How To Solve Problems Creatively?

How can and do we use historical knowledge to solve problems in the present?

• I have a short essay to write for History that is due thursday the 17th of may. I have a few of my own ideas to answer the question, but I would like a little more help in fully answering the question. Any ideas? Here's the full essay question: History is, as historian David McCullough suggests, a "guide to perilous times". How might the history of the American experience of the last quarter of the 20th century (1975-2000) guide America through a perilous 21st century? IN OTHER WORDS: How can and do we use historical knowledge to solve problems in the present? How is history is a tool that real-world problem-solvers living in the present use to solve the complex problems we face as a nation? Thanks :)

• Answer:

  Since history is an agreed fiction* we might not set too much store by it as a teacher. There is also the demonstrable fact that humans do not learn from the past or possibly refuse to learn lessons of history. Like children, we can't be told but have to find out for ourselves. Fire burns. Hmn let's test that. Ooowwww!