Is history cyclical?
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The conventional, linear depiction of time — at least as old as Newton, with philosophical roots reaching as far back as Aristotle — presents it as a straight line in which each passing moment recedes behind the present, just as each approaching moment arrives from a future stretched out in front of us along the time-line we are travelling. It is surprising how pervasive and apparently convincing this depiction is at first blush — given that it is simply not true to our experience of time at all. For the past exists for us as a whole, not strung out along a line: to retrieve a past moment from six weeks ago, we don’t have to rewind the entire chain of events to get there: we jump immediately to the last days of summer. And we can jump from there to any other past moments, without having to trace out or locate those moments on any linear time-lines. The past is, if you will, omni-present to itself. At least that’s the way it seems to us. But then the question becomes: is this true only of our experience of the past? — or is it true of the past itself
[…]
In other words, how do you get from phenomenology (or how things appear) to ontology and how things actually are? To be sure, past events co-exist in memory — we can scan the past and access this event or jump to that event, without having to replay the entire succession of moments between them. But how do we get from this psychological experience/recollection of the past to the notion that past events themselves co-exist ontologically? This is where Deleuze draws on Henri Bergson. The past for Bergson is not the repository of a linear series of passing presents, but an a-temporal bloc where each and every past event co-exists with all the others. For Bergson, it is not just in memory that one event can be connected with any other, irrespective of their respective places on a time-line: in the Bergsonian past, past events themselves co-exist, inhabiting a realm that Bergson calls the virtual: the past as a virtual whole […] (or as a bloc) is the condition for actual events to take place in the present, just as — for example — the language-system as a virtual whole (or what the structuralists call a structure, langue) is the condition for actual speech acts to take place in the present. This view of the past as a condition for the actualization of the present connects with the privileging of becoming over being that Deleuze adopts from Friedrich Nietzsche. Being is merely a momentary, subsidiary, and largely illusory suspension (or “contraction”) of becoming, according to this view; becoming is always primary and fundamental. This means not merely that each and every thing has a history — rather, each and every thing simply is its history: apparent being is always the temporary but actual culmination or expression of real becoming; it is the present actualization of antecedent conditions contained in the virtual past. In the terminology of A Thousand Plateaus, the process of actualization is called “stratification.”
-- Excerpt From: Eugene W. Holland. “Deleuze and Guattaris: A Thousand Plateaus.” iBooks.
[…]
In other words, how do you get from phenomenology (or how things appear) to ontology and how things actually are? To be sure, past events co-exist in memory — we can scan the past and access this event or jump to that event, without having to replay the entire succession of moments between them. But how do we get from this psychological experience/recollection of the past to the notion that past events themselves co-exist ontologically? This is where Deleuze draws on Henri Bergson. The past for Bergson is not the repository of a linear series of passing presents, but an a-temporal bloc where each and every past event co-exists with all the others. For Bergson, it is not just in memory that one event can be connected with any other, irrespective of their respective places on a time-line: in the Bergsonian past, past events themselves co-exist, inhabiting a realm that Bergson calls the virtual: the past as a virtual whole […] (or as a bloc) is the condition for actual events to take place in the present, just as — for example — the language-system as a virtual whole (or what the structuralists call a structure, langue) is the condition for actual speech acts to take place in the present. This view of the past as a condition for the actualization of the present connects with the privileging of becoming over being that Deleuze adopts from Friedrich Nietzsche. Being is merely a momentary, subsidiary, and largely illusory suspension (or “contraction”) of becoming, according to this view; becoming is always primary and fundamental. This means not merely that each and every thing has a history — rather, each and every thing simply is its history: apparent being is always the temporary but actual culmination or expression of real becoming; it is the present actualization of antecedent conditions contained in the virtual past. In the terminology of A Thousand Plateaus, the process of actualization is called “stratification.”
-- Excerpt From: Eugene W. Holland. “Deleuze and Guattaris: A Thousand Plateaus.” iBooks.
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entertainment
Well-known member
the more weird and mystical stuff i get into these days, the more I hold on to my grounding with Popper
i could never float away my worldview on currents of whim and excitement like you.
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
The past in the present. It's interesting when you have prehistoric artefacts incorporated in later, classical worlds. Neolithic axe heads where use extended into the Iron Age. The writer(s) for Gilgamesh already sitting on top of thousands of accrued stories and myths. The Greeks looking at dinosaur bones thinking where's its asshole go? What the Romans thought of Avebury. Biographies? Chaucer's Pardoner and his relics. The phenomenology of objects. Then there's you, staring at them in a church &/or museum, searching for meaning through the most fleeting and profound connections
Aeons are historical constructs. Vervaeke is good on this, comparing and contrasting animism, totemism, the continous cosmos models, axial revolution (the latter i think is horrifyingly wrong), but a good percentage of these used cyclical cultural models to underpin their relationship within and undertsanding of time. We only really know the now and only then indirectly through consciousness. It all gets recycled, genes, myths, place, new bits morph with technology. Best expressed in a stoned, cognitively fragmented Rust Cohle tone.
