The animation of the graphs is a huge distraction from reading. I would rather have histoey drawn in a static figure.
9
Actually, in a different history, it is Alexander Butterfield.
2
There have been many discontinuities over earth's history. Modern human history was lucky to have a moderately stable climate during its growth and development.
We are about to experience a discontinuity. Here's how I would draw it:
https://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices/files/2012/10/Figure-14.png
http://lafenergy.org/essays/gwfig1.php
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide
1
When Francis Fukuyama wrote "The End of History" in 1992, he had a ride into a liberal California sunset in mind. Unfortunately that gentle sunset has become a raging fire so when we use the the EOH phrase today we are thinking more apocalyptically. Every era gets its own end of history.
On another note, I am not sure if we can use the term history to capture theories of human time in every culture. For example, the Kalachakra (the wheel of time) doesn't map well on to ideas of eternal return and the Kalachakra is only one of many ideas of time within Hindu traditions. There's an alternate view that each age is a day of Brahma; starting when he awakes and dissolving when he goes to sleep.
More than linearity, the concept of history is captured by the idea that there's exactly one arrow (even if circular!) and that rigidity about time is an outlier in the cosmologies of the world.
2
I’d draw history as a question mark. All the great civilizations of the past collapsed, Rome, the Mayans, the Chinese dynasties, but their people continued, and other more technologically advanced and knowledgeable civilizations arose in their stead. For the first time, we face the possibility of global collapse. We have to overcome three existential challenges to our survival—global warming, nuclear war, and the concentration of wealth and power in the 1 percenters who put their own immediate interests above ours and our children’s. We need imagination and courage to discard the status quo of our corporate oligarchs and their owned politicians to fight for grass-roots economic, political, and social transformation.
10
Let's remember that history is not the same as "the past." The past is gone. Yet history is very much alive and evolving because history, in my favorite definition, is "the past, remembered." And it's impossible to remember without adding new perspective. Some new perspectives are rather plausible and some excessively biased. I believe that history, like the stock market, spirals generally upward yet fluctuates mightily. The arc of history is long and twisted but it bends toward progress. (Apologies to J.P. Morgan, M.L. King and others for taking liberty with their fine observations.)
6
@Ron
To me proper history is to best describe what happened and what people at that time thought. Not how we feel about the morality of that age. Hubert Humphrey was adamantly against preferential treatment base upon race. Is he be remembered as a racist? Of course not.
2
Fascinating essay. Truthfully, this is not something I have spent a lot of time thinking about. However, I must admit "drawing" history using, I guess, mathematical symbols would clarify perhaps our perceptions of time and eras. To use only one of the examples below seems too simplistic. After all, our evolution as human beings biologically, socially, and intellectually is a complex paradigm. Yes, we can use a circle some times since undeniably actions triggered by the human condition tend to repeat themselves and many times not for the better. But take the arrow which points up. Can we not deny the fact that we build on what has gone before us, that our intellect if allowed learns and grows? Personally, I lean toward the wave which travels up and down, but each time it rises it ascends more than the last. And each time it descends, it becomes shallower.
2
Selective-Ignorance seems the most common thread, historically speaking that is. Ignorance rules the land across the spectrum of society. Humans are murderers after all.
2
I wonder why Professor Sartwell's linear arrow arcs upward from left to right. We leftists (and Hebrew readers) think of it going upward the other way. But with top and bottom quarks and history "fake news" who knows what's up or down.?
2
I'd use the dialectic, with caveats.
First, there is no end. There will always be another thesis antithesis. We just can't foresee all of them from where we are. They'll be there, keep coming, no end.
Second, we don't understand or even remember all the synthesis we find. We ask some of them again (not all of them, not in the same ways), in slightly different forms, and fight it out all over again with variations just enough to confuse ourselves until we work it out, and then say, "We knew that, why didn't everyone."
3
I think we are all taking a rather airily written article a bit too seriously. The time of history measured in human scales and time of physics measured in cosmic scales are so different that any mention of big bang seems out of place. If one really chooses to philosophize on the nature of time then one should study physics, whereas if one studies how human beings perceive time in their lives, and reflect on the collective social memory then one should study history.
The other problem with all these arrow drawings is that one is trying to represent some data, but what are the measurable variables of human history? How can graph/ draw an arrow when one doesn't even know what is the quantity that is changing?
And at the end history tells more about the historian than about the event. May be the cycles/ arrows/ bubbles apply more to historians rather than time.
7
It seems to me you’re confusing history with “progress”. One is a study of what happened yesterday and why it may have happened. The other is a value judgement on whether the world as a whole is “better off” or “worse off” then it was yesterday.
1
I’m glad the Times gave a forum to the anarchist professor, always good to read different viewpoints.
1
Time seems to proceed in one direction since the big bang. It does not double back upon itself, though its progression is not uniform but relative. All of the single point animations moving at a uniform rate are wrong.
But that is of events.Some of those will be quite similar because of similar causality. The universe appears to be working under the same set of rules. That is the one thing that is pretty axiomatic for science to be applicable and by repetition it appears to be.
To say that there are cyclical processes like say rain is a proven, though these are not exact. It is never the same river twice.
History is how we recount the passage of time. It is, a partial recollection of some facts. Some of which might have significance to us. That is then also combined with analysis which might be more scientific or less.
This article however is devoid of studying the history of history, the study of time, or science.
The author was just spitballing it, and it probably as useful as a comment written on a phone, in a couple of minutes.
@Edward BrennanMaybe the arc of the circle won’t be reached for a billion more years. We won’t even be a memory anymore but a new ‘experiment will have begun.
1
I'm envisioning a frequency graph, with, just for fun, the arrow of time pointing from right to left. At the top of each wave is low entropy (i.e. early Roman Empire), at the bottom of each wave, in the trough, is high entropy (i.e. 2nd World War) each wave being between 80 and 200 years. On a broader time scale, the peaks become lower, and the troughs lower, so the whole graph sags. After we've wiped out most of the planet's species and our own civilization, organization and form (low entropy or negentropy as Schrodinger would call it) will gain strength again, pulling the frequency graph upward.
2
Should you not have asked a historian rather than a philosopher to write this column? After all is said and done, we historians are the ones who inflict this question upon graduate students for a minimum of two years.
5
History is determined by it's ability to recover from it's worst atrocities.
3
History is like a spiral with many whirls and twirls, ever changing but ever remaining the same just like the Universe, Law of Correspondence.
