8 ms·

Why Study History?

72 points by georgecmu 14y ago

triplesec 14y ago
Good points in good analytic terms, yet to persuade people I'd try to show them an example, to make it real. For example, Here's a brilliant (data-driven!) example of why Sociology is also worth your time: http://www.psmag.com/magazines/pacific-standard-cover-story/joe-henrich-weird-ultimatum-game-shaking-up-psychology-economics-53135 http://www.psmag.com/magazines/pacific-standard-cover-story/... I wish people would realise that data does come in more forms than just numbers. Numbers are useful, but the social and human sciences have much to teach even when their data is less statistically amenable. Some people are afraid of anything that doesn't have stats in it, and that is their loss!
- monkeyfacebag 14y ago
  It's not clear to me why the value of sociology would need to be defended. A good deal of the social graph analysis that's so popular now is built directly on the methods and works of sociologists and social psychologists (Stanley Milgram's small world, Zachary's karate club, etc.) with the big difference between then and now being availability of computational power and data sets. It seems like a field that has a lot of relevance today, even if perhaps people practice it under different guises.
  - triplesec 14y ago
    You are a thoughtful hacker, but most people don't look much outside their own arena, which they tend to think it better than the rest, for fairly obvious psychological reasons. HN probably contains a much more open minded sample than the average science/hacker community! I'm an applied sociologist, a human hacker with emphasis on method, inter alia. The number of brilliant bio / physics and maths-oriented friends I have who believe that statistics is the only meaningful measure of truth is not insignificant. Sad, but true, a narrow methodological ideology assuming the primacy of cardinal measurements and deduction over anything else. Good point, and I shall use social network analysis as another example for such people. There are numerous examples of this blindness in popular geek culture, such as xkcd positing an outdated reductionism to physics or maths, which as a numberloving teenager I also subscribed to, because it was neat and easy. Thank you for the pushback, but you are part of an enlightened segment. It's about time I constructed a survey to ascertain the actual values and beliefs in this space among the HN community. I wonder if they let you do surveys here.
stcredzero 14y ago
"In every age, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same."
pfraze 14y ago
A very enjoyable option for history fans is http://www.reddit.com/r/askhistorians http://www.reddit.com/r/askhistorians, which keeps very high standards for the authority of their responses.
- AlexDanger 14y ago
  I love /r/askhistorians because the questions are as fascinating as the answers. I wish I'd been exposed to such riveting discussions during my own history classes. I really enjoy the 'cross-cutting concerns' style questions that span historical periods. During your time period of expertise, an unwed woman finds out she's pregnant. What are her options? http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/165dyt/during_your_time_period_of_expertise_an_unwed/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/165dyt/during... It's year XXXX of your specialty. A dead body is discovered in the middle of a well populated area and the overwhelming evidence suggests he was murdered. Is anyone in charge of finding the killer? What is the attitude of the public and is there an expectation of justice? http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1247fn/its_year_xxxx_of_your_specialty_a_dead_body_is/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1247fn/its_ye... How common was casual sex throughout history? http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17zztg/how_common_was_casual_sex_throughout_history/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17zztg/how_co... What is an example of humour from your period? http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yus78/what_is_an_example_of_humour_from_your/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yus78/what_is... I think these types of questions would make great introductory history classes for students, rather than the linear blocks of 'for the next 10 weeks we learn about Ancient Egypt, then we learn Ancient Greece for 10 week' that was the structure of my first history classes.
phillmv 14y ago
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme". Know your 19th and 20th century history. It's remarkable how little gets communicated throughout a high school education. A good grasp of recent history really changes your perspective on the world and how people get along with each other.
protomyth 14y ago
Because the beginning of things is important to understand so you can see the growth an predict what comes next. It also helps to make an honest determination if something has lost its way and not just be resorting to hyperbole.
bcoates 14y ago
