IELTS JOURNAL 139 Norman conquest of England (1066) or the name of the person who came up with the
theory of evolution at about the same time that Darwin did (Wallace) was deemed
superior—a better candidate for law school or even a business promotion. Knowledge
of historical facts has been used as a screening device in many societies, from China to
the United States, and the habit is still with us to some extent. Unfortunately, this use
can encourage mindless memorization—a real but not very appealing aspect of the
discipline.
History should be studied because it is essential to
individuals and to society, and because it harbors beauty.
There are many ways to discuss the real functions of the
subject—as there are many different historical talents and
many different paths to historical meaning. All definitions
of history's utility, however, rely on two fundamental
facts.
History Helps Us Understand People and Societies In the first place, history offers a storehouse of
information about how people and societies behave. Understanding the operations of
people and societies is difficult, though a number of disciplines make the attempt. An
exclusive reliance on current data would needlessly handicap our efforts. How can we
evaluate war if the nation is at peace—unless we use historical materials? How can we
understand genius, the influence of technological innovation, or the role that beliefs
play in shaping family life, if we don't use what we know about experiences in the
past? Some social scientists attempt to formulate laws or theories about human
behavior. But even these recourses depend on historical information, except for in
limited, often artificial cases in which experiments can be devised to determine how
people act. Major aspects of a society's operation, like mass elections, missionary
activities, or military alliances, cannot be set up as precise experiments. Consequently,
history must serve, however imperfectly, as our laboratory, and data from the past
must serve as our most vital evidence in the unavoidable quest to figure out why our
complex species behaves as it does in societal settings. This, fundamentally, is why we
cannot stay away from history: it offers the only extensive evidential base for the
contemplation and analysis of how societies function, and people need to have some
sense of how societies function simply to run their own lives.