Why Study History?
The purpose of historical inquiry is not simply to present facts
but to search for an interpretation of the past. Historians
attempt to find patterns and establish meaning through the
rigorous study of documents and artifacts left by people of
other times and other places.
The study of history is vital to a liberal arts education.
History is unique among the liberal arts in its emphasis on
historical perspective and context. Historians insist that the
past must be understood on its own terms; any historical
phenomenon--an event, an idea, a law, or a dogma for
example--must first be understood in its context, as part of a
web of interrelated institutions, values, and beliefs that
define a particular culture and era. Among the liberal arts,
history is the discipline most concerned with understanding
change. Historians seek not only to explain historical
causality--how and why change occurs within societies and
cultures. They also try to account for the endurance of
tradition, understand the complex interplay between continuity
and change, and explain the origins, evolution, and decline of
institutions and ideas. History is also distinguished by its
singularly broad scope. Virtually every subject has a history
and can be analyzed and interpreted in historical perspective
and context; the scope of historical inquiry is bound only by
the quantity and quality of surviving documents and artifacts.
The Importance of History in Our Own Lives
Two fundamental reasons for studying history underlie more
specific and quite diverse uses of history in our own lives.
History well told is beautiful. Many of the historians who most
appeal to the general reading public know the importance of
dramatic and skillful writing—as well as of accuracy. Biography
and military history appeal in part because of the tales they
contain. History as art and entertainment serves a real purpose,
on aesthetic grounds but also on the level of human
understanding. Stories well done are stories that reveal how
people and societies have actually functioned, and they prompt
thoughts about the human experience in other times and places.
The same aesthetic and humanistic goals inspire people to
immerse themselves in efforts to reconstruct quite remote pasts,
far removed from immediate, present-day utility. Exploring what
historians sometimes call the "pastness of the past"—the ways
people in distant ages constructed their lives—involves a sense
of beauty and excitement, and ultimately another perspective on
human life and society.
History Provides Identity
History also helps provide identity, and this is unquestionably
one of the reasons all modern nations encourage its teaching in
some form. Historical data include evidence about how families,
groups, institutions and whole countries were formed and about
how they have evolved while retaining cohesion. For many
Americans, studying the history of one's own family is the most
obvious use of history, for it provides facts about genealogy
and (at a slightly more complex level) a basis for understanding
how the family has interacted with larger historical change.
Family identity is established and confirmed. Many institutions,
businesses, communities, and social units, such as ethnic groups
in the United States, use history for similar identity purposes.
Merely defining the group in the present pales against the
possibility of forming an identity based on a rich past. And of
course nations use identity history as well—and sometimes abuse
it. Histories that tell the national story, emphasizing
distinctive features of the national experience, are meant to
drive home an understanding of national values and a commitment
to national loyalty.
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