Why Study History?

1
Why Study History?
2
Think of a horn
3
Horn

• Protruding from head
• Band instrument
• Car horn
• Shoe horn
• Saddle horn

4

• What is the first thing Socrates wanted to do
  when engaging a topic of discussion?

5
What is history?

• (defining our terms)

6
History button on web browser
7
Medical history
8
Aggregate of past events -- critical time in
schools history

• In its amplest meaning History includes every
  trace and vestige of everything that man has done
  or thought since first he appeared on the
  earth. James Harvey Robinson

9
A narrative description of past events a
history of France

• (Can anyone write the history of France?
• History will be kind to me for I intend to write
  it. Winston Churchill
• All history becomes subjective in other words
  there is properly no history, only biography.
  Ralph Waldo Emerson

10
The discipline that records and interprets past
events involving human beings He taught
medieval history
11
All that is remembered of the past as preserved
in writing a body of knowledge -- the dawn of
recorded history
12
Artifacts You cant tear down that building,
it is history!
13
History is a Greek word which means, literally,
just investigation. Arnold Toynbee
14
What is history?

• History button on web browser
• Medical history
• Aggregate of past events critical time in
  schools history
• A narrative description of past events a
  history of France

15
What is history (cont)

• The discipline that records and interprets past
  events involving human beings He taught
  medieval history
• All that is remembered of the past as preserved
  in writing a body of knowledge -- the dawn of
  recorded history
• Artifacts You cant tear down that building,
  it is history!

16
Something to watch for

• Confusion of the past with history
• What is equivocation?
• The fallacy of four terms.
• Few will have the greatness to bend history
  itself but each of us can work to change a small
  portion of events, and in the total of all those
  acts will be written the history of this
  generation. Robert F. Kennedy

17
Im Skeptical

• History an account mostly false, of events
  unimportant, which are brought about by rulers
  mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.
  Ambrose Bierce
• I dont believe the truth will ever be known,
  and I have a great contempt for history.
  General George Meade
• Clio, the muse of history, is as thoroughly
  infected with lies as a street whore with
  syphilis. Schopenhauer

18

• History is more or less bunk. Its tradition. We
  dont want tradition. We want to live in the
  present and the only history that is worth a
  tinkers damn is the history we make today.
  Henry Ford
• The history of states and nations has provided
  some income for historiographers and book
  dealers, but I know no other purpose it may have
  served. Borne

19

• History consists of a series of accumulated
  imaginative inventions. Voltaire
• We learn from history that we learn nothing from
  history. George Bernard Shaw

20
Your Scepticism exponential times

• Did You Know video (3.0)
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vcL9Wu2kWwSY

21
This doesnt sound too exciting

• History, real solemn history, I cannot be
  interested in. I read it a little as a duty but
  it tells me nothing that does not either vex or
  weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with
  wars and pestilences in every page the men all
  so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all
  - it is very tiresome. Spoken by Jane Austens
  character Catherine Morland, in Northanger
  Abbey)

22
Zeus, Io, Argus, and Hermes

• History of the pipe
• The story of Io was told in the ancient epic
  tradition at least four times of which we have
  traces
• You will meet Io again in Prometheus Bound
• No harms done to history by making it something
  someone would want to read. David C. McCullough

23
Why Inquire into the past?

• First line from Herodotus Histories Herodotus
  of Halicarnassus here displays his inquiry, so
  that human achievements may not become forgotten
  in time, and great and marvelous deedssome
  displayed by Greeks, some by barbariansmay not
  be without their glory and especially to show
  why the two peoples fought with each other.

24
Herodotus

• so that human achievements may not become
  forgotten in time
• -- What men do is significant.
• especially to show why the two peoples fought
  with each other.
• -- Seeking understanding. Answer the why
  questions.

25
Aristotle

• If you would understand anything, observe its
  beginning and its development.

26
Dionysius of Halicarnassus

• History is philosophy teaching by example.
• -- One of the lessons of history is that nothing
  is often a good thing to do and always a clever
  thing to say. Will Durant

27
Robert Penn Warren

• The past is always a rebuke to the present.
• (note C.S. Lewis admonition about reading old
  books)

28
Machiavelli

• Whoever wishes to foresee the future must
  consult the past for human events ever resemble
  those of preceding times. This arises from the
  fact that they are produced by men who ever have
  been, and ever shall be, animated by the same
  passions, and thus they necessarily have the same
  results.

29
George Santayana

• Those who cannot remember the past are condemned
  to repeat it.
• A country without a memory is a country of
  madmen.
• -- History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot
  be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not
  be lived again. Maya Angelou
• -- There are those to point to what is going on
  in Washington DC and say that we did not learn
  from past attempts at socialism.

30
David C. McCullough

• History is a guide to navigation in perilous
  times. History is who we are and why we are the
  way we are.

31
Enrichment - Beauty

• History is a great deal closer to poetry than is
  generally realised in truth, I think, it is in
  essence the same. A. L. Rowse
• History, we can confidently assert, is useful in
  the sense that art and music, poetry and flowers,
  religion and philosophy are useful. Without it
  as with these life would be poorer and meaner
  without it we should be denied some of those
  intellectual and moral experiences which give
  meaning and richness to life. Surely it is no
  accident that the study of history has been the
  solace of many of the noblest minds of every
  generation. Henry Steele Commager

32
Class Emphasis

• To better understand the flow of human events and
  the foundations of our own culture.
• Cultural literacy
• Anthropology enriched by understanding others
• History is His Story

33
Test Your Awareness

• Video -- http//www.youtube.com/watch?vAhg6qcgoay
  4

34
Genesis 11
35
John 11

• All history is incomprehensible without Christ.
  Ernest Renan

36
Colossians 115-23
37
Genesis 3 Romans 8
38
Davids Leadership Model

• Confidence in God, and led others to place their
  confidence in him.
• Saw Gods activity around him and pointed it out
  to others.
• Obeyed God, and led others to obey God

39
What happens when you see God?

• Isaiah 6