bound to live through it again"

And this is exactly the reason why we should teach history at schools.

~~~
ams6110
The version I know is "Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat
it."

~~~
dredmorbius
Santyana. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Santayana>

------
cawel
So far, I have been taking 2 history courses [1][2] on coursera.org (which
offers over 300 free online courses) and I can certainly recommend both of
them. Each course looks like this: about 2 hours of video lectures per week
(which you can watch whenever you want), over a period of ~15 weeks. Clearly,
following those history courses meant that I do not see the world with the
same eyes now. For one, I feel that I am developing a (healthy) reflex to view
news events in perspective within a longer period of time, instead of just
considering the events in themselves (thus lacking context). Also, drawing
parallels with similar events in the past provides insight and offers a wider
and more informed framework for devising an appropriate action.

[1] "The Modern World: Global History since 1760"
<https://www.coursera.org/course/modernworld>

[2] "A History of the World since 1300"
<https://www.coursera.org/course/wh1300>

------
contingencies
Personally I see history as a huge but imperfectly solvable analytical
problem. I am writing a little known Asian regional history at the moment, and
absolutely love the long journey of discovery that is has provided.

In this era of anything-at-the-search-prompt and prepackaged-newsbite
immediacy, the capacity to evaluate and compound large numbers of disparate
sources in to a coherent and useful narrative is more valuable than ever.

Within programming, I certainly believe that this skill is critically useful
for communicating the complex, multi-faceted environment around software
systems: what led to their existence, how they differ from competing
solutions, how they may be configured, maintained and integrated. More than
once I recall people being astounded at my statement "I love writing
documentation!". One former employer, when presented with a detailed report on
a new third-party system, was simply shocked at the completeness and
accessibility of the material: "Did you really write that?"

------
simula67
Every time people ask 'What is the point of this?' I remember the
Mathematician's apology :
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematicians_Apology>. Many ideas Hardy felt
were useless then, now provides the underpinning for some very useful
applications in the real world.

------
brudgers
What matters is not what has happened in the past, but the way in which our
interpretation of the past shapes our present actions. Describing Thomas
Jefferson as a pedaeophile or arguing that he should be judged by the
standards of his time and place say nothing about the past and much about our
present time.

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." Faulkner.

------
Crake
Lacking historical knowledge doesn't mean being doomed to repeat it. Having
human desires means being doomed to repeat it. You don't see wars started for
lack of history majors (we have more today than we did for most of human
history).

group A: We want your [food, resources, women, whatever].

group B: Uhm, those are ours, you can't have them.

group A: Too bad, we're going to take them by force.

History is interesting, but the world has changed so much in the last hundred
years, that most situations one encounters today have little relation to the
past.

Humanity's base drives haven't changed, but most people like to pretend those
don't apply to their ingroup, historical education or no. Simple, greed driven
motivations only apply to Other People; we always ascribe more complicated and
more noble motives to ourselves.

------
stcredzero
"In every age, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same."

------
lutusp
> History should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to
> society, and because it harbors beauty.

And more important, we study history to avoid reliving it.

------
mhartl
If you're serious about learning history, there's no substitute for reading
primary sources:

<http://books.google.com/>

Remember that the cliché is right: the winners write the history books. The
antidote is primary documents (and humility). This doesn't mean you should
ignore secondary sources. Just keep them honest by going to the originals from
time to time.

------
logical42
..because if it's true that history repeats itself, then studying history is
effectively studying the future?

(i'm sorry, i couldn't help myself)

------
duopixel
This is somewhat far-fetched, but I'd like to see more historians/
archaeologists get into big data. As a society we are collecting the most
important bits of history and putting them in digital form. One might just
decipher a bit more of the Maya code by analyzing patterns in the scripts, for
example.

~~~
pm90
This is already being done. A physicist I worked with used statistical methods
to decipher part of the script used by the Indus Valley Civilization:

[0]:[http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/apr/23/indus-
civilisa...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/apr/23/indus-civilisation-
language-symbols)

[1]:<http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~rao/indus.html>

------
shurcooL
When I was younger, I used to really dislike history. I thought it was boring.
I thought only the present and future were interesting. I didn't see the value
in it.

I see value[1] in history now.

[1] <https://twitter.com/shurcooL/status/308948806882426880>

~~~
shurcooL
Ironically, the linked page doesn't show the tweet that was posted just a
minute later, which is quite relevant.
(<https://twitter.com/shurcooL/status/308949225276862465>)

------
protomyth
Because the beginning of things is important to understand so you can see the
growth an predict what comes next. It also helps to make an honest
determination if something has lost its way and not just be resorting to
hyperbole.

------
peachananr
Why study history? Because it's fun. How fun? Begin your journey right here:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yocja_N5s1I&list=PLBDA2E5...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yocja_N5s1I&list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9)

------
sixQuarks
The best podcast on history: Hardcore History, by Dan Carlin. He also has a
great podcast called "Common Sense".

------
dm8
As my history teacher would say, "to learn from our own (we as a society)
past"