Grasping the arc of history is much like the process of winning or losing war. The side that has the best intelligence of what is happening but cannot readily be seen, wins. In the case of the Trump era find out who is talking to whom, making the deals and strategies that is not meant to see the light of day until it’s too late. Simple as connecting the dots, if one can find the dots along with enough curiosity, imagination, and that something extra.
What a waste of time.
History is based on the chronology of the past. Of course, it is much more than that, but without that it is not history. So, obviously -if for whatever wacky reason- history somehow has to have a "shape," then the only shape remotely approximating actual history is a line of time stretching (depending on the topic in history) between two dates in the past, and (usually) including some few or many time points in between.
Other odd shapes might have limited applicability in certain special instances, but any great reliance on them can only lead to confusion, misunderstanding and ignorance of history, if not misuse of it.
1
What? No linear regressive and or linear progressive?
The Torus Theory?
A possible way of drawing history would be to show the breaks where the march of progress was stopped for a time at a certain place, such as Europe or the Us, as though by a break or wall. Among such times would be the (overlapping) dark ages and witch-burning times, the era of Us slavery and the European holocaust. Declared and undeclared wars around the world would turn 20th century progress into a dashed line at best. The Obama era's progress would be shattered by MAGA and the Republicans rather than being separate but equal as in your loops. There might be an added series of spikes to show not just that damage is being done but how much, a social, humanitarian, and planetary pain index with special notation for the kinds of folly, such as the Electoral College, that, by themselves, have brought about significant pain. Can you hear the winds of time screaming now?
2
The essence of history is found in the tension between the adaptation of evolution and the disorder of entropy: survival battling disintegration, good battling evil, truth and beauty battling falsehood and repulsion, avarice and smallness of mind battling kindness and generosity of spirit, hope battling despair, forgiveness battling revenge, persistence battling surrender, life battling death. Within these battles of opposites we have the wisdom of history as described by Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
In a more practical sense, we have Cahill's "Burden of Proof Principle of History" which says that if something planned has never before been successful, the burden of proof is on those who say it will succeed now. For example: No invasion relying on spontaneous local uprisings behind the lines has ever succeeded, why then will this similar invasion (such as the Bay of Pigs) succeed?
"And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." (F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby")
6
I think of trends as sweeping like a pendulum. An event, viewed positively, will yield more such events, similar yet with slight variations. An event, viewed negatively, will yield opposing events, going in different directions. Also each new generation finds ways to revolt against the previous generation. This is necessary to establish the novel identity of the incoming generation, to distinguish itself from their parent's generation.
Just how do you depict A.N.Whitehead’s Process And Reality?
Theories of history are a vain attempt to predict the future. Like evolution it can only be understood in hind sight.
3
My drawing representative of 2016 onward would have a toilet at the bottom, because that is our trajectory with our current leadership.
1
I worry that xi, and "covfefe" and the other miniputins, won't LET us write reality-based history when they're through with us.
1
This was really interesting.
And in trying to think about the calculus involved, it seems like we have to establish a couple of rules: What are the axis we are plotting on? Enlightenment? Technology? Human suffering?
And then of course, there are the three constants that determine everything else:
1.) Time (duh)
2.) The limiting factor of the exhaustion of energy/resources
3.) The X factor of human nature, on a scale from altruism to straight up anarchy.
#3 makes the loop theory seem pretty attractive, however I would posit that the loops grow larger in amplitude with time, as things good and bad become more possible through technology, but grow closer together in frequency, as that same technology makes the reactive causality spread faster. The first couple of loops took thousands of years. Now they take months.
At the end, there will be a rapid shrinking in the amplitude, as the human animal has depleted the resources available, greatly limiting the extremes of possibility. Unless some balance can be reached between the advancement of humanity and a equally advancing source of energy. But even the sun will die someday.
And then it starts again. Or not. So your Spirograph starts to look pretty good.
1
Philip K. Dick had a term, but I'm not sure how to draw "gubbish."
Perhaps someone created a picture of the third law?
Not everybody has Instagram. I don't know the author will read these comments, but I'll give it a shot.
As a life-long historian, I don't know that I would ever think to represent human history with a simple line drawing.
But if it did, it might look like a tree. Always getting taller and higher, never actually going backward, but constantly sprouting new branches that split and for form still more branches. Some manage to get the nutrients they need to get larger and larger, so that it become impossible to say where the main trunk is, but many offshoots dying off. Sometimes limbs die, or shrivel. Sometime lightning strike and destroys an entire trunk, letting the light in to other that has formerly struggled.
Alternately, picture a n ever-expanding and widening river delta, with shifting channels, some silting up, others widening, joining together, etc., while the delta always spreads and widens.
6
Historiology is a kind of retrospective discourse about our evolving, led by interest in explaining a sense of Our shared, open futurity. The point of understanding the past is always relative to interest in living on, fruitufully.
Humanity is evolving. Modeling that is philosophically important. Making selective, topic-interested retrospective narratives about that is important, too.
But the latter is ABOUT the former: Our evolving includes narrative efforts to understand Our past, relative to interests of inquiry that are selected from Our implicit holism of being in Time, happening in some singular manner that's only available relative to selective interest and by modeling that may be useful for going on fruitfully. That doesn't imply a given telos, just as living a life doesn't imply a given definition of late-life fulfillment.
Imagism about our evolving—and calling it “history” (actually, it’s mere historiography within the research area of historiology, a dimension of anthropological thinking)—is a flaw of scientistic, if not physicalistic modeling.
Imagism actually CONCEALS appreciation of evolving dynamics, which involve the entirety of Our lifeworlds, all value spheres, all modes of being, in constructive interplay.
1
Your question, which "hints" that everyone can create their own "reasonable," and viable graphic, which can be delineated semantically, may not be answerable in a helpful way. Consider: Reality, however delineated, when dimensionalized,operates with everpresent uncertainties. Unpredictabilities. Randomness. And a lack of total control. No matter the types, levels and qualities of one's efforts. Alone, as well as with others. In a timely manner or not. Then there is the actually/potential weight(s) of what is known and understood. Not known nor understood at a given time and place; because of gaps in necessary relevant information and technology. As well as a condition of unknowability, notwithstanding a belief that EVERYTHING, sooner or later, is/can be, known.With the right amounts and types of ongoing efforts. Human hubris?
Additional factors to consider relating to your question and stimulating challenge: just as a map is can not adequately represent the geography it was created to "show," and no word can adequately represent the reality of what it is created to represent, describe, answer, question, no graphic language, of whatever dimensions-uni/multi-can adequately represent semantic language's essence. Including its inherent limitations and flaws.The notion of a semantic timeline, with numbers to represent years/eras/periods, reminds me of Paul Klee's description of his artistic creative process:" I take a line for a walk."
