You're ignorant, boy. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
NO!
Then why study history? Ignorance is bliss. You're ignorant, boy.
We can learn something from history. We don't have to be ignorant determinists--You are DOOMED to repeat.--to learn from history. Wouldn't we be equally likely to repeat history's successes if we were ignorant?
No, there is some value to learning. Our forefathers were quite as stupid and as intelligent as are we, we can study their lives and times and try not to repeat their mistakes, and to profit from their successes.
But isn't the state of the art that the universe is random, that there is no master watchmaker who wound the whole thing up and let it run, much less a Director? Isn't the teaching of Darwin that our, homo sapiens, triumph was a close thing that could have gone either way for a little while early on?
Yes to those questions.
If it was all random then why would we study history?
It was not all random.
It was contingent. Meteors hit, stuff like that. If the Big Meteor hadn't hit the dinosaurs would have survived. We survived because we had brains of sufficient power to recognize, "Hey, it's getting cold isn't it? Time to move to Florida."
Our brains were a random evolutionary endowment BUT THAT IS THE REASON WE TRIUMPHED. Nested within randomness and contingency is determinism. It is not randomness and contingency all the way down, or UP. So that is why we study history. Our brains permit us to; they also permit us to learn from history, including from Darwin.
"Most attempts to explain southern defeat or northern victory lack the dimension of contingency--the recognition that at numerous critical points during the war things might have gone together differently."
-James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (1988).
State of the art! No. That is "Darwinian determinism." Obviously, things "might" have gone differently in McPherson's "four major turning points." Things "might" have gone differently if that meteor hadn't hit; if homo sapiens hadn't had the biggest brains; if Hitler hadn't opened an Eastern front. Why did things go as they did? Of course it is too simplistic to say this factor determined the outcome of the war: the bigger brains (higher literacy) of the U.S. population or greater U.S. resources, or greater manpower, or, or, or. Nobody with a brain argues that. But neither is it contingency all the way down. The war lasted four years for reasons, it ended in U.S. triumph for reasons, among them the aforementioned, it didn't last four years randomly, just a roll of the dice, and it didn't end with U.S. victory randomly. McPherson's four major turning points turned for reasons, not randomly.
Sheesh. Professor McPherson spent 857 pages for that, for contingency? No. That's a waste of timber. He has been studying and teaching history for fifty-two years for that, for "it's contingency all the way down." No sir, that is an insult to brains.
NO!
Then why study history? Ignorance is bliss. You're ignorant, boy.
We can learn something from history. We don't have to be ignorant determinists--You are DOOMED to repeat.--to learn from history. Wouldn't we be equally likely to repeat history's successes if we were ignorant?
No, there is some value to learning. Our forefathers were quite as stupid and as intelligent as are we, we can study their lives and times and try not to repeat their mistakes, and to profit from their successes.
But isn't the state of the art that the universe is random, that there is no master watchmaker who wound the whole thing up and let it run, much less a Director? Isn't the teaching of Darwin that our, homo sapiens, triumph was a close thing that could have gone either way for a little while early on?
Yes to those questions.
If it was all random then why would we study history?
It was not all random.
It was contingent. Meteors hit, stuff like that. If the Big Meteor hadn't hit the dinosaurs would have survived. We survived because we had brains of sufficient power to recognize, "Hey, it's getting cold isn't it? Time to move to Florida."
Our brains were a random evolutionary endowment BUT THAT IS THE REASON WE TRIUMPHED. Nested within randomness and contingency is determinism. It is not randomness and contingency all the way down, or UP. So that is why we study history. Our brains permit us to; they also permit us to learn from history, including from Darwin.
"Most attempts to explain southern defeat or northern victory lack the dimension of contingency--the recognition that at numerous critical points during the war things might have gone together differently."
-James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (1988).
State of the art! No. That is "Darwinian determinism." Obviously, things "might" have gone differently in McPherson's "four major turning points." Things "might" have gone differently if that meteor hadn't hit; if homo sapiens hadn't had the biggest brains; if Hitler hadn't opened an Eastern front. Why did things go as they did? Of course it is too simplistic to say this factor determined the outcome of the war: the bigger brains (higher literacy) of the U.S. population or greater U.S. resources, or greater manpower, or, or, or. Nobody with a brain argues that. But neither is it contingency all the way down. The war lasted four years for reasons, it ended in U.S. triumph for reasons, among them the aforementioned, it didn't last four years randomly, just a roll of the dice, and it didn't end with U.S. victory randomly. McPherson's four major turning points turned for reasons, not randomly.
Sheesh. Professor McPherson spent 857 pages for that, for contingency? No. That's a waste of timber. He has been studying and teaching history for fifty-two years for that, for "it's contingency all the way down." No sir, that is an insult to brains.
