Scrolling through these pictures might seem inconsequential. After all, these moments (and even many of these people) have already disappeared in time.

But in his essay 'Why Study History?', historian Peter Stearns argued that this subject is, in fact, essential to both individuals and society. And that it also harbors beauty.

"There are many ways to discuss the real functions of the subject—as there are many different historical talents and many different paths to historical meaning," Stearns wrote. "All definitions of history's utility, however, rely on two fundamental facts."

Firstly, history offers a warehouse of information about how people and societies behave. "Understanding the operations of people and societies is difficult, though a number of disciplines make the attempt. An exclusive reliance on current data would needlessly handicap our efforts. How can we evaluate war if the nation is at peace—unless we use historical materials?" Stearns asked. "How can we understand genius, the influence of technological innovation, or the role that beliefs play in shaping family life, if we don't use what we know about experiences in the past?"

According to the historian, some social scientists attempt to formulate laws or theories about human behavior, "but even these recourses depend on historical information, except for in limited, often artificial cases in which experiments can be devised to determine how people act."

"Major aspects of a society's operation, like mass elections, missionary activities, or military alliances, cannot be set up as precise experiments," he highlighted. "Consequently, history must serve, however imperfectly, as our laboratory, and data from the past must serve as our most vital evidence in the unavoidable quest to figure out why our complex species behaves as it does in societal settings. This, fundamentally, is why we cannot stay away from history: it offers the only extensive evidential base for the contemplation and analysis of how societies function, and people need to have some sense of how societies function simply to run their own lives."

The second reason why history is inescapable, Stearns said, is that the past causes the present, and consequently the future. "Any time we try to know why something happened—whether a shift in political party dominance in the American Congress, a major change in the teenage suicide rate, or a war in the Balkans or the Middle East—we have to look for factors that took shape earlier."

"Sometimes fairly recent history will suffice to explain a major development, but often we need to look further back to identify the causes of change. Only through studying history can we grasp how things change; only through history can we begin to comprehend the factors that cause change; and only through history can we understand what elements of an institution or a society persist despite change."

Stearn thinks that these two fundamental reasons for studying history underlie more specific and quite diverse uses of history in our own lives. "History well told is beautiful," he said. "Many of the historians who most appeal to the general reading public know the importance of dramatic and skillful writing—as well as of accuracy."

"Biography and military history appeal in part because of the tales they contain. History as art and entertainment serves a real purpose, on aesthetic grounds but also on the level of human understanding. Stories well done are stories that reveal how people and societies have actually functioned, and they prompt thoughts about the human experience in other times and places."

The historian believes that the same aesthetic and humanistic goals inspire people to immerse themselves in efforts to reconstruct quite remote pasts, far removed from immediate, present-day utility. "Exploring what historians sometimes call the "pastness of the past"—the ways people in distant ages constructed their lives—involves a sense of beauty and excitement, and ultimately another perspective on human life and society," Stearns explained.

So are we still studying history? Sadly, the number of students earning degrees in the field fell after the Great Recession of 2008, and while the decline became a bit more gradual before the pandemic (especially when including double majors), it has continued to slip.

The raw numbers are grim: US Department of Education data for the 2018–19 academic year shows the annual number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in history, history teacher education, and historic preservation and conservation fell to 23,923—down more than a third from 2012 and the smallest number awarded since the late 1980s.