What could failure or success create?
1
Graphs are necessarily drawn relative to other variables. In order to plot time, you need at least two axis. Whether history or something else, this is the nature of graphical representation. The linearity or non-linearity of time is therefore contingent on the comparison. You would need to consistently define "history" or "progress" or whatever else across academic fields before you could develop a coherent model for time. Time itself is indifferent.
Time is simply a measurement of celestial orbits relative to space and gravity. Space as measured by the speed of light and gravity as measured by mass. What the relationship looks like depends on where you're standing. That's what Einstein was attempting to demonstrate.
We could measure history relative to time as a function of biological decay. This is essentially what a half-life represents. If you consider "history" as recorded human events, most of human history is considered pre-historical. We use the carbon half-life in the form of carbon dating to translate these human events into modern calendar years. I emphasize the word "translate" though. We are transforming the carbon half-life to fit a linear model. This is a choice.
If I chose a different base unit of measure than light or carbon, my graph would look different. Without knowing what exactly history is measuring though, the entire exercise is rather pointless though, don't you think?
1
Like the wanderings of a drunk person in an unfamiliar setting.
Random, back and forth, up and down. All the while with a headache and occasional vomiting.
6
In the future, anyone who draws our present time in history will surely use crayon.
5
“...concludes from quantum mechanics that “the universe has every possible history”...
.....
Crispin,
If you want to be invited back - please draw and conjure up the path to the multiverse where the NYT has more subscribers than Facebook...
And which MTA subway line stops there on weekends...
I can speak for both AG and Dean – they'd send Krugman packing back to Prinstan via NJ Transit in an instant, and give you his office and column space...
PS
If this utopia also happens to have Margaret Sullivan ensconced as WaPo Public Editor, and heckling Jeff Bezos several times daily – AG will pay double...
1
What an article! Loved it. Ok, here is my take that came to me many years back while in Phnom Penh playing Snooker in a french coffee/bar, apparently with no rush and no need to win, because I was playing against a 10 times more formidable opponent (which I then used to symbolize as the destiny of the world). So, whenever it was my turn, my skill and deliberation wasn't good enough to precisely decide over each ball's fate. So sometimes I achieved what I wanted to do and more than I cared for not. But Destiny was cruel whenever it was her turn, she really knocked those balls into their corners.
So, I realised that it doesn't matter if you shape the ways of the world or not. At one point in time or another by a precise player, or a terribly weak one, by ricochet, intended or not, only action and reaction is what is left. And that we can in this complex world never foresee.
So, if we play or not, it doesn't matter, if we are successful or not, it doesn't matter.
The only thing left, is to smile about how silly and funny and pointless our endeavors are.
Because for someone watching us from a couple of light years away, they wouldn't be even discerning anyone on this earth, for them we would not be even seen as moving in any direction, nor would they understand what we were up to, yet alone what we dream, hope or despair about.
3
"Ecological disasters like the California wildfires, plausibly connected to climate change and suburban development, raise the specter of a human history moving inexorably toward self-destruction."
On that Issue New Yorker had a bombshell report on how Big Oil industry is covering up the inevitability of upcoming global disaster all for the profits sake.
Blatantly lying to global community to amass bigger profits.
No words.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/26/how-extreme-weather-is-shrinking-the-planet
2
Don’t forget the author was mocking the timeline of history, not a chart showing advances and declines in civilization but a “timeline.” Unless he can time travel, I think his fate is to live in the immediate future.
I see human history as the path of a rocket ascending into the heavens only to run out of fuel and crash to earth, an upside down letter V. The rapid rate of our inventions and technology are wondrous and can make life better for some of us (though many are excluded from any benefits)-- until we use up all of the planet's resources in an attempt to advance ever faster, or to conquer others who are in our way. If humanity had advanced more slowly, like a hot-air balloon that floated in place for centuries before moving higher, we might have had time to mature. We might have had time to recognize our smaller place in the whole of nature, and worked to preserve the planet, and shared a better life all people.
4
As a practicing historian, I never saw much to this other than entertainment. On the other hand, it's entirely possible that Hari Seldon got it right. Will get it right.
1
We live in the Post-Historic period.
"The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands. In the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy, just the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history. I can feel in myself, and see in others around me, a powerful nostalgia for the time when history existed. Such nostalgia, in fact, will continue to fuel competition and conflict even in the post-historical world for some time to come. Even though I recognize its inevitability, I have the most ambivalent feelings for the civilization that has been created in Europe since 1945, with its north Atlantic and Asian offshoots. Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again."
Fukuyama, Francis. 1989. "The End of History?" The National Interest.
2
@Jay David
"sophisticated consumer demands"
That's an oxymoron.
Actually, time only has been shown to move forward....civilization is cyclical.
I believe that the single line diagram of time (timeline) merely represents the passage of time and historical events are markers along that line. It doesn’t really represent progress so loops are unnecessary. Time always moves towards the future if you believe in that sort of thing. I only view time as a planning tool. It tells me what I need to do and when. So much of the mythology of time is just a human invention. We always tend toward the dramatic.
2
I've always seen the year, in my mind's eye, as a circle with the Winter Solstice at the top of the circle and Summer Solstice at the bottom. And all just travel around and around on it. Out of the theories mentioned here, I think the "loop theory" matches closer to my own perspective.
I would combine Marx's dialectics with the author's spiral design and with no telos - no goal. I would add the proviso that increasing complexity is not guaranteed. Just as civilizations have collapsed in the past so ours will probably do so as well, temporarily (or permanently?) reducing complexity and simplifying the social division of labor. It rather looks increasingly likely. Perhaps in a coming dialectical synthesis civilization itself as a social form will also be transcended to insure our survival as a species. As Marx pointed out the only guarantee is that the past will weigh on all our choices: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances already existing and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."
6
@john riehle All systems move towards entropy. That’s just reality. It’s not unique to any particular civilization or process.
Additionally, the past is a benefit as much as a burden. We owe the past for the fact that we can live as we do today. If every generation started over from step one then we would all be hunter gatherers in small groups struggling to learn what’s food, how to stay warm in the cold, how to live and communicate with one another, etc.
