However, people in the past spoke and wrote in ways different to us today. If we want to understand an idea from the past, we must, then, learn the words and writing of an older group of people. We must also understand the setting in which a people lived and in which their ideas about the world were formed. This understanding of an idea's setting is important because even if we understand words from the past, they might look different when they are taken out of their earlier situation. What is more, we may find that our wider picture of the world is different to that of the person who first thought of an idea.