History doesn't need to justify itself any more than Literature or Dance does. But trying to turn it into something it's not -- a way of discovering new facts about the world -- is incredibly dangerous. Most educated people are aware that there are limits of reason, such as situations where the facts are so thin that the only honest answer is "I don't know". They are aware of the limits of science, where there is no practical experiment to falsify a claim and you have to fall back on tentative strategies like Popper's. But then these people look at history, and see this giant pile of anecdotes, and all the sudden it's the Middle Ages again and we can hermenutic our way to wisdom by staring at it really hard, or as this website puts it, "having repeated experience in historical inquiry". But I don't get it; if there's a heuristic for knowing when trying to solve problems with history is worse than nothing, I've missed it. Until I figure that out I'm going to have to stick with "always", and this webpage doesn't give me a lot of reason to think otherwise. How can history possibly be harmful? The OP makes the case repeatedly: "History Helps Us Understand People and Societies", but it doesn't give us any basis for knowing if that understanding is based on broad stereotype or outright lies, or worse yet, someone else's interpretation of history: a game of telephone stretching back to the dawn of communication. Merely becoming an experienced historian so that you're less likely to fall into that trap isn't sufficient; you're starting at worse than zero so you have to assume you've just gotten less terrible until you have some solid reason to think otherwise. "History Provides Identity." Identity, of course, being an organized system for dehumanizing other people. That history, true or false, is an incredibly powerful tool for doing this does it no favors as something you should voluntarily poison your mind with. "Studying History Is Essential for Good Citizenship." Here we're getting back around to a better excuse for studying history: If it really is unavoidable, and history is somehow part of us that we cannot destroy, then maybe we need to fill that hunger with a nice pablum like the US civics curriculum. It's a harm minimization strategy, like giving opiate addicts a supply of quality morphine so they don't stick whatever they find on the street into their veins.
- lists 14y ago
  'Most educated people are aware that there are limits of reason, such as situations where the facts are so thin that the only honest answer is "I don't know".' Some of the value of historical study is that you get to discover just how ideas like "limits of reason" and "I don't know" as a valid answer come about in the first place, out of processes that have nothing to do with progress and advancement. This is the kind of historical relativism people start getting afraid of ("what do you mean there's no objective standards for most anything!"), but it's a result of historical inquiry that actually commends us to actually think about what we say, do, and take to be true. We can have conversations with one another only when we drop assumptions. History is key to all ethical conversation.
afarrell 14y ago
Growing up, I've always had a passion for history. This was inspired by games such as Caesar, Civilization, Age of Empires, Dynasty Warriors, and Pirates. This led me to educate myself on military and geopolitical history. While this makes for interesting conversation, and understanding of foreign policy, and some insights into the nature of leadership and group loyalty, it has become increasingly obvious that it is less useful for understanding humans and organizations and their day-to-day conflicts and pathologies. It is far too high-level and besides, most interactions do not happen under the stresses of anarchy found on the campaign field or international stage. Can anyone recommend any histories that they have found that go into detail about the history of more mundane sorts of events we are likely to find in our lives? I'll start: Therac-25: A history of a deadly medical device design error and the organizational failure that accompanied it http://sunnyday.mit.edu/papers/therac.pdf http://sunnyday.mit.edu/papers/therac.pdf
- bokonist 14y ago
  Outre Mer by Paul Bourget http://books.google.com/books?id=5lQTAAAAYAAJ http://books.google.com/books?id=5lQTAAAAYAAJ It is the account of a French man traveling around the United States in the 1890's It's not about organizations so much, but is a wonderful book about the general life of the times. It is the closest thing I have found to a time machine that let's you experience turn of the century America. Democracy and the Party System in the United States: A study in extra constitutional government (1910) by Moisei Ostrogorski http://books.google.com/books?id=HmkPAAAAYAAJ&dq=democracy%20and%20the%20american%20party%20system%20in%20the%20united%20states%20harvard&pg=PP7#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=HmkPAAAAYAAJ&dq=democra... This is a very colorful political history of the United States. A lot of information about how the democratic institutions worked in practiced and evolved away from their formal and intended structures. Definitely a great antidote to the traditional civics class view of American democracy.