2
Arnold Toynbee, in a Study that eventually grew to 10 volumes, attempted to answer this question by analyzing all of the distinct civilizations that have appeared over history, world wide (he identified 21 of them). He claimed to be able to identify a pattern that all civilizations go through. There is a period of growth, initiated by some stimulus (environmental or internal or external challenges) that induce a few innovative individuals to develop solutions to the challenges. This growth period is followed by a "time of troubles" which stops the growth, then a "universal state" of varying lengths. Eventually the civilizations decline, perhaps aided by additional challenges both internal and external, and collapse.
If I read his analysis right, history is certainly not progressive (though progress is part of the origin of each civilization), nor is it cyclical since the pattern does not necessarily repeat in the same geographic location, nor among descendants of previous civilizations. I don't do Instagram, and drawing with text is not really feasible.
In Toynbee's view (from the 1930's England), only one of the 21 civilizations--Western Civilization--is currently still in the growth phase. Not being a historian, I have no idea what current historians think of his views. You have to get past his rather non-PC attitude toward many members of society, as well as his very heavy reliance on religion, and in particular, Christianity.
3
Human history cycles between order and chaos.
I would draw human history not as a line at all, but rather a number of individual dots that were alternatively tightly ordered and widely scattered through the progression of time.
4
How about a skipping stone, representing the inevitable forward march of technology? The water struck by the stone is the social fabric of our society. The waves created move forward and backward, in many directions. They smash against each other, causing construction and destructive interference. But the overall ripple seems to move forward. Will the stone keep bouncing forever?
1
@Devin Powell Well, continuing your analogy, no stone, no matter how well or hard you throw it, will skip across the surface of the water forever.
This is very old and interesting subject. It must be a human nature that we like to find patterns and predict the future.
Depends how long is your timeline, the pattern will look different. If your look at human history in past 5000 years, the timeline should be looked up right forward. On the other hand, if you look at US history in, say past 5 or 10 years, it is certainly showing in circle or backward.
2
@WW For more meaningful patterns, we should be looking for is causal relationship, another kind pattern in history. Causal relationship studies the cause and effective of historical events, thoughts and war, etc. What kind human choices, leadership decisions are the cause of events happened afterwards and the reason behind it. For example, in the past, what events most like to happen follow a wide spread of populism, or will economic bloom bring political changes? ……
random chaos.
1
I think that history is something like a Jackson Pollock drip painting. However, the drip painting of history, unlike a Pollock drip painting, has no borders. Nothing exists “outside” of the painting. Also, the past, the present and the future are all simultaneously a part of the drip painting. The past, the present and the future have always been a part of the drip painting and they always will be a part of the drip painting.
And like a Pollock drip painting any real interpretation of the drip painting of history is simply beyond human language.
1
Based on my belief that the basic path of history has generally been progressive it has also oscillated with varying degrees of magnitude. Unfortunately, the steady advance in destructive technology and population pressure will outstrip our ape-like coping impulses. We’ll either go the way of the Krell or exist in small bands to begin the process again.
I guess it's maybe pride or conceit that leads an aggregate of society to think and believe there must be a start and there must be an end to all things. What if we are less significant that we think, what if we (as a genus) are just a bit player- on for a scene or two, then exit stage left?
Maybe we've done this all before, and again...
The possibilities are limited only by our imagination(s). History, as we call it, has been going on forever, it's just that we don't understand it (and with our 'sciences' we could)- and it's certainly NOT linear.
Try it like this... history only begins when we create time. Only when we measure time is it even possible to record history. We are simply the result of ages and eons with bursts of short periods of 'enlightenment' followed by long periods of decline. Would you know if you lived in 'the dark ages'?
History is a personal map of understanding, leading to understanding for the individual, and no two maps necessarily look the same. It doesn't make one map right and the other wrong, just different for different people.
Understanding history is our comparing of maps, it's about our interpersonal relationships in the now, not the past. Only when we really understand the present, have we understood the past.
Oh well! Now I've had my morning coffee... here's to the future!
Have a nice day!
3
Excellent. As you embark on your therapeutic doodles, let’s first figure out what the two axes of the graph represent, if, indeed, it is some sort of orthogonal plot, and what the units of each represent. Or, is it just a cut of a multi-dimensional space, or in fact, representing anything at all. Lord Kelvin wasn’t explicitly thinking of fuzzy philosophical meanderings when he indicated that if you can’t put a number on something, you really have nothing to say about it.
By the way, Google Images will collect and categorize your doodle, and market probable items to you, or maybe even refer you to sources of professional therapy. Making history, kids!
2
I can’t draw but if I could, and were feeling blue, I’d picture a cowboy with a fast draw, because in my melancholy moods a duel is where it looks like history is heading.
1
Puts me in mind of Sterne's diagram of the plot of "Tristram Shandy"--a straight line with many loops. I imagine he'd have a hearty chuckle after reading this article and the comments that follow it
How would I draw history? With a pencil that had an eraser.
23
@David J
I hope only people’s perceptions of the past change but not the actual past. Otherwise, we have some time travelers going back and changing the past which would be quite newsworthy.
@Shamrock, Historian DJT fits your bill.
1
Everything dies, even the Universe. I would just like it if human civilization would last longer and not be such a brief candle. We are blowing it, in spite of the fact that we have made both moral progress and progress in understanding ourselves. Compare a nineteenth century encyclopedia to the internet. We could do better than this, and I mean better than the global political situation that we are in. We have the access to information and all the means of cooperation at our fingertips. We are letting the bullies take over, when all along we have the numbers on our side.
12
A great exercise. Here are my 2cents.
Any event or activity can be described through the lens of a life cycle, usually visualized as an S-shaped form with different phases of emergence, growth, saturation and decline.
The life cycle starts with the initial investment, high investment and high risks, growth is often in the order of magnitude, and in the end, there might be some loss-making.
If this is true for all events or activities over time, one can reasonably assume that it is true as well for a given moment of time and the S-shaped distribution is an indication how innovations are distributed within a society, from high-risk, loss-making to increasingly obsolete.
The s-shape of distribution of events of nations differ in time, space and technology,
Accordingly, there is a global s-shape distribution. All economies with their particular S-shaped distribution are positioned within it, starting from the US and ending with Afghanistan or Yemen (global commitment is higher than national economic activity).
All nations have limited autonomy of their national trajectory.
Currently, we are in the painful restructuring from the industrial era to something new. It is still unknown.
Thus the answer: overlapping S-shaped distribution of events along a global continuum of decreased value creation. It is a combination of all mentioned approaches. Development is open but follows specific patterns.
