1. Why study history?
It is important to study history because the only way to learn from past mistakes is to recognize the signs of similar occurences. Studying history does not guarantee that we will not make the same mistakes, but it can help in avoiding future ones and also helps the understanding of present situations. A good example of this is studying the mandate system put in place in the middle east under the treaty of versailles in 1919 which is a long term cause of the current problems between the US and the area. Arab countries distrust Western ones because of the mandate system, which among other things misplaced nomadic tribes and caused fighting between them, and because of that distrust it is easy for extremist groups to demonize western countries -- if not for the study of history, the cause of this resentment might not be known and therefore could not be properly resolved (not that it has been, but we can still hope). And by knowing why this happened, mandates can be avoided in the future.
2. Is knowledge of the past ever certain?
Knowledge of the past is never certain because there is no way to be sure of our ways of knowing. For example, governments, such as the fascist government of Stalin or Lenin over the USSR, can literally rewrite history and change facts in a way that benefits their regime. Lenin literally wrote Trotsky out of the history books, and so although Trotsky played a key role in the rise of communism in the USSR, he didn't exist to most of the country. The ways of knowing that the common people had were authority, which in this case was corrupt, and memory -- but at a certain point, those who remember what happened will die and memory will not justify the existence of Trotsky anymore. Furthermore, there is no way to record all that has ever happened or has impacted "history"; a lot of what we call "knowledge" of the past is interpretation, because there are different theories that exist. There is no concrete "truth", so our knowledge that is founded upon these truths is not certain either.
3. Does the study of history widen our knowledge of human nature?
The study of history widens our knowledge of human nature because there are patterns evident in human nature that manifest themselves in the choices we make that then create history. Many of the things we have studied in history present what appears to be a common need for scapegoats, for example. In the Treaty of Versailles, the War Guilt clause that Germany was forced to accept illustrates the need for a scapegoat, as does the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany. By looking at these examples which, though different, both demonstrate a seemingly common human failing, we can examine our current actions: is the war in the Middle East an attempt to use all Arabs as scapegoats for the 9/11 attacks? Does this pattern also manifest itself in other historical events? Our repeated actions reveal our ingrained tendencies, such as the desire not to take responsibility for mistakes made, and hopefully we can learn from them.
4. Can history help in understanding the present or predicting the future?
History can certainly help in understanding the present, because the conditions created in the past have given rise to the future. Again I will use the example of the Middle East and the mandate system: many Americans who aren't aware of the devastation of the mandate system on Middle Eastern tribes are quick to chalk the 9/11 attacks up to "jealousy of the American life" (i.e., we are better than them so they got mad and bombed us), and this simply is not an understanding of the situation. A much more honest and realistic answer would be that, by approving a corrupt mandate system, Western countries completely altered the lives of Arabs in a way that resulted in territory-wars and loss of identity (nomadic tribes were confined to certain boundaries, which obviously had an impact on those tribes); this led to resentment and then with the Gulf Wars to the rise of extremist groups such as the Taliban which were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. With the knowledge of the mandate system and the Gulf Wars, it is easy to see how our past has created our future. Predicting the future is harder -- it may be possible to create vague outlines of what may happen, for example using the rise and fall of the Roman Empire as a model for what will happen to America, to assume that there will be a general "peak and decline" pattern. However, the world is constantly changing with innovations such as new technology; we may be able to say that resentment bred in treaties such as Versailles will lead to war based on similar events in the past, but it wouldn't have been possible for a historian to predict the role that nuclear weapons would play in the end of world war II based on any past wars.
