Why Study? Part 1: History

If asked what I study, this would be my answer: “I am a historian.  My field is the Middle Ages.  My specialty is apocalypticism.”  But why do I study these things, and why should you?

This is the first of a series entitled, “Why Study ______?”  There are certainly many voices that can answer this question for any particular entry, and even I have changed my reasoning over the years.  But I hope to at least provide some of my favorite reasons for pursuing various studies in the hope that they will help inspire others to see them as enjoyable and valuable topics.  To start off, I would like to discuss why I study history.

So, why study history?  I will begin with my answer – two in fact – and then explain what I mean, albeit in a round-about manner.  First, history should be studied because it isn’t what you think it is, that is, it has very little to do with dates, names, and places.  Second, and for me the most important, because history is the best way to study everything besides history.  What does this mean?  Let’s start with the first part.

In my experience, the study of history is popularly a neglected field.  Certainly, historical topic spark interest among many people.  One might be interested in the Roman Empire, the American Revolution, the Meiji Restoration, the Second World War, the Islamic Golden Age, the Kingdom of the Zulu, the Cahokia civilization, or Caribbean piracy in the age of sail, for example.  I most definitely applaud investigating these or any other historical periods.  But I think for most Americans, interest in a historical topic and the study of history are two different things, the former popularly encouraged, the latter generally avoided.  Individual interest in history tends to be done privately, as if in spite of rather than because of formal education.  

When someone is presented in a classroom with “History,” Americans tends to see it as an exercise in memorization and regurgitation, and as such, something to be suffered through.  Dates, names, and places.  1863, Lincoln, Gettysburg.  Or, perhaps more graphically, Booth in Ford’s Theater with a pistol (like Col. Mustard in the study with the revolver).  Reduced to this level – that is, the level of the board game Clue, where being “good” at history is simply gathering the correct nouns together for the final exam – history certainly seems like it has little to offer beyond the amusing anecdote or piece of trivia.  Yet, in an odd way, this does come near the mark, albeit unintentionally.

The game of Clue is not actually about memorization and regurgitation.  For those unfamiliar with it, a quick summary of the premise.  In Clue, each player is trying to discover the randomly generated perpetrator of a murder, the location of the murder, and the murder weapon used.  No one person starts with that piece of information, but as players move around the game board (a stylized mansion), they can pick up on clues, eliminating suspects and other pieces of information.  When a player thinks they have narrowed down the clues to the correct person, place, and weapon, they announce their suspicion and privately look at the correct answer (stored in the center of the board).  If they are correct, they win.  If they are wrong, they lose the game and other players continue on.  Thus success is based on using the clues one gets logically while also working quickly so that others don’t guess correctly first.  And that is the tension: speed vs. thoroughness, all revolving around logical problem solving.

This is what history is – at least, in part.  Clue is not based on memorization whatsoever (you have a sheet at all times that you can write notes on) but on investigation.  To be sure, the information gathered – the raw facts – is of vital importance.  The game is won and lost depending on if Mrs. White or Prof. Plum used a knife or a rope in the kitchen or the ballroom.  Facts matter.  But the game is not about knowing facts but about gathering and using facts.  In short, in a very simplistic way, it is about critical thinking and problem solving.  Students of history will quickly see how far short my comparison between historical study and Clue falls.  Studying history is indeed about using a wide variety of skills, and in the process of studying history, those skills get further refined.  Knowing that Lincoln gave his Gettysburg address in 1863 may not be terribly important on a day-to-day basis for most people, but understanding the sequence of events that led a man named John Wilkes Booth watch an abolitionist be hung in 1859, before the Civil War began, to plot to assassinate the president less than 6 years later is of great value.  The value is not inherent in the facts themselves – though, again, those help make up the raw materials of the study – but in the way the connecting lines are drawn, just as the fun of Clue is not in the answer but in the investigation.  In this light, the study of history is quite valuable, because it can provide and enhance skills that can be applied not to specific dates, names, and places but to any other endeavor.

