Because everything in the present is outcome of the past. In other words past is like a base or pillar on which the present stands.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Pratap,

I'd hate to have to decide between the exclusive pair of history or philosophy as "the most important science," or the most important discipline. Can you explain a bit why things should strike you this way? Most important for what? What kind of question or questions do you have in mind?

Sometimes, I suppose, the future is the most important factor--as when we may have to wait upon events to see the outcome of a prediction or experiment. This may decide the acceptance or rejection of the results of great theoretical labors. 

H.G. Callaway

Because it can not be revisited!!!. It is also because future will certainly happen!!! Whenever there is certainty , there is no information content. Future is our expectation or anticipation.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Jayaram,

Sometimes, the future disappoints our expectations. In that way, the envisioned future may supply missing information and is thereby now uncertain.

H.G. Callaway

Because our brains are designed to learn, so that memory conditions almost everything we do, including new learning.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Sunar, 

What you say is actually something of a normative stance. No doubt, our brains might be considered to be "designed to learn." But, on the other hand, the degree to which memory, or established, accepted knowledge or belief, conditions new learning depends on our methods. Too much emphasis on past learning can effectively inhibit innovations; while, on the other hand, excessive emphasis on innovation may lead to neglect of past accomplishments. Its no good pretending that methodological choice is somehow already decided for us--in either direction. 

I have no doubt, of course, that the domination of history can be or is sometimes treated as a metaphysical dogma or unquestionable commitment. If so, this usually has social roots. 

H.G. Callaway

Well, thanks all.

I was pondering over this question, as a teacher of ancient Indian history, and am truly puzzled why and how, some of the world's earliest (historically!) educational institutions cropped up in India - Taxila, Nalanda and Vikramshila.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Pratap. 

Fascinating question. 

Do you think it had to do with the need to organize society in the wake of the pre-historic, Indo-European invasion of the sub-continent? What is your answer? 

Thinking of Euclid, I have often had the occasion to wonder why it was that geometry was the first science --or the first to be systematized.

H.G. Callaway

The present is the result of a long chain of events that happened in the past. Therefore, history is a vital part to understand the results of previously happened events.

Regards

SM Najim 

Ajay, we know that the Buddha saw dependent origination as the chain of causes that creates the present. However we live only in the present. He often admonished his disciples with this kind of query, Though the past has shaped the present, how could the past be the most important factor?. The Buddha would respond that the present is the most important factor. That dukkha is created by clinging, grasping, and craving the past and permanence in our contingent world. We also might find this notion reflected in Husserl's phenomenology. He urged us to see on our own observation of the world as it is rather than rely on past notions and theories to shape present observations.

What I am suggesting is that it might be worth the effort to consider the implications of both Buddhism and Phenomenology in your research on this topic. With Buddhism, the idea of time itself is troubled by the idea of the moment which also requires further discussion. Finally I think it would be worthwhile to consider Gadamer and Ricoeur's separate ideas associated with hermeneutics and how the past gets interpreted over time. What of the past is retained as it was? Perhaps little without interpretation. Then if the past is most important it must be the interpreted past. Over time this is reinterpreted over and again until...what then has the past become?

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Ketcham, 

Interesting comments. As I recall, Buddhism arose in India as a reform movement from within Hinduism. Yet it went off on its own way. Right?

In that case, it seems desirable to emphasize the importance of the present and the future as this arises in Hinduism. Pratap, as an historian of ideas, would surely know of such things as might argue against any exclusive emphasis on the past. 

H.G. Callaway

Callaway,

Buddhism indeed was, in part, a critique of common practices and rituals in the Buddha’s time. I think that there will be a lot of strong arguments for positing the importance of history in human endeavors. History associated with the time of the Buddha is an important way of analyzing why his thinking diverged.

In this context, the Buddha’s concern was that there were many rituals and practices designed to perfect a permanent soul. The Buddha questioned permanence of the soul if the five aggregates he saw as comprising a person are processes and not finite objects. H.S. Prasad explains in Essays on Time in Buddhism that, “no Buddhist school holds time as a substantive reality.” What we have then is a contingent being who experiences the moment only and not the past or the present. However, history introduces the complication with which any momentary hypothesis about existence must grapple and that is memory. The Buddha had deva vision which means he could remember his past lives and that of other Buddhas. Is this not the past? Of course it is. So what we have with Buddhism is an idea that the experience of time is the moment. Then, in Buddhism, how do we grapple with change in the universe we know about or have experienced? How are existential time, clock time, change, and memory related? This is an interesting question.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Ketcham, 

Clearly, we do not want an exclusive focus on the past. But there are surely many ways around that. 

Why take up Buddhism? Perhaps its just your particular interest? (From what little I know of it, "the middle way," seems preferable to going on about metaphysics of the self). 

In any case, the chief interest on this thread seemed to be in the history of Hinduism. I would suggest following that lead in relation to the question of the dominance of the past. Its a small point on the methodology of these discussions. 

H.G. Callaway

What do you mean? Can you give some example of a case in which the past is the most important factor? Most important in relation to what? I am having some trouble grasping where you want to go with this question?

The Christian Teaching in the Holy Bible tells us that God is timeless. Jesus Christ was crucified on the Cross for our sins to salvage us from eternal damnation. That  is why he is still being celebrated in the sacred mysteries of the Holy Mass for the salvation and purification of our beinghood. That is history for the devout Christian. Of course, we use the past as a bedrock or base to judge the present and to better our future. The past therefore plays a remembrance role for our present and future.

 Philosophy is more important than history because, we can see that Philosophy is  embedded in all the courses but all is not Philosophy. That is why in the award of doctoral degrees in all disciplines, you say Doctor of Philosophy in either History, Medicine, Business Management etc. Philosophy is the king of all disciplines. 

Everything has a history, and the history continues to reach into the present.  For example contemporary America is still in the grip of slavery and the Civil War.  Barrack Obama sold himself as a liberator, but his legacy is Trump.  Yale thinks it can free itself from the burden of the past by renaming Calhoun college.  Poor fools.  The hardcore pro-Hilary faction has adopted the slogan "Not my President"  forgetting when it was last used (against Abraham Lincoln in 1860) and what was the result (a bloody civil war, and the crushing of  the forces of secession).  Knowing history makes it possible to learn from it, rather than being caught in its grip.   Among other things, we need to avoid both ancestor worship and a kind of retrospective moralism that enables to preen ourselves on our moral  superiority to our ancestors, when we do not face their temptations.

\

Alas, such worthy comments, and all so transient. Well the fact is, as my colleague, and former classmate (St. Stephen's Batch of 1979) Dr. Upinder Singh argues, in her new book 'The Idea of Ancient India', that the time has come to jettison the old idea that Buddhism ever vanished from the land of its origin. To the contrary, it continued to flourish at a lower rev, and that is argued in retrospect, so I guess in this case, a sense of history does help in the salvaging of philoshophy