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The study of history is essential as it connects the present with the past and provides insights into human behavior, societal operations, and moral understanding. It serves as a vital resource for evaluating complex social phenomena and offers inspiration through historical examples of courage and resilience. Additionally, history contributes to the formation of identity for individuals and nations by illustrating their development and cohesion over time.

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6 views

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The study of history is essential as it connects the present with the past and provides insights into human behavior, societal operations, and moral understanding. It serves as a vital resource for evaluating complex social phenomena and offers inspiration through historical examples of courage and resilience. Additionally, history contributes to the formation of identity for individuals and nations by illustrating their development and cohesion over time.

Uploaded by

Javeedkhan Pattan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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History – Its Concept,

Nature and Significance 1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY OF


HISTORY
NOTES
The study of history is no waste of time or luxury, but a pressing need. It takes
out of the narrowness and commonplace, events of everyday life. It depicts
before us an exciting picture of the march of man through the ages and the
work of the multitudes of men trying to pass on to us a better life than theirs. It
is the story of the development of man in various fields, i.e., social, political,
cultural, economic and religious, etc. and helps us to understand how the world
developed into what it is. In addition, it links the present with the past.
1.4.1 History Helps Us to Understand People and Societies
History offers a storehouse of information about how people and societies
behave. Understanding the operations of people and societies is difficult,
though a number of disciplines make the attempt. An exclusive reliance on
current data would needlessly handicap our efforts. How can we evaluate war if
the nation is at peace – unless we use historical materials? How can we
understand genius, the influence of technological innovation, or the role that
beliefs play in shaping family life, if we do not use what we know about
experiences in the past? Some social scientists attempt to formulate laws or
theories about human behaviour. But even these resources depend on historical
information, except for in limited, often artificial cases in which experiments
can be devised to determine how people act. Major aspects of a society’s
operation, like mass elections, missionary activities, or military alliances,
cannot be set up as precise experiments. Consequently, history must serve,
however imperfectly, as our laboratory, and data from the past must serve as
our most vital evidence in the unavoidable quest to figure out why our complex
species behaves as it does in societal settings.
1.4.2 History Contributes to Moral Understanding
History also provides a ground for moral contemplation. Studying the stories of
individuals and situations in the past allows a student of history to test his or her
own moral sense, to hone it against some of the real complexities individuals
have faced in difficult settings. People who have weathered adversity not just in
some work of fiction, but in real, historical circumstances can provide
inspiration. “History teaching by example” is one phrase that describes this use
of a study of the past—a study not only of certifiable heroes, the great men and
women of history who successfully worked through moral dilemmas, but also
of more ordinary people who provide lessons in courage, diligence, or
constructive protest.
1.4.3 History Provides Identity
History also provides identity, and this is unquestionably one of the reasons all
modern nations encourage its teaching in some form. Historical data include
evidence about how families, groups, institutions and whole countries were
Self-Instructional
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formed and about how they have evolved while retaining cohesion. For many

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