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 school’s 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 can’t 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 school’s 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 can’t 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. I’m Skeptical • “History: an account mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.”~ Ambrose Bierce • “I don’t 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. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s 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?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY

21. This doesn’t 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 Austen’s 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 harm’s 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 deeds—some displayed by Greeks, some by barbarians—may 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?v=Ahg6qcgoay4

34. Genesis 1:1

35. John 1:1 All history is incomprehensible without Christ.~ Ernest Renan

36. Colossians 1:15-23

37. Genesis 3 – Romans 8

38. David’s Leadership Model • Confidence in God, and led others to place their confidence in him. • Saw God’s 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