I view history as a wave with in a probability universe. Let me explain. As a person or society, we have have choices, potentially an infinite number, in reality some are more likely than others given our past. As we choose, one set of choices collapses and another set opens up. Hopefully our choices lead us to a better and better life, but sometimes not, sometimes we have to pass through a mistake to realize that this is not what we intended (Trump & Brexit are examples), hence the wave portion. As a person, we hopefully learn to make better choices as we gain experience, and so too as a society, but societies seem to be forgetful. As in "why do we keep going through the same issues? We know where this leads, but we are doing it again."
Interesting article, thanks for stretching my thinking.
Surely a view of history must include those most important factors: the Unknown and the Unexpected.
1
History does not have a "direction". History is the study of what has already happened, it is not a tool to predict what will happen in the future. The Durants, who I was surprised not to see featured prominently in this article, attempted to use it as such and failed. Marx did the same, with the same result.
Until history is dealing with as many people as chemistry deals with atoms, individual actions will have such an effect on trends as to make prediction next to impossible.
1
"I call it the Spirograph theory."
'The Golden Ratio' would [hypothetically] exist whether or not our species possessed the cognitive capacity to give it a name at all.
Personally, I'd draw history in a manner which allowed for American schools to properly teach Existentialism. There aren't "many worlds," because there is only one Universe, as the word itself suggests. One verse. One thing that is true.
I view history as cycles except that we never know exactly where we are in the cycle. I also view history as patterns that repeat but again we can never recognize the pattern. As the reader can see this is not able to be illustrated but I think it is valid.
When one talks about history, what you really are talking about is meaning.
Meaning, using an abbreviated definition - is an answer.
As a postmodernist, I have to say we have found very few answers. And when I apply this interpretation to all areas of history whether they are the history of science, philosophy, politics, justice, etc. I find no answer sufficiently satisfying.
I personally revel in this state of ignorance. It keeps me thinking and searching.
But, for most, this would be a very frightening way to live. And I agree, that most everyone needs meaning to move forward in their life. But what you believe to be an answer to the question of what is history, it is really only just a temporary point in the understanding of something.
As for how I would draw history, all I can say to that is I cannot draw something that has no shape. But I can put it into words, so here goes.
History (meaning) is a riddle, wrapped inside of an enigma, that is dropped inside of a maze that has no solution.
2
I detested HIStory in high school because it was nothing but a chronicle of wars. It was about men. About military strength. About people dying and lives being destroyed - usually with the use of "religion" and money as the tools to enrage people enough to kill each other.
It left the women and children whose lives were constantly destroyed by male egos out of the picture entirely. Women and children were "property" with no rights of their own in this destructive model.
Education and our ability to travel and learn about the greater world outside our little communities has enlightened many of us. We realize that HIStory must end if there is to be true human progress rather than constant destruction by the demented, socially unconscious minority .
Socially Conscious Women are stepping up to take one-half the power in the world and bring it into balance. OUR story of shared power by Socially Conscious Women and Men starts now.
It is centuries past time.
2
@njglea I agree with your points regarding how History has been taught in the past, and I'm pleased to see it changing. I would like very much to think that more powerful women in powerful positions might result in an improved society. Sadly, I suspect that women will, ultimately, makes the same mistakes as males in the past. I hope I'm wrong.
2
It seems absurd to draw a timeline of history at anytime, but delusional to attempt it to anticipate the future from patterns of the past. This is particularly relevant for the present time as we face unprecedented challenges humanity has not experience before. The impact of climate change portents huge human migrations to be violently resisted by the invaded; changes in weather patterns will threaten food production for an ever increasing world population. Technology will leave many underemployed and over surveilled, raising the scepter for autocracies. We have empowered humans with weapons- chemical, biological and nuclear- that will become ubiquitous. This is chaos of an unprecedented magnitude and horror that will be extremely difficult to disentangle. Chaos cannot be defined by a timeline.
3
I think of history as a tapestry in progress. The warp remains constant and the weft, with the weavers, is ever changing. Dark threads predominate for a while but there always bright strands within the pattern. When civilizations blossom the patterns become lively, brilliant and strong, but within that beauty the dark threads remain. Great nations rise and fall. Golden ages don't last but some bright threads remain and give structure to the patterns that emerge.
My fear is that in a world of limited resources, burgeoning population, and a climate changing in ways we are just beginning to understand, the pattern may soon come to an end.
But what do I know, I'm not a philosopher.
5
The Professor has figured out that the events prior to and during WWII in Germany and Japan were not great leaps forward in human history. I see a Nobel Prize in the future for this anarchist educator. His insights are truly exceptional.
1
I prefer the word "posterity". We can't do anything about the history, its in the posterity where we find reconstruction goes on. The history books are always written in hindsight, esp. where the saying "winners write the history books" applies. We find ourselves in a "who will guard the guardians" dilemma, bestowing the authority to determine for us the general fund from which to draw on how we think and believe. Is that an objective observation or yours? How to be objective while being stuck in subjectivity. Doomed to fail.
Quite honestly, I don't knw whether to laugh or cry at another instance of the decay of philosophy. After abandoning its historical roots of trying to understand how to live a good life, it has descended into exploring problems that only a demented logician can appreciate. Most historians would rather do history than pointlessly speculate. The practice of history is about understanding the human condition and as such it changes as different generations of scholars and writers ask different questions of the same material or explore neglected material. None of this has anything to do with sterile speculation about typology.
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@cdd
News becomes myth. Tall tales come from the past.
1
Why is Marshall McLuhan never acknowledged in these kinds of discussions? The reason we're thinking about things like history the way we do now is because the technology we use today is different from that used in the 19th century. Hegel and Marx were formed by the printing press, regular type, standardizations of languages through print. Electronic media, on the other hand, makes us think differently, not linearly but in a multi-stranded way. Mr. Sartwell thinks about history the way electronic media have dictated he should, not because of any new insight into its nature or trajectory.
4
99% of humans who have ever lived would tell Sartwell to think outside the box. The natural freedom of the human mind cannot accept the stunted version that history begins with the Big Bang. Most people think like the most expensive living artist, David Hockney: that you would have to be brain-dead to stop at the Big Bang. He believes in a personal God. Dawkins is frustrated that the masses shed his arguments like waters off a ducks back. Hawking's sterile speculations are like the abstract sophistry of the infinitely divisible halves. Here's what resonate in the human mind: "In the Beginning, God," and "from Everlasting to Everlasting thou are God." Because man is made in God's image, he has an eternal antenna to grasp the infinite, "deep calling unto deep," or like to Like. Man looks and knows like God, and that God, king David said in the 23 Psalm, "is with me." In Sartwell' stunted version, history is a footnote in biology, which is not even a footnote in Physics or Chemistry--the Cosmos from end to end is sterile, biology exists in other galaxies only because (well) it just has to, the Bio of the Gaps. Someone practiced Earth-control and that someone is both in and at the End of History. Dry, sir, very dry.
