Whether it’s the history of science, business or religion, every subject has its own particular history that explains how that subject came to be. It is one of the most fascinating aspects of studying the subject and can help to shape our opinions and how we see the world around us. History is important because it shows a bigger picture and helps to teach students how to be critical thinkers.
Many people have a negative view of history and believe that it is meaningless bunk consisting solely of dates and names. However, that criticism misses the point of studying history completely. History is the grounding that allows a person to build and change upon a secure foundation. Without knowledge of the past, a person can only rely on a miscellany of resources that they glean both consciously and unconsciously.
A student can glean much of this information from secondary sources, such as books, magazines and blogs. The historian’s task is to question these sources and analyse them in order to construct a narrative that explains what happened and why it happened. This is a process that involves an active imagination in order to reconstruct the past, as well as an analysis of the nature of human society and culture.
It’s impossible to understand 20th-century world history if you are simply provided with a list of key dates, supplemented by data on (say) armies and church attendance. This cornucopia of facts gives us a clue about what happened, but not much more than that. It would be like trying to understand a modern city by reading a cornucopia of maps and reports about traffic accidents, building development and church attendance.
Historians study primary sources, too, but they do so in the context of their own theoretical assumptions about how human societies and cultures function. For example, a historian may believe that the ownership of capital and wealth shapes most social structures and interactions. They will therefore seek to investigate how the wealthy and powerful have managed to gain and retain power. They will also explore the extent to which poorer classes struggle and push to improve their economic situation – something known as the material dialectic.
In this way, historians try to understand the full range of human experience, including the accidental and the surprising. They want to know what it was really like to be alive at a particular time and place, in the same way as novelists do. The difference is that novelists can invent, while historians work with verifiable facts and try to capture an authentic feel for vanished worlds. This is a challenging and exciting task, and it’s an important part of why history matters. It can make the future more meaningful, and is essential to a full understanding of the condition of being human. If you’re interested in exploring the subject of history further, University of the People offers a variety of tuition-free degree programs that can help to develop your knowledge and skills.