One question that has been often put to historians in times of crisis was: Can history teach us something? The answers to this question are complex and mutually confronted. Critics negate that we can draw lessons from history. Has the time, then, come when we, at last, can discard past and turn to future?
Wrong way of thinking is the basis of these questions. Past, present and future can not be separated. On the contrary: Only in their three-pier dimensionality, they make up reality. Good laws and legal commentaries particularly reflect this fact.
Only those who, using science methods, understand past and prevail history can successfully struggle with present and future. Popular request to abandon history counteract the fact that human civilization has been built from multiple of its knowledge and experience.
Economists draw numerous conclusions from past events. They use historical material to prevent economic errors reiteration. US financial industry lived last couple of years confident it can operate without, this old-fashioned, European logistics. Ultimate effect is that financial crisis 2008, among other things, represents obvious old errors’ recurrence that were disastrous for USA even in 1929 crisis.
Insurance history, in this regard, has special role for two reasons: it is part of the insurance science and part of the history science.
Insurance science itself is aggregate science, which by using various methods, tend to reach cognition, hence, cognition on insurance phenomenon. It is divided into:
– Insurance Economy,
– Insurance Law,
– Actuarial Mathematics,
– Insurance Medicine,
– Insurance Engineering,
– Insurance Politics,
– Criminality in Insurance, etc.
Accordingly, even in history science comprehensive and partly quite different methods subdivisions can be noticed (compare, for example, debates in economy, art and religion histories).