The second reason to study history, as I said, is because it allows one to study everything that isn’t history.  Mathematics can be applied to many things, but not everything is math.  Biological forces inform so much of ourselves and our world, but there is little overlap between it and astrophysics, for example.  Every other fields of study has similar constraints save for history.  History is everything for all time.  Everything humans have done or thought about falls into its purview: the history of mathematics, the history of biology, of astrophysics, music, politics, fashion, art, technology, accounting practices, interior design, hygiene, cinema, board games, the internet, the Civil War, and, well, everything else.  Do you want to study the night Lincoln was assassinated?  Well, what interests you?  The life of President Lincoln, or that of Booth?  Southern reactions to the end of the war?  Mid-19th century American theater?  Or perhaps pistol manufacturing?  Medical theory and practice?  Or criminal investigations?  Or journalism after the assassination, or following Booth’s death?  To say that you want to study the history surrounding the events of April 14 and 15, 1865, is hardly helpful, for they can (and have) been examined from countless perspectives, all of some value.

And that is really why I chose to study history.  No, not because I was interested in Lincoln’s assassination (used here only as an example).  When I was still deciding in high school what field to pursue, I was at a loss.  I loved so many subjects that I felt that walking towards one meant abandoning the others.  But then I realized that history was the answer.  In it, I had the opportunity (and the unending excuse) to study everything I ever loved, because everything was fair game.  But at the same time, I knew it would be a challenge, one that I was eager to meet.  Because if the study of history meant I could study anything, it also meant that to be a good historian I would have to remain interested (at least a little) in everything.  When it came time to take the GRE (a test commonly, though now controversially, taken before entering graduate school), I was rather unusual.  Like the SATs, the GRE has two broad categories: math and verbal.  Most students pursuing graduate degrees in history (and history departments looking at the results) ignore the math component and focus all of their attention on the verbal part of the exam.  I did not, and I am pleased to say that my ranked math and verbal scores were both high and nearly identical, according to percentile.

I knew most history departments wouldn’t care that I did well in mathematics, but I did, because to me, history is a universal subject requiring universal skills.  For a historian, every skill, every interest matters because everything connects through our common humanity and experiences.  History is an opportunity to do anything with everything. There are restraints and necessities imposed on what can and can’t be done due to the specifics of the historical discipline (especially regarding sources – not a topic to discuss now), but in the end, I study history because of the freedom it gives me.  One can study the history of economics.  Or one can study the history of the Star Wars movies.  Or one can study how financial considerations affected how the Star Wars was made and how Star Wars changed the way Hollywood understood risk and reward when investing in blockbusters.  And it is all valid for the historian.

That’s why I study history: because it hones my intellectual skills far beyond mere memorization while giving me the absolute freedom (and challenge) to study anything and everything that I find interesting.  And even if I wasn’t pursuing history professionally, it doesn’t diminish the value of any of these things at all.

I hope this has helped you gain some respect for studying history.  By all means, try not to get facts about history wrong, if you can help it, but more importantly, dive into what interests you not for the anecdotes but for the thrill of investigation and analysis.  I don’t think you’ll be disappointed, whatever you wind up studying.

Doing History vs. Knowing History

“For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge of mathematics.”  -Roger Bacon, Opus Major, c. 1267

“On the whole, however, the conclusions I have drawn from the proofs quoted may, I believe, safely be relied on.”  -Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, c. 400 B.C.E.

All academic subjects have their negative (and therefore misleading) stereotypes.  For history, this usually means thinking of it as merely a collection of facts – dates, names, places – to memorize for the sake of a test.  But history is not a purely knowledge-based discipline.  All those who practice it know this, but it might be instructive to explain what I mean.

Let us briefly compare history to something quite different: mathematics.  Having an interest in one does not preclude a person from the other, though these two subjects are not usually spoken of in the same breath like one might do with, say, physics and chemistry.  Math can be a very abstract field.  Sure, you can have five apples and remove three apples to leave only two apples remaining (5-3=2).  But when you get into algebra, trigonometry, and calculus, equations become rather bizarre.  Take for example the following:

Summations, quadratic equations, Cartesian coordinates, integrals, probabilities, irrational numbers, imaginary numbers, the list goes on.  Sometimes there are real-world analogues for everything in an equation, but such comforts disappear very quickly.  (Note: “i” is the symbol for the imaginary number that signifies the square root of “-1”.  You will never ask to buy “i” apples from the store, but “i” is still an important and useful concept in mathematics.)  Thus, mathematics can very easily get into abstract concepts, removed from anything as tangible as seen in simple arithmetic.