Aeons are historical constructs. Vervaeke is good on this, comparing and contrasting animism, totemism, the continous cosmos models, axial revolution (the latter i think is horrifyingly wrong), but a good percentage of these used cyclical cultural models to underpin their relationship within and undertsanding of time. We only really know the now and only then indirectly through consciousness. It all gets recycled, genes, myths, place, new bits morph with technology. Best expressed in a stoned, cognitively fragmented Rust Cohle tone.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
Popper's "historicism" is largely a strawman tailored to suit his argument. it has little to do with how historians actually use the term, or practice history.
he was writing specifically in the context of refuting Marxist historical determinism - vastly more relevant in the 30s - and as far as that aim goes, sure
and he has does have some useful things to say about the general practice of history and the difficulty (or impossibility) of using past to predict future
but he's not a silver bullet against drawing any kind of historical comparisons, ever. no on here is proposing universal historic laws.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
this isn't uninteresting in terms of individual experience of time but less interesting in terms of history
I think it comes back to what one means by history and cyclical when one asks "is history cyclical?"
I took the OP to be basically a literal question, as in the history of human events
in that sense, the model of an atemporal bloc isn't helpful - it's impossible to construct history from all past events co-existing simultaneously
if it's a more philosophical question, then I think time, past and memory are better words to use than history
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
history by definition is a record of discrete past events
that record can take many forms but if it doesn't have it in some form, it isn't history, but something else
and history, unlike memory, is an investigation of the past
that record can take many forms but if it doesn't have it in some form, it isn't history, but something else
and history, unlike memory, is an investigation of the past
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
the time is a flat circle kinda talk is interesting too, but it's philosophy, not history
entertainment
Well-known member
That sounds about right. You can't get anything past padraig can you.
No, but of course as long as the human apparatus remains constant, history will channel itself through certain analogous avenues.
Did you study history, Padraig?
The cyclical aspect made me think of betting markets and how pretty much everyone is trying to identify and spot patterns with historical precedent. Even on a prosaic level like football, mates of mine will have fixed ideas about how West Ham play in Cup games or similar.
The cyclical aspect made me think of betting markets and how pretty much everyone is trying to identify and spot patterns with historical precedent. Even on a prosaic level like football, mates of mine will have fixed ideas about how West Ham play in Cup games or similar.
entertainment
Well-known member
There's of course also a degree to which such predictions become true by virtue of being asserted by many people at once. Even in football, a team that rarely turns around games when down by halftime will instill in themselves a disbelief that they are capable of doing that. Similar effects in markets.
History repeats sometimes because we assume it will.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
I'm just not much of a Popper fan
that's the only book of his I've read - because of its relation to history - and I had decidedly mixed feelings about it as noted
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
couple undergraduate courses. it's just a longstanding hobby.
the cyclical thing - or more generally, making predictions based on precedent - depends on context, scale, quality of input data, etc
entertainment is absolutely correct that there's a degree to which any prediction can be a self-fulfilling prophecy
or going the other way, any connection drawn to the past can be shaped to fit present concerns - see the Thucydides Trap for a famous recent example
the difficulty, as I said to begin with, is always sussing out what's useful from what isn't in terms of predictive power
prediction based largely or solely on statistical analysis of past events is its own subset of drawing historical comparison
entertainment
Well-known member
We're talking about Open Society and its Enemies?
I thought it was excptionally erudite. The way he explains the ontology of Heraclitus and those, very lucid and engaging.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
as professional history has shifted largely toward social history it's shifted away to some extent from conclusions and even narratives
not that people don't draw conclusions but you're not going to see much The 15 Decisive Battles of the World type of thing
not that people don't draw conclusions but you're not going to see much The 15 Decisive Battles of the World type of thing
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
no, The Poverty of Historicism
and I'd certainly agree that he's very erudite, lucid, and a good writer, certainly by philosophical standards
I just don't think much of most of the positions he takes
shiels
_
Padraig, do you teach? I like the didactic style "entertainment is absolutely correct to...", "this is not uninteresting", "this isn't a bad conception of". They reminds me of the tutor comments from an online course I took on imperialism last year. The thought of having my work formally praised in front of others was nearly enough to get me to do any of it
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
which is perhaps the history version of all the talk about different ways of looking at time
"history" never actually begins or concludes, but humans and our works do, so we wind up imposing artificial beginnings and endings
i.e. the "Middle Ages" beginning in 1066 (Hastings etc) and ending in 1453 (fall of Constantinople)
obviously historians are more aware than anyone of the artificiality of such constructs, yet, we're stuck with them
things like social history, microhistory - history from below - are in part an effort to counteract Great Man etc focused narratives