It’s common for everyday people to assume that studying history requires lots of memorization of dates, people, and events (most of us probably experience this). I usually reject this assertion and try to convince people otherwise, but how would you as a historian or someone who’s interested in history respond to someone who asks “Why is history valuable?”
I understand this is a very general question, which is why I ask, because there’s so many ways to answer it and I want to see what other people might say who have more experience than I do studying history (I’m a junior at university). I guess when someone asks me this, I tend to have a little bit of a different answer each time. There are also many different ways to word this question, so have at it.
Thinking like a historian also means taking contingency very seriously. Broadly speaking, contingency is the idea that events or changes are dependent on previous events or conditions, not luck or divine fate. As a result, historians are encouraged to consider connections between periods and locations when trying to understand an event. Taking contingency seriously also requires one to acknowledge that historical outcomes could have easily moved in a different direction; it offers a powerful alternative to ideas such as Manifest Destiny that frame a nation’s history as predestined. By demonstrating how historical outcomes were contingent on multiple factors, historians also show that our very future is not predetermined.
I think one way in which someone can think like a historian is to always be willing to dig deeper. I'm a historian and special collections librarian, and most of my day is helping students and scholars with their research. Digging deeper to me means looking at all sides of a historical topic and asking a lot of questions. If a student comes to me and says they're writing a paper on biblical perspectives on the apocalypse, I of course look up what books we have on the topic. The next step is thinking hmm what kind of primary sources do we have related to this (diaries, sermons, works of art, etc)? What kind of scholarship has been written about this topic over the past 100 years?
In my line of work, I like to think that a historian is not only a gatekeeper but an interpreter too. I have my MA in French History so if a researcher has questions on it I can combine my librarian skills and my background knowledge together. I bring up materials from the archive and make sure they're cared for, but I can also place them in their historical context. History is valuable to me because as you wrote it goes beyond memorizing dates and facts-it's also literature, philosophy, art, politics, etc. To have all those things represented in an object is fascinating to me.
/u/crossynz has previously written about why historical research is not like scientific research
/u/commiespaceinvader has previously answered How do you even history?
A professor of mine (I'm still a student myself) has described history in her lecture as a "Diskussionswissenschaft" (=a science that is based upon discussion). For me that is one of the main things that define history. It's not only about dates or events, but about the discussion of them. Obviously it helps to know about dates to do that, but that's secondary (another teacher of mine once just said "You can always look up the dates if you need them" - though he was joking - mostly). And discussing this means that we learn more about ourselves and our time, if we are willing to look at how we discuss, what our own motives and ideas are, and what ideas our counterpart has. Add that to the events we discuss and the things that were discussed in the past (if you can still recognize and find those - and keep in mind that every historical source will have its own biases) and you can build on that and (hopefully) learn about the present. I had a third great quote from another professor of mine but I'm afraid I lost the paper I wrote it down on. Basically it said that the past (or history in the general sense, not the science) is what we in the present agree upon and that it is ever changing based on our current understanding/bias/motives etc. I'll see if I can dig it up, even if it's in german.
I'm afraid it's not that easy to describe those thoughts in a second language, so I hope I made sense at all.