Why should we study history?
In this paper, I shall present a number of people's opinions on why we should study history. Let me point out at the outset that many of these views overlap, with differences that are ones of emphasis, rather than of principle.
According to some of the greatest historians, such as Arnold Toynbee, the essential value of history is its ability to give us self-awareness, self-knowledge. This occurs because historical figures are presented to us in detail. Studying Alexander the Great, for instance, teaches us that a single person is capable of the whole range of behaviour from cruelty to kindness.
Diane Ravich, an education policy analyst, gives a practical reason for studying history. Like many others before her, she claims that history doesn't tell us the answers to our questions, but it helps to inform us and thus to improve our judgment, so that we make better choices in the future.
With a different focus, though, we can say that we know nothing about the future, and the present is just a moment, so in fact all there is is history. As the philosopher of education John Dewey suggested, the only tool we have for making sense of the reality we experience is what has occurred in the past.
According to historian Mark M Krug, the knowledge of how people acted in the past may not always suggest clever solutions to present crises, but it makes the task of finding them easier by giving us a starting point, a body of past experience which we can, and if necessary, reject. Peter N Stearns argues that the wisdom available from history has a personal, everyday application. People need to have some sense of the workings of societies, simply so that they can run their own lives without coming into conflict with the community to which they belong.
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said people need models to imitate, and historical models are particularly powerful because they actually existed. Through her contribution to ending English rule over France, Joan of Arc demonstrates the power of individual belief and action. Galileo's opposition to the prevailing belief that the sun and planets orbited the Earth symbolises the fight against authority for freedom of thought. When studying history, we judge the actions of historical figures to be admirable or despicable, good or bad, and choose who we want to emulate.
Some philosophers have identified a pattern in historical events. Both Georg Hegel and Oswald Spengler saw history as a dynamic process, one in which nothing is static, in contrast to the many other philosophers who have believed that history consists of unique events. But there the resemblance ends. In Hegel's view, history is a process of conflict between opposite ideas, leading towards greater freedom, which combines the best elements of the two original ideas.
Spengler, on the other hand, developed the organic view that historical cultures, like plants and animals, follow a process of growth, flowering and deterioration, a rise inevitably leading to a fall. There are very many historical examples of both individuals and empires that have conformed to this pattern.
Many historians argue that a society which has a shared cultural understanding of its own history is more likely to function smoothly than a society that is ignorant of its past. For example, Beverly Southgate claims that societies, like individuals, need to know who they are, and where they belong. Individuals who lack this sense of uniqueness are likely to feel that life has little meaning or purpose, and so too with societies. A shared knowledge of its history provides a nation with meaning, purpose and cohesion.
Southgate would agree with Conal Furay and Michael J Salevouris, in whose view a society that cannot recall its past is like an individual with amnesia, unaware of the roots that have created it. As a consequence, it has no direction, and this impacts on its further evolution.
These two historians identify another value of history. We tend to have a narrow view of our own society, assuming that its ways are the only acceptable ones. By learning how our own country used to be, we may realise that our present-day customs are not the only ones which are acceptable. This clearly has implications for our attitude towards other present-day countries and cultures, too.
Many historians and educators believe that the expert knowledge possessed by historians includes not only the learning of factual information, but also the habit of critically examining and evaluating evidence. These are abilities worth developing, as they are very useful, both in other academic pursuits and in almost any career.
Homo ergaster
A A huge debate rages about human origins, but the broad consensus among scientists is that all the different species of human (hominids) that have ever existed were descended from ape-like creatures that walked upright in Africa more than six million years ago. These creatures had many descendants, most of which became extinct, but the first creature we would recognise as human first appeared in Africa almost two million years ago. Homo ergaster, meaning 'working human', evolved during an accelerated period of global cooling and drying that cleared more and more tropical rainforest from Africa, and created desert in the northern half of the continent.
B One of the best sources of information about Homo ergaster is a skeleton found in 1984 by Alan Walker and Kamoya Kimeu at Nariokotome in West Turkana, Kenya. The remains turned out to be those of a young boy, who was between 11 and 13 when he died. Around 1.5 million years ago, the boy's body sank into the marsh where he died, and became fossilised. His teeth show signs of a sizeable abscess where his milk teeth fell out, indicating that he may have died from blood poisoning. Nariokotome Boy, as he has been dubbed, was about 160 centimetres (5 feet 3 inches) tall, and would have stood at 185 centimetres (6 feet 1 inch) had he reached adulthood.
C He was clearly a strong boy, with a body shape that was perfectly adapted to an active life in the sun. Human populations living on equatorial grasslands today, such as the Masai in Kenya, have the same tall, linear physique. This body shape creates a large surface area over which the body can cool itself more easily, preventing Nariokotome Boy from overheating under the blazing sun. This hominid was probably the first to regulate its temperature through sweating. For creatures that must remain active at midday in a sunny, dry habitat, sweating is the most effective mechanism for maintaining safe body and brain temperatures. Homo ergaster's body was probably smooth and largely hairless, since heat loss through sweating occurs most efficiently through naked skin. Its skin was almost certainly dark, to protect it from the sun's harmful rays.
D Homo ergaster travelled long distances on foot, as it worked hard to scavenge enough meat to feed its body and brain. In order to increase the energy efficiency of muscles involved in upright walking, Homo ergaster developed a narrower pelvis. But its slim hips came at a price. Firstly, the narrowing of the pelvis caused the lower part of the rib cage to narrow. In order to prevent constriction of the lungs, the upper part of Homo ergaster's rib cage expanded, giving its chest a human barrel shape. Secondly, and more importantly, the narrowing of the pelvis constricted the female birth canal. This single anatomical change seems to have had profound consequences for human society.