  - ljlolel 14y ago
    Question: how different is it from today?
- corporalagumbo 14y ago
contingencies 14y ago
Personally I see history as a huge but imperfectly solvable analytical problem. I am writing a little known Asian regional history at the moment, and absolutely love the long journey of discovery that is has provided. In this era of anything-at-the-search-prompt and prepackaged-newsbite immediacy, the capacity to evaluate and compound large numbers of disparate sources in to a coherent and useful narrative is more valuable than ever. Within programming, I certainly believe that this skill is critically useful for communicating the complex, multi-faceted environment around software systems: what led to their existence, how they differ from competing solutions, how they may be configured, maintained and integrated. More than once I recall people being astounded at my statement "I love writing documentation!". One former employer, when presented with a detailed report on a new third-party system, was simply shocked at the completeness and accessibility of the material: "Did you really write that?"
duopixel 14y ago
This is somewhat far-fetched, but I'd like to see more historians/ archaeologists get into big data. As a society we are collecting the most important bits of history and putting them in digital form. One might just decipher a bit more of the Maya code by analyzing patterns in the scripts, for example.
- pm90 14y ago
  This is already being done. A physicist I worked with used statistical methods to decipher part of the script used by the Indus Valley Civilization: [0]:http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/apr/23/indus-civilisation-language-symbols http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/apr/23/indus-civilisa... [1]:http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~rao/indus.html http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~rao/indus.html
shurcooL 14y ago
When I was younger, I used to really dislike history. I thought it was boring. I thought only the present and future were interesting. I didn't see the value in it. I see value[1] in history now. [1] https://twitter.com/shurcooL/status/308948806882426880 https://twitter.com/shurcooL/status/308948806882426880
- shurcooL 14y ago
  Ironically, the linked page doesn't show the tweet that was posted just a minute later, which is quite relevant. (https://twitter.com/shurcooL/status/308949225276862465 https://twitter.com/shurcooL/status/308949225276862465)
petercooper 14y ago
Half way through high school in the UK, you choose your subjects that you want to do until the end of high school and which you get your qualifications in. Being a bit weird, I chose subjects I didn't know much about so I wouldn't get bored, and chose history despite never giving it a second thought before. And.. it's probably the one subject that really stands out from high school for me now. It wasn't so much learning about facts and figures but learning about the art of studying history, the difference between primary and secondary sources, the importance of good sources, and similar general principles that have continued to be useful to me as an adult. I guess none of this would be surprising to anyone with a good liberal arts education, but approaching history as a math and science geek, it was a real eye opener for me as a teenager.
- triplesec 14y ago
  I never appreciated history until I became a grad psych/soc researcher into tech/media and grokked method (and how most researchers don't, and if you think you do, you probably don't). In high school it was all facts and figured and then I gave up the boring "learn stories" stuff up for A-level maths physics and chemistry. I wish they taught history and humanities at school in the way they teach physics and chemistry practicals. I'd have loved it then, and clever nerds would understand its value!
  - rplacd 14y ago
    I have the luck of going through one of those analytical history courses right now - but they do one thing differently: they don't even want to stoop down to prescribe on that level. Instead they give a higher-level question: "to what extent would you consider Mao's contribution to the development of modern China over-rated?" - and ask for a good argument. That inevitably that means considering counterpoints, placing them in context (and you can't go far with that if you don't understand a mite of historiography and how that in turn arises from "mainline" history), shooting them down. It's done wonders to my writing. In fact, it's been the only opportunity in my high school program to consider and create arguments of such depth - so there's your intrinsic value.
sixQuarks 14y ago
The best podcast on history: Hardcore History, by Dan Carlin. He also has a great podcast called "Common Sense".
simula67 14y ago