What worries me is that elementary school classrooms actually don't have any view of history at all except that the American Colonies and the Revolution are taught over and over again in every grade. Many hallways and classrooms are decorated with child-drawn posters of the colonies and their industries. The colonies are dragged out again and again in every grade, even including middle school. Mentions of Europe are rare and almost entirely about the evils of George III and Parliament. It's no surprise at all that American adults have only the haziest knowledge of world history, centered almost entirely on late 18th century America. In my own opinion, an event that had a lot to do with shaping modern world history was the Reformation. Many frequent churchgoers may have an idea what that is, but I'd bet that most adult Americans, churched or not, know nothing about it.
3
@Charles Zigmund
1. Elementary schools re-teach the same time periods in US history with increasing sophistication as children are able to read and communicate at a higher level.
2. My children were educated in European history, AP American history, AP US Government, and the non-Western world in high school. High school English also provided a window to other cultures. Greek mythology is incomprehensible without awareness of a polytheistic culture. Shakespeare makes more sense if you’re familiar with Elizabethan England Good luck with James Joyce if you’re clueless about early 20th century Ireland.
The problem may not be with individual courses, but with students or schools that don’t engage in a challenging range of classes
History is often simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reasoning, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:
Peace-loving Europeans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others, have died because the Peaceful Majority did not speak up until it was too late.
As for us who watch it spiral and unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts and hound them to the ground: Fanatics who threaten our way of life. Let us hope that thousands, world wide, think about this before it's too late.
'Guernica'
7
What a thought provoking little article.
I'm a retired sociology professor/director of a global studies problem who has long understood history as a series of overlapping weltenschaungs. Using the typologies listed here, I'm probably closest to loop theory with a heavy dose of dialectical underpinnings. However, age and the current state of the world find me eager to ponder multiple possible alternative explanations.
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@Linda C
". . . global studies problem . . . "
"Problem" for "Program": What a profound and disheartening Freudian Slip in this context.
First of all, it was Herbert Butterfield--not "Alexander" (whoever that is)--who coined the term "Whig history."
For readers interested in the longer history of how history has been visualized, I highly recommend Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton's beautifully illustrated book Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010). As Rosenberg and Grafton show, the linear model has been far from the only way history has been imagined in Western culture.
Personally, I'd choose Darwin's suggestion of a "coral" to represent historical change (evolution is often represented as a "tree," but that more linear model owes more to 19th century German thought than to Darwin's own). History is progressive in the sense that past events constrain the possibilities for future ones (it is path-dependent), but since those events are highly contingent and unpredictable, "progress" can't be measured on a linear axis. Stephen Jay Gould's book Wonderful Life (his best in my mind) also has some profound and compelling discussion of the nature of historical change.
9
Alexander Butterfield revealed the Nixon tapes....which is why, in our family of history teachers, facts come first....
How would I draw a picture of history, where human history is headed, a timeline, or line of direction, I suppose something of a geometrical and biological and of course physical model?
It seems logical to conclude that the development of history has to be based on what's physically possible, therefore discoveries of science will describe what's humanly possible under the circumstances. But here is the confounding part to me: The physical sciences typically say things like the laws of nature produce horses but not unicorns, that unicorns are in the realm of imagination, and what is in the realm of imagination of course cannot come into existence, become history, but it's mighty strange that the very laws of existence which say unicorns cannot come into existence nevertheless produce humans which imagine them, which is to say the very laws result in conceptions which transgress them, and why on earth would a law make possible the conception of what transgresses it unless of course it's possible to transgress the very law?
Therefore I think mathematicians are on the right track when they say for all laws of existence it's still possible to imagine things like zero or absolute plenitude or unicorns or pretty much anything else of the imagination and that probably somewhere most anything of the imagination has in fact come into existence. Therefore probably multiverse, multiple direction views of existence are the most accurate so far as we know. Science=dreams=reality?
Thank you. A small point: it's Herbert Butterfield, not Alexander (which is an old Watergate name).
2
I knew i was hanging onto that old Spirograph set for a reason.
sandye
1
@sandyefern
I loved that reference! I wondered if they are still made, so one can draw looping geometric designs with a colored pen instead of just having a computer program do it for you!
I am reminded of the groundbreaking work of "Professor" Irwin Corey, The World's Foremost Authority.
4
@K D P
Brilliant riposte. The author of the article surely was inspired by the great Dr. Corey. I remember watching him on the Steve Allen Show.
6
Let’s hear it for Irwin! There was a reason his wonderful caricature resonated so well, even with an audience that had never encountered the species. Didn’t even have to use graphics; not even silly ones. Thanks for mentioning him. I think of him almost every time I read this column.
4
Karl Popper's tome "The Poverty of Historicism" laid most of these speculations to rest.
Since the onset of cars and unrelenting addiction to oil --a line plunging straight downwards..................
A timeline, but drawn with a spiral. Progress, and whatever passes for enlightenment is not linear, but dips back into the past for a pause. Trumps Amerika, anyone ???
1
It seems that the circular or looping diagrams of the course of history require moving backwards in time.
As to the Big Bang and the theological Supreme Being creating the Universe, both run into a singularity, of what was there before? If the Big Bang is a periodic expansion and shrinking process, then what or who renews the energy converted to entropy? (Assuming that the 2nd law of thermodynamics holds).
On a scale of human history, L. N. Tolstoy's "inevitability" of the major historical events makes people into passive and non-thinking lotus eaters. To say nothing of the fact that history is rewritten by the victors. Now we are in a period of its rewriting under the inluence of leftist radical Democrats, and of all the so-called politically correct and militant vegans.
Ludwig Wittgenstein once said that the single greatest delusion of modern times is the belief in "laws of nature."
We assume, if we look at the history of the universe, that no mater how you draw it - linear, circular, spiraling, all directions at once - it goes from past to future.
Some physicists play with the notion there is no such thing as time, but they have no way to conveying their alternative in any practical manner.
On the contrary, contemplatives from Nagarjuna to Meister Eckhart have described disciplines by which it is possible to directly perceive all possible phenomena (all possible universes, if you like) emerging out of Timeless Being, from (eternal) moment to (eternal) moment.
