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Being a professional technologist (which is probably as far away as one could get from being a historian), it baffles me that the academic military history disc

by ateng 6y ago

Being a professional technologist (which is probably as far away as one could get from being a historian), it baffles me that the academic military history discipline is treated as said in the article —- war is still being waged daily in the modern world, and in the very foreseeable future it will not end. Surely at least the military academies around the world would do serious studies on the past to predict the future wars, at bare minimum?

NineStarPoint 6y ago
It’s also plausible that military institutions are less likely to want to share their findings than civilian ones though. If the US military thought it had found a unique predictive insight in history, it really wouldn’t want anyone else to know about it.
- smogcutter 6y ago
  On the contrary: https://www.armyupress.army.mil/ https://www.armyupress.army.mil/
  - anigbrowl 6y ago
    Strange. In Chrome this IP address can't be found, whereas it loads just fine in Firefox. This is the second time in a week I've come across a problem with a .mil domain, though the other one wasn't browser-specific.
  - mcguire 6y ago
    I prefer https://www.usni.org/ https://www.usni.org/ :-) Also, there's https://history.army.mil/html/bookshelves/collect/collect.html https://history.army.mil/html/bookshelves/collect/collect.ht..., specifically the "U.S. Army in World War II Series".
thoughtleader31 6y ago
Well that's the thing the article touches, people tend to think that military history is not studied in a serious manner as far as an academic discipline goes. Military academies can do the bare minimum in rigor as far as they need to impart their military tradition and form effective officers, just like the author said about aristocrats learning how other aristocrats did their thing before smashing some peasants.
icegreentea2 6y ago
Serious studies are being done all the time. The "anti military history" positions expressed in the blog post are not reflective of the position some monolithic "board of academics" who control all the funding and classes. They are opinions that are sometimes held by some individuals in a diverse field, who sometimes are in positions to deny or attempt to deny funding in local situations. Serious research is being done, serious books and papers published, serious courses and lessons are taught. If you want a technologist analogy, there are some parallels to what I assume PHP or Perl communities might be like. Whenever you go out into the broader world, you need to acknowledge how everyone else likes to take potshots at your language, and then move on to explain why your language meets certain needs anyways. And in the end, all the pot shots taken at PHP or Perl don't remove any of the immediate needs.

by ateng 6y ago

NineStarPoint 6y ago

It’s also plausible that military institutions are less likely to want to share their findings than civilian ones though. If the US military thought it had found a unique predictive insight in history, it really wouldn’t want anyone else to know about it.

smogcutter 6y ago
On the contrary: https://www.armyupress.army.mil/ https://www.armyupress.army.mil/
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  Strange. In Chrome this IP address can't be found, whereas it loads just fine in Firefox. This is the second time in a week I've come across a problem with a .mil domain, though the other one wasn't browser-specific.
- mcguire 6y ago
  I prefer https://www.usni.org/ https://www.usni.org/ :-) Also, there's https://history.army.mil/html/bookshelves/collect/collect.html https://history.army.mil/html/bookshelves/collect/collect.ht..., specifically the "U.S. Army in World War II Series".

thoughtleader31 6y ago

Well that's the thing the article touches, people tend to think that military history is not studied in a serious manner as far as an academic discipline goes. Military academies can do the bare minimum in rigor as far as they need to impart their military tradition and form effective officers, just like the author said about aristocrats learning how other aristocrats did their thing before smashing some peasants.

icegreentea2 6y ago

Serious studies are being done all the time. The "anti military history" positions expressed in the blog post are not reflective of the position some monolithic "board of academics" who control all the funding and classes. They are opinions that are sometimes held by some individuals in a diverse field, who sometimes are in positions to deny or attempt to deny funding in local situations. Serious research is being done, serious books and papers published, serious courses and lessons are taught. If you want a technologist analogy, there are some parallels to what I assume PHP or Perl communities might be like. Whenever you go out into the broader world, you need to acknowledge how everyone else likes to take potshots at your language, and then move on to explain why your language meets certain needs anyways. And in the end, all the pot shots taken at PHP or Perl don't remove any of the immediate needs.