Every time people ask 'What is the point of this?' I remember the Mathematician's apology : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematicians_Apology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematicians_Apology. Many ideas Hardy felt were useless then, now provides the underpinning for some very useful applications in the real world.
gambiting 14y ago
I live in Polish town of Oswiecim - where the former Nazi Auschwitz Concentration camp is located. There is a quote on the wall there, one that I will remember forever. "The ones who forget history are bound to live through it again" And this is exactly the reason why we should teach history at schools.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- ams6110 14y ago
  The version I know is "Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
  - dredmorbius 14y ago
    Santyana. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Santayana http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Santayana
mhartl 14y ago
If you're serious about learning history, there's no substitute for reading primary sources: http://books.google.com/ http://books.google.com/ Remember that the cliché is right: the winners write the history books. The antidote is primary documents (and humility). This doesn't mean you should ignore secondary sources. Just keep them honest by going to the originals from time to time.
dm8 14y ago
As my history teacher would say, "to learn from our own (we as a society) past"
brudgers 14y ago
What matters is not what has happened in the past, but the way in which our interpretation of the past shapes our present actions. Describing Thomas Jefferson as a pedaeophile or arguing that he should be judged by the standards of his time and place say nothing about the past and much about our present time. "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Faulkner.
meerita 14y ago
And that day came. It was boring to read books on design, crime fiction and I bought a history book. It was about the life of Julius Caesar, I knew who he was and I knew what he had done, but I wanted to read it and refresh my memory. From that day, I started buying more and more books of history. Extending the story from 44BC in all directions. After that day (11 years ago) I can say that my life changed a lot. Now things are different. If you're at a party or at someone's home with friends and history appears as a topic of conversation, everyone says something but rarely agrees with the story itself. It is normal to hear more nonsenses than good facts or stories, and this is how you begin to tell the history for the rest so they understand it, and they realize that you tell in a much more attractive way than a school teacher. Everyone looks at you so mesmerized that once you finish, never, ever, you regret having learned about the story itself.
lutusp 14y ago
> History should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to society, and because it harbors beauty. And more important, we study history to avoid reliving it.
cawel 14y ago
So far, I have been taking 2 history courses [1][2] on coursera.org (which offers over 300 free online courses) and I can certainly recommend both of them. Each course looks like this: about 2 hours of video lectures per week (which you can watch whenever you want), over a period of ~15 weeks. Clearly, following those history courses meant that I do not see the world with the same eyes now. For one, I feel that I am developing a (healthy) reflex to view news events in perspective within a longer period of time, instead of just considering the events in themselves (thus lacking context). Also, drawing parallels with similar events in the past provides insight and offers a wider and more informed framework for devising an appropriate action. [1] "The Modern World: Global History since 1760" https://www.coursera.org/course/modernworld https://www.coursera.org/course/modernworld [2] "A History of the World since 1300" https://www.coursera.org/course/wh1300 https://www.coursera.org/course/wh1300
logical42 14y ago
..because if it's true that history repeats itself, then studying history is effectively studying the future? (i'm sorry, i couldn't help myself)
Crake 14y ago
Lacking historical knowledge doesn't mean being doomed to repeat it. Having human desires means being doomed to repeat it. You don't see wars started for lack of history majors (we have more today than we did for most of human history). group A: We want your [food, resources, women, whatever]. group B: Uhm, those are ours, you can't have them. group A: Too bad, we're going to take them by force. History is interesting, but the world has changed so much in the last hundred years, that most situations one encounters today have little relation to the past. Humanity's base drives haven't changed, but most people like to pretend those don't apply to their ingroup, historical education or no. Simple, greed driven motivations only apply to Other People; we always ascribe more complicated and more noble motives to ourselves.
peachananr 14y ago
Why study history? Because it's fun. How fun? Begin your journey right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yocja_N5s1I&list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yocja_N5s1I&list=PLBDA2E5...