You can draw this or live it or both.
www.remember-to-breathe.org
1
The general drift of "his"tory, seems, at this point, to be a downward spiral.
If we gave equal shrift to "her"story, though, we might have a chance of changing that to an upward slope.
3
"The global population has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to 7.616 billion in 2018......and 11.2 billion by 2100."
I can't say for sure whether it's loops, linear, dialectics, time bang, etc for drawing history. But sometime after 2100, maybe even sooner, human history will be null and void. A flat line might best describe it.
Of course that coudl change if we put a stop on population explosion. But even then, there's the environmental pollution we have yet to come to grips with.
Doesn't look to good.
6
@cherrylog754
Nonsense.
God aka Mother Nature always sorts stuff out. One by one DNA gene step.
1
The greatest lie ever told is history.
Our short lifespans limit our ability to remember and pass-on information, and those who take the time to record history do so with bias and agenda as their guiding light.
Very few have a sense of our true heritage, and those that do are not saying. Probably just as well... as Jack Nicholson said, you couldn't handle the truth!
1
Paralysis thru Analysis.
Let me dumb it down if I may.
In a technical democracy which a majority of the world is in, albeit shaky, one of the basic rules is not to let the extremes rule.
Follow great leaders in history whether it be Pericles in classical Greece, Ghandi in India or Washington, the founding fathers and Lincoln in America.
2
However you wish to draw the 6th extinction we are causing and entering in. Pretty good bet there will be no historians at the end of the narrow gauntlet to draw any pictures. Nor any Rock of Ages to exempt our passage to another stage of the hard rock. I mean if you want to draw, you might as well draw it big, without history, man or god.
I'd just draw it as a slinky, descending an infinite number of stairs.
I always loved my slinky.
3
The immortal coil!
1
I would draw history using the Hegelian dialectic image, but instead of having the triangles moving upward, I'd have them moving randomly up or down or left and right - similar to Brownian motion, but in two dimensions.
2
The urge to produce a philosophy of science, especially in recent times, has mirrored an inappropriate desire to turn historical thinking and historiography into something "scientific." Unfortunately, history (i.e., the past) is composed of multitudinous and complex events which are often quite singular rather than of decontextualized and generalizable patterns. When finding/making the latter is attempted one ends up with either pseudo-science or bouts of moralizing.
This is why history's muse is Clio, a literary "spirit." Tt is also why historians are rightly inclined to produce narrative "stories" that inevitably differ from one writer/researcher to another and always generate new stories among future historians . These narrative accounts are not wholly works of fiction but they are not and cannot be abstract schemas, scientistic formulas or predictive equations either.
3
History has no predeterminate direction. It depends on how human beings will decide. It may be frightening, but the human species is on its own. That is called freedom.
3
Dear Professor Sartwell,
I would draw history in disappearing ink.
Whatever scientific progress we make is invariably negated by our moral outrages and regress. All of our Acadias vanish before they take root but our infernos flourish in every corner of the earth.
History, as such, does not exist. However, the great individual men and women and their achievements most certainly do. They provide the hope and the reminder that courage and excellence are always within reach, even if the vast majority of us never reach for them.
Cordially,
S.A. Traina
6
History is not science. There are too many variables and unknowns to craft the double-blind experimental controlled tests that provide predictable and repeatable results. Thus drawing history is an apt exercise in subjective fiction and mythology.
We don't understand nor can we can explain the nature of physical reality. The theories of Quantum Mechanics and Relativity can not be reconciled. And they only deal with the 5% of reality that is not a mass known as dark matter (25%) nor a force known as dark energy (70%).
I would draw history as a flushing toilet carrying human waste into the unknown.
1
What are the units for the x axis of this two-dimensional space? Per-capita wealth? Or per-capita health? Or some other variable? (I assume the y-axis is time, of course.)
1
Interesting perspective - there is no value judgement of historical events, only the future cultural context puts the value matrix based on the prevailing cultural biases. Swami Vivekananda look to this historical complexity by starting that we are moving from lower truth to higher truth. No historical events and understanding is an error or evil in the long run, the value judgement is a temporal measurement, in the long arch of history, it is a noise. The kalachakra is only the presentation of the cyclic nature of this ever ending play of cosmic energy - there is no value assessment on it.
1
A simple, linear timeline of history is one of the essential cognitive maps. Every student needs one, just as much as they need a mental map of world geography.
They can use it to anchor everything else they learn in the future.
It's not an ideological tool or a theory. It's a way of contextualizing virtually everything you ever learn about the past.
You can talk about refining this simple linear map as students grow. Add other lines that show different cultures or subjects. Show intersections.
Perhaps college students who already have a well-annotated map of history can consider additions like the ones in this article.
But they are not a good starting place.
16
@Gerald Grow If only college students as a whole had a solid understanding of history! With the exception of the small subset of History majors, college students reflect the US population in general with their thin knowledge of US or world history. Of course, the status of education in our country opens up a whole new can of worms, but just wanted to give you a heads up that college students are not getting the history or humanities education that would help put current events into context, linear, circular or otherwise.
19
What the article does not go into is how the linear model of history is exploited for propaganda purposes. Pro-abortion lobbyists, for example, complain that people who think abortion law should be determined by the democratic process are trying to "turn back the clock", as if protecting the abortionist industry was some sort of manifest destiny and opposing it was somehow unnatural.
1
You choose very unsettling words. No one is pro-abortion. And a linear history in no way describes its evolution. Rather, a society’s recognition that women have a right to control their own bodies is one whose time might be coming.
4
@Charlesbalpha
Charles,
1. Nobody is pro-abortion.
2. 80-90% of the American population is in favor of allowing abortions in the first trimester.
7
@don salmon
My discussion was about removing abortion law from democratic control. If they think 80_90 percent favor it why are they afraid of a vote?
What about a fractal theory of history, with patterns discernible only from the echoes of time but not by those living in them and certainly not providing any kind of patterning that usable?
23
When philosophers expound on history, you can be sure you won’t learn history, but glimpse a poetic interpretation of the past. Historians, on the other hand, are trained to avoid the trap of interpreting the past through grand schemes. While acknowledging that we are shaped by the times in which we live, trained historians strive to analyze the past on its own terms. This op.ed is fun to read but not helpful in coming to terms with how people lived, felt, and acted in the past.
52
Fascinating article.