E As brains increased in size, mothers had to push increasingly big-brained infants through an already tight pelvis, and that caused problems. The eventual solution was a trade-off. While chimpanzees are born with their brains almost fully mature, humans are born with a comparatively immature brain. This makes human babies helpless and vulnerable during their first year of life as their brains make vital neural connections. As a result, human mothers need to be well nourished to keep up with the demands of their babies, making them increasingly reliant on the support of their male partner and other members of their group. Many experts regard this shift as the beginning of the nuclear family with its distinctively human pattern of sharing and cooperation between males and females.
F Nariokotome Boy had a thick, bony ridge across his eyes. A pair of front teeth stuck out at an angle from a large, projecting mouth below a long, wide nose. His anatomy does not seem developed enough to have given him the control over his breathing needed for complex speech, so Homo ergaster probably communicated using hand movements supplemented by a limited range of sounds. The other relatively small teeth of Nariokotome Boy suggest that Homo ergaster relied more than his ancestors on stone tools for cutting up meat before eating. To begin with, Homo ergaster used primitive implements, which were little more than chipped rocks with sharp edges. But by around 1.6 million years ago, Homo ergaster developed symmetrical, heart-shaped handaxes, which gave the hominid greater control over the butchering of meat.
G Shortly after Homo ergaster appeared 1.9 million years ago, humans began to leave Africa for the first time and move to other continents. Archaeological records show they spread over an area ranging from Turkey into Asia, although the population may not have been very large. This newfound desire to travel may have been dictated by an increasing reliance on meat for food. Carnivores generally need much larger home ranges than similar-sized herbivores, because carnivores have fewer total calories, in the form of animal prey, available to them per unit area of their territory.
What should companies do to survive?
A In the world of business, where today's fashionable management theory soon becomes a stale cliché or a quaint archaism, it is essential to have a clear idea about the enduring rules of good management. The company that follows these is the company that is in the strongest position amid the uncertainties and violent upheavals of the world as we know it.
B A company is the sum of what its people understand and know how to do well. Value lies increasingly in creative ideas and knowledge. But ideas have value only if people share and develop them in ways that increase revenue; knowledge is useful only if people can find what they need to know. Getting intelligent people to share what is in their heads is vital, and takes more than mere money or clever software. Ideas must flow in every direction through a company – not merely from the top down. And knowledge is worth storing only if senior staff set careful rules to filter and structure it. What goes into a database determines the value of what comes out. So setting central rules and standards is key to good knowledge management.
C Good judgement is a key skill. Managers constantly blitzed with new information need to build in the data that matters and set aside the rest. Big-bang decisions are generally best avoided – or implemented in small incremental moves that leave room for flexibility and for altering course, if circumstances change.
D Customers matter – but some matter more than others. Acquiring new customers often costs more than making extra sales to existing ones. So companies must build loyalty by providing reliability and good service. Given the welter of product information reaching customers, memorable brands will grow more important. Companies need not only to widen their reach by finding new markets, but also to deepen existing relationships. They have more information than ever before about their customers, and must use this to offer their most profitable customers special deals and to make them feel part of an elite club. Some companies even seek to 'fire' unprofitable customers by charging them higher rates than others.
E Like its customers, some of a company's people matter more than others, and not just at the top: managing talent is also about capturing innovative ideas from middle managers and those further down the line. At every level, managers must identify where most value lies. In some cases, a few stars will encapsulate much of a company's value; in others, teams of employees will matter more. Some companies will want to hire the talents of 'free agents' as and when they are required; others, to employ directly their best brains.
F Companies need to collaborate more, in alliances that allow them to outsource production or to spread risk or to enter new markets. Effective collaboration calls for trust and shared understanding, rather than the top-down, command-and-control approach of hierarchical structures. Successful collaboration also requires excellent communication, and incentives that reward sharing information and working for common goals. As costs of handling information in a company decline, new opportunities open for redefining corporate shape, and companies are becoming less hierarchical, with more ways to arrange and rearrange structure. Managers must think through from scratch which activities should be kept in-house and which outsourced, and normally a company should keep those activities it does better than its competitors.
G Given the pace of change, bosses need more than ever to be able to communicate persuasively through many channels, with their staff and the outside world. They must also listen: the most valuable communications will frequently be bottom-up, and the people nearest to the customer are best placed to explain what they see and hear. Managers must listen to them.
H Ironically, internet technologies, tools of freedom and decentralisation, call for discipline and standard processes. Only by setting standards and insisting that everyone abide by them will companies reap their potential savings. Companies need to insist on common practices in areas such as purchasing and information technology in order to harvest real productivity gains. As a result, some aspects of centralisation will increase: a key task of top managers is to provide structures and standards, and to insist that they are observed. Once standards have been set, openness and freedom should reign. Centralisation of standards makes possible decentralisation of decision making. In addition, internet technologies increase the need for a culture of openness, to foster the sharing of knowledge and effective collaboration. Increasingly, companies will allow their suppliers and customers 'inside the machine,' as it were, by giving them extraordinary access to their databases and inner workings in order to integrate their operations and to make collaboration effective.
J The key to success lies much less in technical know-how than in excellent leadership to push through and build upon organisational change. At some points in a company's life, it will need a leader who can rally staff to push through the trauma of disruptive change. At other times, the right style will be the manager-as-coach, a selfless talent scout who specialises in assembling and motivating great teams. Always, the people at the top will set the tone in a firm. Their skills will determine whether it is a good company to work in and do business with.
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