72 points by georgecmu 14y ago

Good points in good analytic terms, yet to persuade people I'd try to show them an example, to make it real. For example, Here's a brilliant (data-driven!) example of why Sociology is also worth your time: http://www.psmag.com/magazines/pacific-standard-cover-story/joe-henrich-weird-ultimatum-game-shaking-up-psychology-economics-53135 http://www.psmag.com/magazines/pacific-standard-cover-story/... I wish people would realise that data does come in more forms than just numbers. Numbers are useful, but the social and human sciences have much to teach even when their data is less statistically amenable. Some people are afraid of anything that doesn't have stats in it, and that is their loss!

monkeyfacebag 14y ago
It's not clear to me why the value of sociology would need to be defended. A good deal of the social graph analysis that's so popular now is built directly on the methods and works of sociologists and social psychologists (Stanley Milgram's small world, Zachary's karate club, etc.) with the big difference between then and now being availability of computational power and data sets. It seems like a field that has a lot of relevance today, even if perhaps people practice it under different guises.
- triplesec 14y ago
  You are a thoughtful hacker, but most people don't look much outside their own arena, which they tend to think it better than the rest, for fairly obvious psychological reasons. HN probably contains a much more open minded sample than the average science/hacker community! I'm an applied sociologist, a human hacker with emphasis on method, inter alia. The number of brilliant bio / physics and maths-oriented friends I have who believe that statistics is the only meaningful measure of truth is not insignificant. Sad, but true, a narrow methodological ideology assuming the primacy of cardinal measurements and deduction over anything else. Good point, and I shall use social network analysis as another example for such people. There are numerous examples of this blindness in popular geek culture, such as xkcd positing an outdated reductionism to physics or maths, which as a numberloving teenager I also subscribed to, because it was neat and easy. Thank you for the pushback, but you are part of an enlightened segment. It's about time I constructed a survey to ascertain the actual values and beliefs in this space among the HN community. I wonder if they let you do surveys here.

stcredzero 14y ago

"In every age, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same."

pfraze 14y ago

A very enjoyable option for history fans is http://www.reddit.com/r/askhistorians http://www.reddit.com/r/askhistorians, which keeps very high standards for the authority of their responses.

AlexDanger 14y ago
I love /r/askhistorians because the questions are as fascinating as the answers. I wish I'd been exposed to such riveting discussions during my own history classes. I really enjoy the 'cross-cutting concerns' style questions that span historical periods. During your time period of expertise, an unwed woman finds out she's pregnant. What are her options? http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/165dyt/during_your_time_period_of_expertise_an_unwed/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/165dyt/during... It's year XXXX of your specialty. A dead body is discovered in the middle of a well populated area and the overwhelming evidence suggests he was murdered. Is anyone in charge of finding the killer? What is the attitude of the public and is there an expectation of justice? http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1247fn/its_year_xxxx_of_your_specialty_a_dead_body_is/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1247fn/its_ye... How common was casual sex throughout history? http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17zztg/how_common_was_casual_sex_throughout_history/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17zztg/how_co... What is an example of humour from your period? http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yus78/what_is_an_example_of_humour_from_your/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yus78/what_is... I think these types of questions would make great introductory history classes for students, rather than the linear blocks of 'for the next 10 weeks we learn about Ancient Egypt, then we learn Ancient Greece for 10 week' that was the structure of my first history classes.

phillmv 14y ago

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme". Know your 19th and 20th century history. It's remarkable how little gets communicated throughout a high school education. A good grasp of recent history really changes your perspective on the world and how people get along with each other.

protomyth 14y ago

Because the beginning of things is important to understand so you can see the growth an predict what comes next. It also helps to make an honest determination if something has lost its way and not just be resorting to hyperbole.

