“The study of history has value only to the extent that it is relevant to our daily lives.”
History is a mirror. As Chinese old saying goes, studying history makes one wise and reasonable. More and more people become to realize the benefits of researches into history, believing that it can provide them values only if what they have learned from history can be relevant to their daily lives. But is this really the case? I cannot agree with them without any reserves.
First of all, studying history benefits us beyond daily lives by leading us to look back into the past and gain experience to apply to our world nowadays. The most typical example is the study of philosophy. Studying the history of philosophy, we acknowledge what problems the great thinkers have ever contemplated and what wisdom they have gained from musing, or see clearly how the philosophical theories debate and develop. More specifically, Sun Tzu, a famous philosopher of Chinese ancient times, wrote the book “The Art of War” thousands of years ago stating various strategies in wars, now are being highly spoken of by both military commanders and business leaders. They use these strategies like a kind of art into wars between countries or companies, to gain military victory or success in the market competition, affecting directly or indirectly what will happen in the future. This has been out the bound of people’s daily lives, while study of philosophy has the power to affect the future world.
Secondly, the history of science though seems meaningless if people only care its applicable uses in daily life, it is indispensable for the existence and development of human beings as a whole. History of science exhibits us not only success but also failures. Success such as Newton’s Classical Mechanism and Mendel’s experiments of inheritance, of which one provides a basic frame for classical physics studies and the other is the foundation of the disciplines of genetics, play significant roles in giving impetus to the development of both theoretical system and applicable technology. In addition, failures such as Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in America’s space exploring history or Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster, which both happened in 1986, offers people opportunities for deep reflection as well as grief. Knowing what contribution the pioneers have made motivate people explore the nature on the giants’ shoulders, and what the worst will happen make scientist more cautious when they are trying hard to challenge the nature.
History research is of so much subjective elements that even a same segment of history can be explained in different ways and give rise to several theoretical systems to support various ideas. So we cannot rely on the so called facts of history too much. Like many experts of Econometrics always emphasize:, ”Be careful! The statistics tell lies”, history tells lies too. One reason is that people lose information when doing record of what happed. Second reason is that no one is perfect, and famous persons will make mistakes too. Thus, we should have a sense of skepticism when learning from historical experience, and try to think creatively and independently, which I believe the way Copernicus put forward Copernican Heliocentrism to overthrow the blind believing and Roosevelt created the New Deal against the popular liberalism to save his people from Great Depression. Learning from the history selectively can help people find the proper way to a better future through continuous modifying or overthrowing and creating.
As H.W. Beecher has ever said: “ We should so live and labor in our time that what came to us as seed may go to the next generation as blossom, what came to us as blossom may go to them as fruit. This is what we mean by process.” The author believes that only studying history relevant to our daily life is valuable, which now can be regarded as a shallow statement. Form what we have discussed above, it’s safe to come to the conclusion that studying history can have an effect reaching far into the future of human beings and the world. We cannot be the selfish ones focusing on individuals’ daily lives only, and forget to make contribution to our next generations by studying history skeptically.
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