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Maybe the best explanation of history to teach, if not the most correct, is "history happened the way that it did because of trillions of choices that people ma

Maybe the best explanation of history to teach, if not the most correct, is "history happened the way that it did because of trillions of choices that people made."

forapurpose 8y ago
> Maybe the best explanation of history to teach, if not the most correct, is "history happened the way that it did because of trillions of choices that people made." Many times it's just luck. The existence of life at all, the death of the dinosaurs, the ice ages, droughts, famines, epidemics (e.g., the Black Plague) ... all luck. From an entire society's perspective, one or a few people who discover something big is luck. And when a set of actions together have large consequences, sometimes it's just (un)fortunate coincidence.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > From an entire society's perspective, one or a few people who discover something big is luck. Do we have cases of that in history at all? All the important scientific, technological and social breakthroughs I can think of are clear, incremental extensions of contemporary state of knowledge and societies. Individuals who were at the right place and with right skills are attributed the discoveries, but the truth is, if they didn't "make" those discoveries, short time later their colleagues would.
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    There is an endless debate among historians, AFAIK, about whether events are due to structural (that is, systemic) issues or due to personal agency - the 'great person' hypothesis. You are talking about science, which if course is one narrow domain; and even in science, I tend to agree with you but if there were no paradigm shifters (using Kuhn's model) such as Newton, Darwin, or Einstein, would we have made those discoveries? Would the whole course of research in those fields have changed? Changed to where we are now? Soon after those people? At all? If it's inevitable, why weren't those things discovered outside Europe? Was the Enlightenment, the foundation of the scientific revolution, inevitable? Again, if so, why not elsewhere? Why not 1,000 years earlier? In geopolitical matters, would the world be the same without Napoleon, the founders of the U.S., Lenin, or Hitler? What about Admiral Nelson? What if someone else was U.S. President on 9/11? Clinton? Trump? Would the world be the same without Moses, Jesus or Mohammad? My point is not that I know the answers, but that it's not so clear cut that outcomes are due to structural reasons.

Maybe the best explanation of history to teach, if not the most correct, is "history happened the way that it did because of trillions of choices that people made."

forapurpose 8y ago

> Maybe the best explanation of history to teach, if not the most correct, is "history happened the way that it did because of trillions of choices that people made." Many times it's just luck. The existence of life at all, the death of the dinosaurs, the ice ages, droughts, famines, epidemics (e.g., the Black Plague) ... all luck. From an entire society's perspective, one or a few people who discover something big is luck. And when a set of actions together have large consequences, sometimes it's just (un)fortunate coincidence.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> From an entire society's perspective, one or a few people who discover something big is luck. Do we have cases of that in history at all? All the important scientific, technological and social breakthroughs I can think of are clear, incremental extensions of contemporary state of knowledge and societies. Individuals who were at the right place and with right skills are attributed the discoveries, but the truth is, if they didn't "make" those discoveries, short time later their colleagues would.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  There is an endless debate among historians, AFAIK, about whether events are due to structural (that is, systemic) issues or due to personal agency - the 'great person' hypothesis. You are talking about science, which if course is one narrow domain; and even in science, I tend to agree with you but if there were no paradigm shifters (using Kuhn's model) such as Newton, Darwin, or Einstein, would we have made those discoveries? Would the whole course of research in those fields have changed? Changed to where we are now? Soon after those people? At all? If it's inevitable, why weren't those things discovered outside Europe? Was the Enlightenment, the foundation of the scientific revolution, inevitable? Again, if so, why not elsewhere? Why not 1,000 years earlier? In geopolitical matters, would the world be the same without Napoleon, the founders of the U.S., Lenin, or Hitler? What about Admiral Nelson? What if someone else was U.S. President on 9/11? Clinton? Trump? Would the world be the same without Moses, Jesus or Mohammad? My point is not that I know the answers, but that it's not so clear cut that outcomes are due to structural reasons.