bcoates 14y ago

History doesn't need to justify itself any more than Literature or Dance does. But trying to turn it into something it's not -- a way of discovering new facts about the world -- is incredibly dangerous. Most educated people are aware that there are limits of reason, such as situations where the facts are so thin that the only honest answer is "I don't know". They are aware of the limits of science, where there is no practical experiment to falsify a claim and you have to fall back on tentative strategies like Popper's. But then these people look at history, and see this giant pile of anecdotes, and all the sudden it's the Middle Ages again and we can hermenutic our way to wisdom by staring at it really hard, or as this website puts it, "having repeated experience in historical inquiry". But I don't get it; if there's a heuristic for knowing when trying to solve problems with history is worse than nothing, I've missed it. Until I figure that out I'm going to have to stick with "always", and this webpage doesn't give me a lot of reason to think otherwise. How can history possibly be harmful? The OP makes the case repeatedly: "History Helps Us Understand People and Societies", but it doesn't give us any basis for knowing if that understanding is based on broad stereotype or outright lies, or worse yet, someone else's interpretation of history: a game of telephone stretching back to the dawn of communication. Merely becoming an experienced historian so that you're less likely to fall into that trap isn't sufficient; you're starting at worse than zero so you have to assume you've just gotten less terrible until you have some solid reason to think otherwise. "History Provides Identity." Identity, of course, being an organized system for dehumanizing other people. That history, true or false, is an incredibly powerful tool for doing this does it no favors as something you should voluntarily poison your mind with. "Studying History Is Essential for Good Citizenship." Here we're getting back around to a better excuse for studying history: If it really is unavoidable, and history is somehow part of us that we cannot destroy, then maybe we need to fill that hunger with a nice pablum like the US civics curriculum. It's a harm minimization strategy, like giving opiate addicts a supply of quality morphine so they don't stick whatever they find on the street into their veins.

lists 14y ago
'Most educated people are aware that there are limits of reason, such as situations where the facts are so thin that the only honest answer is "I don't know".' Some of the value of historical study is that you get to discover just how ideas like "limits of reason" and "I don't know" as a valid answer come about in the first place, out of processes that have nothing to do with progress and advancement. This is the kind of historical relativism people start getting afraid of ("what do you mean there's no objective standards for most anything!"), but it's a result of historical inquiry that actually commends us to actually think about what we say, do, and take to be true. We can have conversations with one another only when we drop assumptions. History is key to all ethical conversation.

afarrell 14y ago

Growing up, I've always had a passion for history. This was inspired by games such as Caesar, Civilization, Age of Empires, Dynasty Warriors, and Pirates. This led me to educate myself on military and geopolitical history. While this makes for interesting conversation, and understanding of foreign policy, and some insights into the nature of leadership and group loyalty, it has become increasingly obvious that it is less useful for understanding humans and organizations and their day-to-day conflicts and pathologies. It is far too high-level and besides, most interactions do not happen under the stresses of anarchy found on the campaign field or international stage. Can anyone recommend any histories that they have found that go into detail about the history of more mundane sorts of events we are likely to find in our lives? I'll start: Therac-25: A history of a deadly medical device design error and the organizational failure that accompanied it http://sunnyday.mit.edu/papers/therac.pdf http://sunnyday.mit.edu/papers/therac.pdf

bokonist 14y ago
Outre Mer by Paul Bourget http://books.google.com/books?id=5lQTAAAAYAAJ http://books.google.com/books?id=5lQTAAAAYAAJ It is the account of a French man traveling around the United States in the 1890's It's not about organizations so much, but is a wonderful book about the general life of the times. It is the closest thing I have found to a time machine that let's you experience turn of the century America. Democracy and the Party System in the United States: A study in extra constitutional government (1910) by Moisei Ostrogorski http://books.google.com/books?id=HmkPAAAAYAAJ&dq=democracy%20and%20the%20american%20party%20system%20in%20the%20united%20states%20harvard&pg=PP7#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=HmkPAAAAYAAJ&dq=democra... This is a very colorful political history of the United States. A lot of information about how the democratic institutions worked in practiced and evolved away from their formal and intended structures. Definitely a great antidote to the traditional civics class view of American democracy.
- ljlolel 14y ago
  Question: how different is it from today?
corporalagumbo 14y ago

