In an online discussion post, Alcorn State University history professor Dr. Jason Gibson posed a question that represented part of his students’ midterm. It was about the…
In an online discussion post, Alcorn State University history professor Dr. Jason Gibson posed a question that represented part of his students’ midterm. It was about the…
They are useless. History is useless by definition; and philosophy has reached the peak of its usefulness somewhere in the middle of the XIX century and can’t do better anymore. Like alchemy, which was useful at some point.
Often, people who say that philosophy and the study of history are useless endeavours are hoping for the resurrection of some historical philosophy or another and they don’t want people to find out how and why it failed.
Are you one of those people?
That’s strange logic. I just want people to analyze the current situation with modern tools, not referring to some ancient legends.
What makes something useful to you? Does it need to be something done or learned purely for the sake of profits? Does it need to be cold and unfeeling data for it to matter?
That’s the question I can’t answer. Really, I can’t formulate a really nice definition of usefulness. But still I can’t think of any use for history. Except maybe fun as in “literature”. But being fun doesn’t justify its teaching at school. Drinking alcohol is fun too, but…
History serves as a record for the decisions of those who came before us. I believe it matters so that we can learn something from both the mistakes and the pivotal moments of the past.
Personally, I was convinced about just how much history mattered when I took a class on it taught by a veteran. The way we avoid making poor decisions -decisions which bring about the premature deaths of countless young men and the innocent, through acts of war - is by learning from our past and looking for a better path.
Philosophy matters for the same reasons, imo. If we are not taught how to reason, how can we expect to live a life that has any meaning or purpose? Both for ourselves and for others. If we’re not taught how to see through the dangers and misdirection of logical fallacies, for instance, we can more easily be bought into a lie or blame a scapegoat for all of our problems.
This is absurd. You don’t think there’s anything important that we can learn from our past and apply toward our future?
Time changes. Cultures, laws… Absolutely all that changes. Data, that history gathers, can’t be used for prediction. At least the precision won’t be better than if you will just analyze your current situation. Absurd is trying to predict the future from fairy tails about kings and dragons.
Time changes but people don’t. Weird that you bring up fairytales about kings and dragons despite that having absolutely nothing to do with history.
People do too. And history is ALL about fairy tales.
How can you claim that people/societies change with time while also claiming that history is all about fairytales? How can you possibly determine what people or society used to be like if you also think that any records from that time are useless and made up? Utter nonsense.