Why do you like History?
- Thread starter BCLG100
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I think of it of finding out how we got from there to here.
Fifty
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
philippe
FYI, I chase trains.
I love history becuase that which has been seen cannot be unseen.
mitsho
Deity
I History does not repeat itself
II Thus you cannot learn from history point.
Everyone that does that just copies the present onto the past. It does not work. You cannot have the same situation like you cannot have two identical human individuals! Accept the past as unique. Thus
is only partly true. History a) helps to understand how and why the present is as it is, b) helps to understand present facts in the light of different past acts, c) but you cannot copy the morale of the past onto the present!
II Thus you cannot learn from history point.
Everyone that does that just copies the present onto the past. It does not work. You cannot have the same situation like you cannot have two identical human individuals! Accept the past as unique. Thus
is only partly true. History a) helps to understand how and why the present is as it is, b) helps to understand present facts in the light of different past acts, c) but you cannot copy the morale of the past onto the present!
flyingchicken
Deity
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Oh, pshaw, stop being so nitpicky. We're in Civilization forums and thus most of us know how abstracted yet functional things can be.
mitsho
Deity
Am I? I'm just a student of history and I know how popular the thing is and can be (just look at the various history magazines at your local kiosk
). But the science is different. It just doesn't seem the people in here are aware of that.
). But the science is different. It just doesn't seem the people in here are aware of that.flyingchicken
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It's pretty obvious that you can't go "the moral of the story is that we should use more spears" to the modern days as much as you can't go "the moral of the story is that slaves need to be set free because they're people just like you and me" to the past because of the vastly different climates.
With enough generalization and abstraction, you will see that history does repeat itself.
You really can't argue with the vagueness of that statement, just to preempt.
With enough generalization and abstraction, you will see that history does repeat itself.
You really can't argue with the vagueness of that statement, just to preempt.
Well obviously exact things don't repeat themselves but themes occur consistently throughout history, as a student of history i'm surprised your not aware of that. Look at how many times a malthusian crisis has occured or the number of times a rebellion has occured for the exact same reason the current oppressors had rebelled previously. It is easy to draw parralells to the themes in history whilst it is rather obvious that mehmed the conqueror is not actually going to get his catapults and cannons and then set 'em up outside Istanbul.
allunderheaven
Settler
My love in history stemmed from world war II films and games like Age of Empires, Civ, Rise of Nations...so on and also because of the stories...
I don't know why I do. I just do.
MilesGregarius
Half-baked Renegade
mitsho
Deity
But then what is the point of it. I can generalize any statement so that it is true. Anything is true with enough abstraction. You get easily into the spheres of tautology ("Wenn der Hahn kräht auf dem Mist, ändert sich's Wetter oder's bleibt wie es ist" - it's the normal German example, difficult to translate and I do not have time to search a good english example, but you probably know what a tautology is...)
Science, and history is one if you want to learn from it, and Prediction profits works this way: You have conditions (A) and you have "results" (B). The more of A you have, the more precise you get. The more of B you have, the more general prediction you can make. Now in history we do have many many factors (conditions) that change from time to time (as well as in all social sciences, only natural sciences can keep the conditions the same, mostly), but the results seem similar. Thus, many people think (falsely) they can go from B to A backwards.
Thus, history doesn't work like natural science and even "worse" than with Social science (where you can make some predictions). And thus, @BCLG100 you can see paralells, but you would need to have a really good argument to prove that it is causal! (And, btw. I don't get your Mehmed II example, care to explain again? thanks
). That said, it is true that historians all the time make prediction, it is part of our "job", and it relies heavily on common sense and "historical techniques", not so much scientific methods.
Sharwood
Rich, doctor nephew
You're correct of course, but since much social science makes assumptions based, in part, upon history - I know this, as I study both history and sociology - they're not as mutually exclusive as you're stating. Broad historical trends do tend to repeat themselves, but you've probably got a better chance of predicting something with a combined sociology/psychology background than one in history.
mitsho
Deity
Thank you, that must have been a first on these forums. I might think of changing my sig with that. Haven't changed it for a long time. (Or has anyone a better idea for my sig?
)I'm as well a student of history and a social science (political sciece), which is why I at first had the idea. I'm all about for interdisciplinary work and I do dislike my fellow students talking of something in a "history science" tone and you know they do not know really much of it. It occurs obviously to me whenever the topic gets political science like (which it gets often as I do tend to chose these courses
).My pun was directed at all these people that say: "Look, Hitler was stupid invading Russia as it didn't succeed with Napoleon either" (but then Hitler did invade France through Belgium as it was tried in WWI and this time it worked). There is a big difference between saying "Historical 'events' (and present ones) do have sometimes similarities and understanding the past may help us understand the present" and "History repeats itself". The later is simply not true!
m
Not at all. In 1914, the German attack went primarily north of the Ardennes, which is where the French concentrated their attack. In 1940, the French went where the Germans went in 1914, while the Germans took the route the French tried to use (in reverse of course). Also, the Germans had a mobility and concentration advantage, went for an encirclement as opposed to the flanking maneuver, and had much better supply transport than in 1914. Too, the Wehrmacht had that brief halt on the Somme to regroup, which wasn't afforded to the 1914 Heer.
Extremely poor and rather general analogy. It's like saying "stupid people suck because they are stupid" - because it's silly to make such a terrible analogy, and anyone who does that should be drug out into the street and shot.
mitsho
Deity
You just proved why I said history doesn't repeat itself. Thank you. Too many different factors
flyingchicken
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But isn't it in drawing parallels to the factors and how they affect outcomes where history repeats itself, not in the events themselves?
No, I didn't. I indicated that that comparison was a bad one to use as an example. Better comparisons would be different: for example, stating that it is much more difficult to invade France from Italy than it is to invade Austria from Italy; there is one historical example of the former succeeding (which took several centuries and was fought against disparate tribes that united infrequently, and wasn't really fought against a nation-state), while there are Revolutionary, Napoleonic, World War I, and World War II examples of the latter, off the top of my head in a few minutes. The examples of Austria successfully fending off such attacks are relatively few and far between (yes, I know that they exist, such as the War of the Spanish Succession, but that basically turned into a case of Austria unsuccessfully attempting to invade southern France anyway).You just proved why I said history doesn't repeat itself. Thank you. Too many different factors
Yes.
mitsho
Deity
Yes, but I say you don't have any situation where you have the same factors. Compare it to a scientific study. You have various open variables with which you want to explain a dependent variable (the outcome). But you need many many more control variables to prove that it is really the same thing that has happened.
Fact A has probably (?!) the same effect at time I and at time II, but that doesn't mean you can predict the outcome at time III as there are many more different Factors (B-Z) contributing. Thus, it doesn't repeat, certain things may seem to repeat and historians frequently do like to do that, look at the past and predict the future, but that is just questionable.
Besides, we are way too much on the political/miltary side of history here. Historical Anthropology may be for example a more fruitful place of interest.
Why are you sitting so much on Wars? Do you really compare a Roman conquest with Napoleons war and the World Wars? There are just so much different things. As said, a) the political situation on both sides are each time different b) the economical situation are different, c) the techniques and methods are different as well in all of your situations. I don't even wanna go into detail.... Having seen your point, would you say that a further conquest from Italy to Austria will be successful? I doubt it.
Besides that, it seems your reason is the topography of the areas in question. What do they have to do with History and Human Interaction. Do you think that in a different, but similar situation (with countries Ataly and Iustria
or whatever they are called if this situation exists on this planet, on another one or in a paralell universe), Ataly will have it easy to invade Iustria?Similar threads
