Why is history important?

S

sean s

New member
to not learn from are mistakes and to not understand are past cancels out the whole reason evolution made us the best. because we know how to ask why and try again. i think your right on. history lets us understand a life times experience in many fields and tell us where to pick up to improve the future. you remember the saying in national treasure (horrible cliche.lol)
thomas eddison tried 2000 times to develope the carbonized cotton filament for the incadescent light bulb.
and when he was asked about it he said " i dident fail, i found 2000 ways how not to make a light bulb".
history is everything.
 
I love love LOVE history, and i take great interest in it. Some day I wish to work for the smithsonian. Anyways, my friend who is a math whiz hates history. She says its not important and we don't need to study it. I told her that history repeats itself, and we use it to see changed in society. But she still doesn't understand. What do I do?
 
You could explain to your friend that history is a very broad subject, and covers a lot of divisional areas, like ancient history, military history, social, geographical, etc. and leads to other specialized areas like archeology. It is very important. For instance, one cannot make policy decisions in governmental affairs without a knowledge of what happened in the past and the repercussions of acting in a certain manner.

Without the knowledge and exploration of history, mankind would be at a loss in approaching the future and some of its nasty surprises.

But Math is important too, you know. You can try to explain to your friend that you recognize its importance, and you know that he is very strong in the subject. But why can't he be a bit more broad minded? Does it make it right for him to denigrate something which he does not fully understand? simply because he doesn't care for this subject? If he's really that smart, why does he state that "we don't need to study history"---when it is always offered as an academic subject in educational institutions?

You could snap a finger, and maybe, just maybe he would snap out of his smugness.
 
My history teacher says "You have to know where you came from to know where you're going."
 
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