The word “history” can be traced back to the original Greek word, histor, meaning “learned, or wise man,” which gave rise to historia, meaning “inquiry, narrative, or account.” Eventually, it is from this root that we also get our English word story, and our understanding of history as the study of the story of the past. But the foundation of history is learning and wisdom.
Interestingly, the word “science” comes from the Latin scientia, whose root is scire, meaning “to know”; the word mathematics is from the Greek mathēmatikē, from the base of manthanein, meaning“learn”; and the word philosophy is from Greek: philo, meaning “love”; and sophos meaning “wisdom”—the love of wisdom.
Are you sensing a theme here? It seems that the names of all of these academic disciplines are just a bunch of different words for knowing and learning and becoming wise. Over time, the words and their disciplines have become specialized—so that math deals in numbers, science deals in the physical world, history deals with the past. But don’t miss the significance of what they have in common.
They are all ways of knowing a larger and more complete whole. And history is not only an essential piece of that puzzle; it may well be the tie that binds it all together—for even what I just shared with you is…well…a bit of the history of words.
So, if you want to be learned or wise, you need to know the whole story; if you want to be a histor, then know your history.
Have a wonderful day.