History, on the other hand, even for those who never paid attention in high school, is quite “real.”  People who lived at some point in time at certain places and accomplished specific things.  Certainly the past is intangible (one can’t “touch” July 4, 1776, or relive the American Civil War), but the effects can be solid as the Statue of Liberty (dedicated 1886) or as participatory as universal male adult suffrage (after passage of the 15th Amendment, 1870).  People live with the effects of history, the good and the bad, every day.  The odd thing, however, is that, despite how abstract math is and how real history can be, when we study these subjects in school, we tend to think of them quite differently.

Both school children and adults speak of these subjects in unusual but consistent ways.  People tend to say, “I (don’t) know history” but “I can(‘t) do math.”  (Maybe you’ll also hear, “I’m (not) good at ____” applied to either history or math, though I suspect more the latter.)  Why the difference, and what does it mean?  Simply put, most people think history is something binary: you either know it or you don’t.  When was the Declaration of Independence sign?  Who was the first African American to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947?  Where was the first atomic bomb test done?  Dates, names, and places.  Facts.

Compare these to math questions, such as this: x²+10x=39, solve for x.  This question is fundamentally different than those others about the Declaration of Independence, baseball, and atomic bombs.  Why?  Because, despite the fact that there is only one right answer to both the math and history questions, the math question is a problem that can be solved.  One studies for a math test not by memorizing numbers but by learning the relationship between symbols so that, when given a seemingly random combination of numbers and symbols, you can rearrange them until they make sense.  For the history questions above, however, there is nothing to figure out.  You either knows the name Jackie Robinson or not.  That is why people talk about knowing history but doing math.  As a result, many people tend to think a historian is someone who simply knows a lot of names and dates while a mathematician is someone who has mastered the ability to make sense out of complex symbols.  One is passive, the other active.  One “knows,” the other “does.”

But as any historian can tell you, separating history as something you “know” from math as something you “do” is rather ridiculous.  Historians are not people who simply know a lot of things that happened.  For them, history is something one does.  Historians certainly “know” a lot about their particular specialty (medieval history, American, gender, Asian, military, economic, etc.), but that is not all they are capable of.  In learning their field, they have gained skills and perspectives in producing interpretations of the information that they work with.  That is, historians certainly know a lot of names and dates, just like a mathematician knows many numbers.  But in the course of study, historians also develop critical thinking skills used to analyze, criticize, and interpret information.  In other words, historians, like mathematicians, look at information that might confuse or mislead other people and see it as symbols that can be rearranged in order to make sense out of.  Knowing when the 15th Amendment was passed or who was the first modern African American major league baseball player is unimportant and meaningless trivia until they are connected by a historian (or anyone) doing history.  Why did it take less time to codify African Americans’ right to vote following the Civil War than it did to accept them playing alongside white Americans in baseball?  Why did women have to wait 50 years after the 15th Amendment for the 19th Amendment?  (How) did Jackie Robinson playing baseball and worries about the nuclear Cold War influence ratification of the 24th Amendment, passed in 1964, nearly a hundred years after the 15th Amendment?  To answer these questions in any meaningful way takes more than knowing history.  It takes the ability to do history.

If you pick up a historian from one specialty (ex. 20th century American military history) and place them in another (ex. 16th century European religious history), they will know very few of the details, if any.  I and nearly all the historians I know have had to teach well outside of their comfort zone.  But while they may not know all the details and nuances of a particular time, place, and subject, they will be able to latch onto important ways that a society functions, how it expressed itself, how it chose to deal with problems, how it portrayed itself, and how it has since been remembered.  This, too, is not because they know more history but because they can do history.  Because history is not about know the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier, or that the first atomic test happened at Trinity, New Mexico.  Mathematics isn’t about know off the top of your head that in the equation x²+10x=39, x=3.  Instead, mathematics is about knowing what to do when presented with any combination of symbols and numbers in order to create meaning.  Likewise, history is about knowing how to make sense out of a near infinite combination of names, dates, places, and events found in texts (as well as artifacts left behind) in order to create meaning through interpretation.

And the wonderful thing about history that makes it different than mathematics?  You can have more than one right answer!  The “rightness” is not merely a function of the data but how you use it.  And even the wrong conclusions, when arrived at through hard work and thoughtfulness, can yield great results.

People who know a lot of names, dates, and places are not historians.  People who interpret these things are historians.

Now go on.  Do some history!