5. To what extent does emotion play a role in an historian’s analysis? Is (historical) objectivity possible?
I think that emotion plays a role in a historian's analysis to a great extent. First of all, every historian has opinions regarding the world outside of history, and is more likely to pick out their facts to create theories based on their personal beliefs. For example, Marxist historians favor the theory that economic competition and the naval and arms race between Britain and Germany were major causes of World War I, because these theories point out capitalism as the culprit. Confirmation bias is almost inevitable, because a historian has to pick what facts they factor into their assessments of the past -- they aren't likely to pick facts that support a theory they themselves oppose. This is not objective, and allows emotion to impact how they view historical facts. Furthermore, even if a historian is being objective, where they are from geographically and the "emotion" associated with historical events in that area paints what facts they get. An American historian during the Cold War would be unlikely to get the facts regarding the Rape of Nanking because knowledge of that incident was suppressed -- America was in a war on communism, and the government didn't want communist China viewed in a sympathetic light. As a result, a historian trying to be objective may be simply unable to get the facts because of how the people surrounding them feel. The closest thing I can think of to "objective" history is Positivism, which claims that history is only history if it is in the form of pure historical fact, without analysis and including ALL facts. This may be objective, but it simply cannot work because it is not possible for every single historical happening to be recorded -- it is inevitable that certain facts will be known, and what is known obviously impacts what we view as historical truth, whether or not it really is the truth.
6. Why do accounts of the same historical event differ? Whose history do we study?
Accounts of the same historical events differ for several reasons. One reason is that not every historian has access to the same facts; on two different sides of one war, different events will be more important to one side than to the other. Again, as with the Rape of Nanking, some information is simply not available because very few governments want to tell a truth that portrays them in a negative light. Furthermore, the winning side of a war has the power to dictate what is the historical truth. It is said that the victors are the ones who write history, and it's true: very few historians will support historical theories that portray them in a negative light, so the facts that are passed down are altered or completely omitted. In fascist regimes such as Communist China, the brutalities of the Guomingdang Government were used as justification for takeover, but the brutalities committed by Mao's armies didn't exist in the history books because it painted the Communists in a bad light; dissenters were sent to the country and "re-educated" after Mao's Hundred Flowers speech because, being the victor, Mao could decide what history and truth were.
7. What determines how historians select evidence and describe/interpret or analyse events?
There are many factors that determine how historians select evidence and analyze it. Geographical position can play a role, because a historian born and raised in, say the USSR, is likely to support Communism and therefore would be more likely to choose evidence and analyze that in a way that makes it seem as if Communism is superior to Capitalism. Geography can also impact what facts are made available to historians to analyze, particularly in single-party states. Similarly, personal convictions/emotions impact what evidence a historian will select and analyze; obviously, a Marxist historian would be more likely to pay attention to the importance of the economic race in the start of World War I and downplay the importance of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand (for example) because each historian is trying to prove a point: they have a theory as to why something happened which is born of their own personal convictions, and will try to prove their theory as right.
8. What problems are posed for the study of history by changes in language and culture over time?
Changes in language make the study of history much harder to convey. Some issues, such as "untranslatable words" pose a threat to the understanding of concepts between languages; it may be possible to convey a point in Dutch with one word, but impossible to convey that same meaning in English because there is no English equivalent. Over time, as language changes concepts can be lost. Furthermore, when languages die, there is no way to translate them and so any history recorded in them will be lost until those languages can be translated again (an example of this would be the role of the Rosetta Stone in the understanding of ancient Egyptian heiroglyphic languages, which were untranslatable prior to its disovery). Culture changes cause problems for the study of history because the concept of what history changes with culture. In ancient Rome, often stories that were interspersed with mythology were taken as historical facts. In current American culture, although there is a faction of people who take the Bible as historical fact, religious mythology and 'stories' are not accepted as historical fact. So although "The Aeneid" may have been historical to the Greeks, in American culture it ceases to be history at all. This raises questions of whether our older histories can be relied upon as factual, and whether our current way of recording history will be historical a couple of thousand years into the future.
9. Can history be considered in any sense “scientific”?
History is in some senses scientific. There are many similarities between the historical and scientific processes: the historian, like the scientist, formulates a question such as "What were the main causes of World War I?", has a hypothesis, and conducts research that allows them to come to a conclusion. The main difference is that in science the evidence must be found through experiment, whereas in history the evidence already exists. History shares some flaws with science, such as the trouble of confirmation bias and the selection of evidence specifically to support a theory as well.