Understanding and knowledge are important if people are to participate fully in the civic and intellectual life of their communities. Reflecting upon historical events and experiences facilitates our understanding. It enriches our ability to imagine alternative possibilities. Through studying history we can see continuities and disruptions between past and present that enable us to envisage and move into the future. Albert Einstein once said it is more important to have imagination than knowledge.
History is a discipline to encourage the imagination.
Historians reconstruct past events and experiences through the examination of documents, visual records like photographs, and material artefacts. For this they require imagination as well as knowledge gained from reading. Sometimes studying history involves looking at films rather than books. The range of sources and possible topics is as endless as human imagination and it is this which makes history exciting and worthwhile. Some people see history as the study of the past, but it is more about why and how the past has meaning in the present.