contingencies 14y ago

Personally I see history as a huge but imperfectly solvable analytical problem. I am writing a little known Asian regional history at the moment, and absolutely love the long journey of discovery that is has provided. In this era of anything-at-the-search-prompt and prepackaged-newsbite immediacy, the capacity to evaluate and compound large numbers of disparate sources in to a coherent and useful narrative is more valuable than ever. Within programming, I certainly believe that this skill is critically useful for communicating the complex, multi-faceted environment around software systems: what led to their existence, how they differ from competing solutions, how they may be configured, maintained and integrated. More than once I recall people being astounded at my statement "I love writing documentation!". One former employer, when presented with a detailed report on a new third-party system, was simply shocked at the completeness and accessibility of the material: "Did you really write that?"

duopixel 14y ago

This is somewhat far-fetched, but I'd like to see more historians/ archaeologists get into big data. As a society we are collecting the most important bits of history and putting them in digital form. One might just decipher a bit more of the Maya code by analyzing patterns in the scripts, for example.

pm90 14y ago
This is already being done. A physicist I worked with used statistical methods to decipher part of the script used by the Indus Valley Civilization: [0]:http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/apr/23/indus-civilisation-language-symbols http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/apr/23/indus-civilisa... [1]:http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~rao/indus.html http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~rao/indus.html

shurcooL 14y ago

When I was younger, I used to really dislike history. I thought it was boring. I thought only the present and future were interesting. I didn't see the value in it. I see value[1] in history now. [1] https://twitter.com/shurcooL/status/308948806882426880 https://twitter.com/shurcooL/status/308948806882426880

shurcooL 14y ago
Ironically, the linked page doesn't show the tweet that was posted just a minute later, which is quite relevant. (https://twitter.com/shurcooL/status/308949225276862465 https://twitter.com/shurcooL/status/308949225276862465)

petercooper 14y ago

Half way through high school in the UK, you choose your subjects that you want to do until the end of high school and which you get your qualifications in. Being a bit weird, I chose subjects I didn't know much about so I wouldn't get bored, and chose history despite never giving it a second thought before. And.. it's probably the one subject that really stands out from high school for me now. It wasn't so much learning about facts and figures but learning about the art of studying history, the difference between primary and secondary sources, the importance of good sources, and similar general principles that have continued to be useful to me as an adult. I guess none of this would be surprising to anyone with a good liberal arts education, but approaching history as a math and science geek, it was a real eye opener for me as a teenager.

triplesec 14y ago
I never appreciated history until I became a grad psych/soc researcher into tech/media and grokked method (and how most researchers don't, and if you think you do, you probably don't). In high school it was all facts and figured and then I gave up the boring "learn stories" stuff up for A-level maths physics and chemistry. I wish they taught history and humanities at school in the way they teach physics and chemistry practicals. I'd have loved it then, and clever nerds would understand its value!
- rplacd 14y ago
  I have the luck of going through one of those analytical history courses right now - but they do one thing differently: they don't even want to stoop down to prescribe on that level. Instead they give a higher-level question: "to what extent would you consider Mao's contribution to the development of modern China over-rated?" - and ask for a good argument. That inevitably that means considering counterpoints, placing them in context (and you can't go far with that if you don't understand a mite of historiography and how that in turn arises from "mainline" history), shooting them down. It's done wonders to my writing. In fact, it's been the only opportunity in my high school program to consider and create arguments of such depth - so there's your intrinsic value.

sixQuarks 14y ago

The best podcast on history: Hardcore History, by Dan Carlin. He also has a great podcast called "Common Sense".

simula67 14y ago

Every time people ask 'What is the point of this?' I remember the Mathematician's apology : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematicians_Apology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematicians_Apology. Many ideas Hardy felt were useless then, now provides the underpinning for some very useful applications in the real world.

gambiting 14y ago

I live in Polish town of Oswiecim - where the former Nazi Auschwitz Concentration camp is located. There is a quote on the wall there, one that I will remember forever. "The ones who forget history are bound to live through it again" And this is exactly the reason why we should teach history at schools.

