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"The Christian way has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found to be hard and left untried" - GK Chesterton.
"The most obvious predicition about the future is that it will be mostly like the past" - Alain de Botton -
Not describing, explaining.Originally posted by duke o' york View Post
I really doubt anyone here has read The 10 000 year explosion. Also the topic in itself was about which books one would use to explain why the world is like it is as simply as possible to as many people as possible as quickly as possible.Originally posted by MOBIUS View PostNot to mention telling us about something we've all read ages ago...
Modern man calls walking more quickly in the same direction down the same road “change.”
The world, in the last three hundred years, has not changed except in that sense.
The simple suggestion of a true change scandalizes and terrifies modern man. -Nicolás Gómez DávilaComment
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So what is the difference to a historian?Comment
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Jared Diamond isn't really history at all. That's not a criticism. "Guns, Germs and Steel" is a good read.
"Collapse" has been done better by other sources.The genesis of the "evil Finn" concept- Evil, evil FinlandComment
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None of the authors I mention in the OP are historians.Originally posted by duke o' york View Post
Historians have long struggled to describe how history has unfolded or how they wish it would have unfolded. They have also set different models to explain why history turned out as it did.
Especially in the latter tradition one got many complicated and esotherical theories about the way the world works. Complex world systems, "civlizations", ethos, religion, ideas, great men, socioeconomic movments ect. all filled with douzens of ad hoc explanations.
Few have taken the reductivist approach. I have chosen as few as possible examples of environmental determinism and hereditarianism as I could to demonstrate that one can understand the bulk of history as it unfolded by looking at just a few critical factors.Modern man calls walking more quickly in the same direction down the same road “change.”
The world, in the last three hundred years, has not changed except in that sense.
The simple suggestion of a true change scandalizes and terrifies modern man. -Nicolás Gómez DávilaComment
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Determinism has one massive flaw- where the hell do you stop?The genesis of the "evil Finn" concept- Evil, evil FinlandComment
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So description and explanation are completely different. Well I'd love to see a historical author try to defend his latest text to a publisher without saying how it explains anything about the time in question. Description of each period has been done already, by hundreds of authors. To have anything new published then it needs to have an angle showing how the lessons of that time are relevant today, and in the future.Comment
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What do you mean? I'm not talking about classical determinism here, we all know these are complex systems prone to violent changes due to chance.Originally posted by Bugs ****ing Bunny View Post
But all we are going for is probability. Our real problem is that we don't know what where black swans. This is why all these propositions are general, since we hope the average score after 8000 years of civlization would look more or less similar in another alternative Earth.
Perhaps you mean the scale to which we can be reasonably determinisitc?
We can for example safley say people of Northern Eurasian descent would have come to dominate the world for some time. We can't safley say France was destined to win the hundred years war.Last edited by Heraclitus; June 25, 2010, 18:31.Modern man calls walking more quickly in the same direction down the same road “change.”
The world, in the last three hundred years, has not changed except in that sense.
The simple suggestion of a true change scandalizes and terrifies modern man. -Nicolás Gómez DávilaComment
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But Valois won the Hundred Years War, not the French, given that Anjou was fighting for the English/British side.Comment
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You are right I should have said that it would have been impossible to predict that in the war of the Wannabe Kings of France vs. wannabe Kings of France and England the Wannabe King of France would win.
However if I recall right some sources at the time already give hints of "us" (English) not having any more land over there ("France").Modern man calls walking more quickly in the same direction down the same road “change.”
The world, in the last three hundred years, has not changed except in that sense.
The simple suggestion of a true change scandalizes and terrifies modern man. -Nicolás Gómez DávilaComment
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The Bible
The Koran
Mein Kampf
That about covers it.You just wasted six ... no, seven ... seconds of your life reading this sentence.Comment
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Saw the TV series of Guns, Germans and Steel. Quite good, actually. I specially liked the actor, who was Otto Bismarck.
I've allways wanted to play "Russ Meyer's Civilization"Comment
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she canna take much more of this, keptin!Who were the other contenders? Diogenes Laërtius and Dan Brown?Scouse Git (2) La Fayette Adam Smith Solomwi and Loinburger will not be forgotten.
"Remember the night we broke the windows in this old house? This is what I wished for..."
2015 APOLYTON FANTASY FOOTBALL CHAMPION!Comment
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Of books that I've actually read.
Reflections on the Revolution in France - Edmund Burke
Democracy in America - Alexis de Toqueville
Decline of the West - Oswald Spengler
There's lots of others out there that I haven't read.
I'd have a honourable mention to Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I could not put it down.
second honourable mention to Pierre Berton's "The Last Spike"Scouse Git (2) La Fayette Adam Smith Solomwi and Loinburger will not be forgotten.
"Remember the night we broke the windows in this old house? This is what I wished for..."
2015 APOLYTON FANTASY FOOTBALL CHAMPION!Comment
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