It has too much of an American slant, as if most of history happens between the Atlantic and Pacific. It has not, and does not. What passes for civilization has only been on this continent for a bit over 450 years. There are bars in Europe older than that, never mind souks in North Africa, or caravaserais on the old Silk Road. History is organic and events in countless places impact other events many miles and years apart.
To me, the real issue is not how we draw history but how we draw the future. I am normally an optimistic person, but I have a dim, dark view of the future of humanity. I hope I'm wrong, in part because I have kids who will have to deal with the future, but I think things are going to go downhill in a big way, possibly by the end of this century. People around the world can fix things, but I wonder if the collective will exists or will exist to do so.
It may be that humans become extinct. Meanwhile, the bugs, and microbes and rats are all in waiting, telling each other, "Time is on our side, boys. Time is on our side."
33
@noley
There are 7.4 B humans and more to come. About 20
% are Han.
“Only 450 years of civilization “?
And so Indigenous populations are completely erased. There was a 14,000 year old civilization in North America. It was obliterated by the European one.
9
The historian Page Smith used to stay that, "Even though it feels as if the general trend of History is down, every once in a while, a few people get together to lift it up higher than it's ever been before." That could translate into a kind of ratcheting diagram, where short and steep shots to new heights are followed by long slow declines... until the next advance.
19
In every one of the drawings you present, there is a line, graph or spiral upwards or outwards, implying growth. The human mind has grappled with problems and more or less solved them with innovation or tools. Language, wheels, power, schools etc. The common feature is growth. We obsess over GDP growth for example. All other species of Nature are limited by ecosystems that reach steady states, flourish for a while and then perhaps are replaced. The question provoked by this essay is "what is the ceiling?" or "is there a ceiling?". The other question not addressed is "quantity vs quality". No axis presented makes this distinction, it is all quantity.
So my drawing would be a a graph of the population of representative cultures or areas of the world superimposed on each other, with two subgraphs, one assessing the amount of consumption per person and the other some measure of perceived happiness. And perhaps there would be a ceiling as well.
13
@William Trainor - I think we know what the ceiling is on modern growth, energy production without pollution, i.e. CO2, methane, fly ash, etc. If humans don't solve this problem in the next 50 years we will likely have a great extinction of life on earth, humans included.
3
@William Trainor
We are all apes. We are not ants. Ants rule and run stuff. We evolve or not.
2
While the intermediate points along the time-path of history vacillate between progress and reaction, the overall direction has clearly been toward freedom, democracy, and justice for all. As we examine all movements of history, many of which were formed on the basis of religion, it becomes clear that the initiation seems progressive until adaption becomes reactionary. The Christianization of Europe represents a progressive religion co-opted by repressive regimes. Eventually, the hard lines soften to provide a freer society until the next crisis or reaction pushes forces against the open society. We are in that period now, exemplified by Russia, China, the Xenophobic parties of Europe, the tyrants of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Philippines as well as Trump and the White Nationalists. Just as the press has sounded the alarm, just as Brazil has joined the movement, the cracks in this pseudo foundation have formed in the USA, and will form in other parts of the world in the not so distant future. Time is limitless, so to expect China to become a free society, at this point, doesn't seem realistic. But, it too will change. We can only hope that our nation acts quickly. I believe it will. It's in our founding articles and our true national spirit.
7
Perhaps it would help to get really complicated. I have sometimes thought of the course of history as the path of a small bug crawling across a very rumpled quilt. It can't see ahead and it does not make a straight line. It just takes each step to go forward. Sometimes it backs up. It may go left or right at any given moment. It is an x, y, z path. And it moves along a time axis. "Events" unexpected, man-made and natural disrupt carefully laid plans. So too do the "trumps" just happen, like a kid jumping on the bed, and throw the bug through the air. So what do you do? This is where institutional memory, and the ability to intelligently improvise are so important. Plan reasonably but keep a flexible mindset at the ready. This is why governance is no place for heedless mediocrity.
13
@John Olson History is the record of human life, or of a society, and as a society we do not all see the same thing. Events do disrupt our plans, but our history happens between us, within the bug, the ship of state if you will. We decide, given the material constraints, where we wish to go, how we wish to go and in which direction. Some leaders reflect our worst angels some appeal to our better angels. All leaders have some kind of vision of the future, back, sideways or forward.
2
@John Olson
The comedy-of-ideas TV show THE GOOD PLACE parodied the whole idea of trying to "draw" the course of history by showing it as a wildly looping line that spelled out the mysterious word "Jeremy Bearimy". They then debate what the dot over the "i" stands for.
The argument can benefit from a little satire.
8
@John Olson
This sounds a lot like the author's spiral loop. Thanks for the wonderful visual now in my head.
1
Human history is not the same as the history of the universe. The world physics reveals follows natural laws, the human world, human interests and ideals. Human history, or at least American history, is progressive. Woman vote, as they should, but it took over 100 years for that to be achieved, for the equality touted in the Declaration of Independence to be realized for women, and even then not all, not women of color.
American history is a pendulum on a sailboat, progress always meets opposition from those with power and privilege, but with struggle and protest, we move forward nonetheless.
Can anyone deny the Civil War not only saved the Union but also expanded rights? The same with MLK and Civil Rights movements. Real progress is possible if not easy, and always subject to attempts to turn it back.
MAGA is a particularly virulent backlash against the progress made on several fronts. Hopefully progressives and liberal will move us forward again.
21
Human history is different of the history of the universe by human definition only, but when applying the laws of the universe as we humans understand them human history is a subplot of the universe. In other words, everything our body does at every second or any interaction we have at every moment can be traced back to the physical laws that rule large objects and subatomic particles. The effect of the physical laws become so complex in even simple biological processes that it is impossible for humans to understand how they laws form what we call human history.
6
@Oliver Herfort Human history both is and is not a subplot of the material universe. Materialism does not explain ideation. That may be why the Marxian inversion of Hegel's idealism failed to predict history. Humans are constrained by nature but also create, make artifacts, artificial intelligence and our own cultural realities. To ignore creativity and ideals ignores most of human reality. We make the world, with the materials at hand and the ideas in our minds.
8
@Donald
I don't know how the "history of the universe" got involved in the discussion, but I'd like to point out that the laws of thermodynaimics imply a constant drop in the supply of useful energy and thus a pessimistic end for the universe. Not a very good model for human history.
8
How to draw the timeline of history? It all depends on what principles you and your culture determine are important towards understanding your values, aspirations and existence: the rest, as they say, is commentary.
8
Very cool. I will turn this over in mind for the next couple of days.
5