Why is the study of History so important?

Answer 1

To understand history is to understand why our world today is as it is. The past gives clarity to the present.

Answer 2

History is very closely (almost inseparably) tied with politics. So why study history and why not force everyone to study science all the time? Because even scientists have quirks (yes, it's true). We all have irrational beliefs that don't seem logical, but it is our own personal way of life. History is the examination of those decisions that have shaped the world we live in. When you think about it in this way, history really does affect everyone just as much as manufacturing chemicals in a lab or engineering a bridge.

Answer 3

Several Reasons: Number one; The study of history helps us to figure out what to do today. Second: History is the most mysterious subject a subject we will never find all the answers but the search is all the same greater than the find. Finally I leave you with a quote from Marcus Tullius Cicero: Not to Know What has been Transacted in the past is always to remain a child. If No use is made of the labors of the past, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.

Answer 4

"Those who do not know their own history will be enslaved by those who do" - from the comic "biersuppe"

More accurately, as history is written by the winners, it's important that we have many accounts of it for comparison. The Romans took pride in burning libraries, and the Ancient Egyptians recorded only their victories, and defaced the statues and records of kingdoms past. The more people who are keen to keep records, the more accurate a puzzle we can reconstruct of the past, and avoid it becoming and unbeleivable myth with no relevence in reality. That way we can decipher what was left to us by the wisdom of our ancestors.

Answer 5

When you look at what it is that you are studying - the events and lives of real people - the importance is obvious. When you see the events an incomplete episode at a time (newspaper headlines/CNN reports - you only get a single link in what is a chain of events. If one read a full account (those thick books) of the events one then can get a fuller understanding of what occurred, and what may occur in the future.

Answer 6

Because he who controls the past controls the present -- and he who controls the presents controls the future.
-- George Orwell, 1984

1984 is probably the most important book every written, because it spells out exactly where we can go when history becomes an abstraction that changes with political convenience.

History is important because it tells us where we have been.
And why we don't want to go to certain places again.

Answer 7

Have you ever heard the saying about history repeating itself. its true. if we don't study history, we will never learn from the mistakes of the past. that would be very bad. we would let the same bad things happen over and over. nothing constructive would ever succeed, and we would never advance. ignorence of the past could cause so many problems for the future.

Answer 8

Because, as George Santayana said, those who will not learn from hisory are doomed to repeat it.

The Athenians set out to defeat Syracuse, and got a rude shock when they suffered a humiliating defeat. The story is recounted by Thucydides. I think if more Americans had read this terrible true story they would have backed off from trying to prevent the Vietnamese from achieving their independence from foreign control.

Answer 9

A Roman historian, wrote

"The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things rotten through and through, to avoid." Livy

Answer 10

Have you heard that those who have no understanding of history are compelled to repeat it?? Although one would hope that a thorough knowledge of the past would therefore enable humanity to avoid certain disastrous events such as war, unfortunately human nature seems not to operate upon such lofty principles! Still, if we should forget our history, we would lose ourselves...