What is history?
It must be understood that history is a response to the eternal desire of human beings to know about themselves. For this reason it is fundamentally a humane study, emphasising the importance of people, their individual choices, the values they hold, and the angles of vision by which they have looked at themselves and the world.
This pervading interest in humanity is the vital link between history and other humanistic disciplines with which it shares tools and objectives. But because history deals primarily with the human race in time, it offers a way of looking at human experience that the other humanistic disciplines do not. History brings depth to the study of humanity, giving it a past perspective and a sense of the inevitability of change. Because history deals with the flow of things, it shows that nothing stands still, that experience is dynamic and continuous; it lets us know that while what is happening now is important, people have had problems before and have survived them. One of history's most valuable contributions to its reader and writer is that it puts the present in its proper place.
Russel B. Nye, History, Meaning and Methods, Scott, (Foresman and Company, Glenview, Illinois, 1975)