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ams6110 14y ago
The version I know is "Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  Santyana. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Santayana http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Santayana

mhartl 14y ago

If you're serious about learning history, there's no substitute for reading primary sources: http://books.google.com/ http://books.google.com/ Remember that the cliché is right: the winners write the history books. The antidote is primary documents (and humility). This doesn't mean you should ignore secondary sources. Just keep them honest by going to the originals from time to time.

dm8 14y ago

As my history teacher would say, "to learn from our own (we as a society) past"

brudgers 14y ago

What matters is not what has happened in the past, but the way in which our interpretation of the past shapes our present actions. Describing Thomas Jefferson as a pedaeophile or arguing that he should be judged by the standards of his time and place say nothing about the past and much about our present time. "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Faulkner.

meerita 14y ago

And that day came. It was boring to read books on design, crime fiction and I bought a history book. It was about the life of Julius Caesar, I knew who he was and I knew what he had done, but I wanted to read it and refresh my memory. From that day, I started buying more and more books of history. Extending the story from 44BC in all directions. After that day (11 years ago) I can say that my life changed a lot. Now things are different. If you're at a party or at someone's home with friends and history appears as a topic of conversation, everyone says something but rarely agrees with the story itself. It is normal to hear more nonsenses than good facts or stories, and this is how you begin to tell the history for the rest so they understand it, and they realize that you tell in a much more attractive way than a school teacher. Everyone looks at you so mesmerized that once you finish, never, ever, you regret having learned about the story itself.

lutusp 14y ago

> History should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to society, and because it harbors beauty. And more important, we study history to avoid reliving it.

cawel 14y ago

So far, I have been taking 2 history courses [1][2] on coursera.org (which offers over 300 free online courses) and I can certainly recommend both of them. Each course looks like this: about 2 hours of video lectures per week (which you can watch whenever you want), over a period of ~15 weeks. Clearly, following those history courses meant that I do not see the world with the same eyes now. For one, I feel that I am developing a (healthy) reflex to view news events in perspective within a longer period of time, instead of just considering the events in themselves (thus lacking context). Also, drawing parallels with similar events in the past provides insight and offers a wider and more informed framework for devising an appropriate action. [1] "The Modern World: Global History since 1760" https://www.coursera.org/course/modernworld https://www.coursera.org/course/modernworld [2] "A History of the World since 1300" https://www.coursera.org/course/wh1300 https://www.coursera.org/course/wh1300

logical42 14y ago

..because if it's true that history repeats itself, then studying history is effectively studying the future? (i'm sorry, i couldn't help myself)

Crake 14y ago

Lacking historical knowledge doesn't mean being doomed to repeat it. Having human desires means being doomed to repeat it. You don't see wars started for lack of history majors (we have more today than we did for most of human history). group A: We want your [food, resources, women, whatever]. group B: Uhm, those are ours, you can't have them. group A: Too bad, we're going to take them by force. History is interesting, but the world has changed so much in the last hundred years, that most situations one encounters today have little relation to the past. Humanity's base drives haven't changed, but most people like to pretend those don't apply to their ingroup, historical education or no. Simple, greed driven motivations only apply to Other People; we always ascribe more complicated and more noble motives to ourselves.

peachananr 14y ago

Why study history? Because it's fun. How fun? Begin your journey right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yocja_N5s1I&list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yocja_N5s1I&list=PLBDA2E5...