The path of history ... stair, line, curve or circle? - Page 2 - Historum

Omnia illustrantur · November 10th, 2011, 10:07 AM

I would have to say circle. We are human beings none the less and always have the same driving factors:
lust, greed, selfishness, etc
revenge, anger, ambition.
As long as us humans remain the same "being or essence" we will repeat our previous actions over and over again. History is full of repetitions.

**AlpinLuke** · November 10th, 2011, 11:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pixi666

You can't reduce the whole of history into a 2 dimensional shape. Aspects of it, however, can. According to Thomas Kuhn, science advances like the staircase model, with plateaus representing scientific paradigms, and vertical lines representing 'paradigm shifts'. For example, astronomy went through a series of sudden paradigm shifts: Aristotelian to Ptolemaic to Copernican to Newtonian to Einsteinian.

But every part of history has an element of all the lines you describe.

Yes, that's also my thought about history as a comprehensive subject.

A matrix of different functions or better a set of dynamics at work could describe what history is in a more suitable way.

I would add a consideration about how history is read.

Semiotics could suggest that it can happen that reading gives further [or even different] meaning to what is written, according to the code, the culture [the "language"] of who reads history.

So we can develop the debate further introducing the matter of how we perceive these "functions".

**Naomasa298** · November 11th, 2011, 12:56 AM

Ah, but it could be a 3-dimensional shape. Something like this, I think.

I'd say that's a pretty accurate representation of history.

**AlpinLuke** · November 11th, 2011, 01:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Naomasa298

Ah, but it could be a 3-dimensional shape. Something like this, I think.

I'd say that's a pretty accurate representation of history.

Interesting thought and curious model of history ...

I was wondering about timing and time line. Temporal dimension should be involved in the representation of history: we can see how, during the development of mankind different cultures have moved at different speed.

**AlpinLuke** · November 11th, 2011, 02:04 AM

If time is the awareness of change, without change we cannot note time so that we could start from a simple equation:

C = H

where C = Change and S = History

But Change needs a cause, which can be a process or a single event. At the end a process is a list of events, a summation.

And events can be the result of a timing * a force * a dynamic [the historical dynamic have activated by forces in a certain time.

So, if we really want to write down a formula, I would think to something like ...

corrocamino · November 11th, 2011, 02:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlpinLuke

If time is the awareness of change, without change we cannot note time so that we could start from a simple equation:

C = H

where C = Change and S = History

But Change needs a cause, which can be a process or a single event. At the end a process is a list of events, a summation.

And events can be the result of a timing * a force * a dynamic [the historical dynamic have activated by forces in a certain time.

So, if we really want to write down a formula, I would think to something like ...

Enter the era of mathematical historiography!

**AlpinLuke** · November 11th, 2011, 05:19 AM

And I could develop the formula inserting a factor of historical inertia as divisor of the events ...

But honestly this modernist/deterministic approach to history is not mine.

I do prefer the post-modernist conception of historical development, even if I keep my particular "pseudo modernist" stance also in this field, recognizing that in some contexts a deterministic, even linear, development of history is visible.

corrocamino · November 11th, 2011, 05:25 AM

Bad news! I've discovered that S doesn't exist, and (what's worse!) H is a discontinuous function!

**AlpinLuke** · November 11th, 2011, 06:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by corrocamino

Bad news! I've discovered that S doesn't exist, and (what's worse!) H is a discontinuous function!

Mmhh

So, it will be better to base our "mathematical historiography" on the Quantum Sum of the pasts [and the process of normalization of the field ...]

Jokes a part, some attempts to reduce history to math formalisms have been done for real. But usually in a fragmented way.

For example math analysis of the demographic history exist. Economical history, in almost all its aspects, is a well suitable subject for statistical math.

But whole history as a complicated matrix has never considered from the perspective of the math formalisms [at least as for I know ...]