0910G[North America Flying]Issue103 by fake

fake2009UID: 2631119

题目：ISSUE103 - "The study of history has value only to the extent that it is relevant to our daily lives."
字数：517
用时：00:45:00
日期：2009-7-27 10:03:18

As civilized human, different from animals, we have both material and spiritual lives. When it comes to the study of history, we could adopt this thinking pattern in that the significance lies in the history study can be discussed in perspective of material and spiritual. So I hold the opposite opinion with the argument "history study has value only when it is relevant to our daily lives" which put only emphasis on pragmatism.

Admittedly, history study does have value in our daily lives. To illustrate this point, I would like to cite some examples in the study of science and technology history. Lives in the past always gave us inspiration and motivation to promote the living condition and convenience. Tools for daily work are changing revolutionarily due to the extract and summary of the precious history of tools used by people. In the past, we use fire to heat food, while currently we make use of microwaves to achieve the same goal. Since the Industrial Revolution, machines became widely used so that people are free from laborious work. Life becomes easier and efficient. In these cases, we can clearly see that the study of history in the field of science and technology has great value lying in our daily lives.

Yes, the pragmatism cannot be denied, and of course due to this, human life becomes better day by day. Nevertheless, when we've done in the basic material life, people have thoughts and ideas in spiritual or psychological level. In this sense, the argument cannot be convincing as it stands.

As we know, there is also a kind of history study which focuses on human arts and civilizations. Obviously, we can hardly make any connection to our daily life, but it's also undeniably valuable to human beings. We manage the prosperity of arts due to the study of arts history. Take the field of literature for example; from Shakespeare to Wordsworth, from Dickens to Mark Twain, the history literature has experienced great change and development which is sparkling with pure love for nature, embrace of humanity, curiosity for themselves, and precious human wisdom.

While between the two levels of history study, the value lying in our daily lives is undoubtedly of much more immediate importance for it's to some degree the prerequisite of the latter level. It is hard to imagine that people, who are wandering all day to make themselves not suffer from starvation and homeless, could be very productive in their spiritual sparkling. Maslow's pyramid model of human needs which is publicly acknowledged could be also explainable in this respect. Only after satisfying the basic human needs, people could pursue higher level of needs. Although it is a theoretical model, it is based on the facts of behavior of majority of people.

In sum, I don't agree with the arguer that the value of history study only lies in our daily lives. We should not only emphasize on the pragmatism, but also the higher spiritual level, although I admit that former one is the fundamental factor based on which the latter one could have fully developed.