Claim: Knowing about the past cannot help people to make important decisions today.Reason: The world today is significantly more complex than it was even in the relatively recent past.Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or

I do not agree with the claim that knowing about the past cannot help people make important decisions today. In many ways, the past informs what happens now. The advancements and progress that have been made in various areas like technology, science, and society are rooted in the occurrences of the past. It is true that the world today is more complex today than it was in the past, but that is not a strong enough claim to then argue that knowing about the past cannot help people make important decisions.

Let’s take the various technological advancements that have been made over the last decades. It is easy to argue that computers in this day and age are a lot more complex than they used to be, and advancements in technology seem to be ever increasing with each year and the idea that technology today is significantly more complex than in the relatively recent past can be argued to be true. However, that does not mean revolutionaries and creative “geniuses” learned nothing about the past when making important decisions. Steve Jobs, for example, was at one point very successful but went through periods where his success seemed uncertain. One example of this is the Cube, the technology he was eager to get going. The Cube turned out not to be successful and perhaps this period of doubt and uncertainty allowed him to ponder what his next steps would be. Additionally, seeing all of the technology that wasn’t succeeding around him may have pushed him further into success. By understanding the types of technology equipment that had failed, he was able to advance the computer that much more. In this way, knowing what had occurred in the past in the field he was working on allowed him to make important decisions as to the best ways to create his own ideas and support the advent of technology that much more.

The same is true in science. One just has to look at the field of research in many areas (mathematics, chemistry, physics, engineering, psychology) to understand that in order for science and research ideas to progress further, past ideas need to be taken into account. A psychology researcher who wants to create a study on stress and anxiety needs to know what past research studies have been done on the subject to know what avenue to take his or her study in, and to analyze whether it is even needed. Science progresses through tiny steps that accumulate over time, and the only way for that to happen is for the building blocks to be cemented from an easier stage. In other words, the past directly influences our scientific ideas at any present time.

The claim’s mention of the world being more complex today than in the past probably comes from only taking into account progress in fields like science and technology and so forth. However, the biggest example that proves the claim to be untrue is if we examined ourselves and the way we function. Rather than just having experienced it, we need to understand our own past (in terms of our actions, behaviors, beliefs, feelings, etc) in order to grow as individuals. We’ve made mistakes in our past, and being able to recognize them means that we can rectify them in the present as well as in the future. When we are in school and we have failed classes or tests before, we need to not just know that those things happened in a superficial level, but we need to understand why those things happened in order for us to now be successful.

Although the claim may have been written by someone who was only taking into account particularly “complex” material, technology being the most obvious, it is such a broad, vague statement that can apply to anything that it quickly falls apart under scrutiny. Even the reason that the world is significantly more complex today than it was in the relatively recent past can prove to be weak. What does “relatively recent” past mean? Is it referring to a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago? Maybe in technology and science that statement holds true, but again both the reason and the claim are so broad and can be applied to anything that to make a statement such as “knowing about the past cannot help people to make important decisions today” is to deny all of the complexities and incorrect assumptions that such a statement carries.