"I disagree with the word usage of “by contrast”, which suggests that a historian’s job does not look to change the future, and a human scientist does not try to understand the past. Historians do try to understand the past, sociologists do look to change the future, but the overlap of these areas of knowledge is large. A quote of Confucius’, “Study the past if you would define the future.” would sum up the idea of historians studying the past to gain knowledge about the consequences of large scale political actions. Interpreting the past can be used to prevent future disasters, as shown in N. Angell’s book The Steep Places, where he states that “…the worst possible policy would be to assume without adequate examination of ourselves and of the external facts that we shall not resist, and then discover at the 11th hour that we cannot stomach what the policy demands and decide to fight. This would correspond to the line of policy which produced World War II. It would be certain to produce World War III.” This quote is a good example of the use of recent history in analysing which steps would lead to war and how to prevent taking them. N. Angell is using the knowledge gained through the study of the events leading up to Word War II and applying this to the threat of a future Russo-American war.

In Van de Lagemaat’s Theory of Knowledge for the IB Diploma, psychology, economics, anthropology and sociology are recognised as belonging to the area of knowledge known as the human sciences. "

IB, with your scanny things, this is me. Mine. My essay. I wrote this. I also used part of it to argue a point. MINEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.