> Human beings react to the same emotions and incentives they always have And we know this... how? Studying history! > and there's no library big enough to ch

> Human beings react to the same emotions and incentives they always have And we know this... how? Studying history! > and there's no library big enough to change that Who's trying to change human nature? This is a strawman you are thrashing. Studying history is about understanding human nature, not changing it. Just like studying physics is about understanding projectile motion, not about changing the gravitational constant. The idea behind studying history is that we use the insights gained from it to try to solve new challenges in reasonable ways, instead of ways we'd know were likely to fail if we'd just cracked open a book.