We plan for and worry about the future. But history is the study of the past.
History offers a storehouse of information about how peoples and societies behave.
An exclusive reliance on current data would handicap our efforts to understand. The past causes the present, and so it causes the future as well. When we try to understand why a change in the teenage suicide rate occurred in the last decades, why the Republicans or the Democrats or members of a new political party now dominate government, or why network television is losing its audience, we need to study the factors that shape these changes. Take an important human phenomenon such as alcoholism. Scientists have been identifying specific genes that seem to cause a proclivity toward alcoholism in some individuals.