Category: Education

The historian and the time machine

The best of historians are intellectual giants, providing a valued contribution to understanding. Of the others, we pass by. I am no historian – just a picker at facts others have found – but I am fascinated with the process.

Hobbes translated Thucydides and knew an excellent historian from a poseur, laying down a standard:

In a good Poem, whether it be Epique, or Dramatique; as also in Sonnets, Epigrams, and other Pieces, both Judgement and Fancy are required: But the Fancy must be more eminent; because they please for the Extravagancy; but ought not to displease by Indiscretion.

In a good History, the Judgement must be eminent; because the goodnesse consisteth, in the Method, in the Truth, and in the Choyse of the actions that are most profitable to be known. Fancy has no place, but onely in adorning the stile.

Modern historians generally follow this principle, in the way the Romans did not:  the great speech of Caligacus before Mons Graupius is celebrated for its poetry, power and patriotism; and for being entirely fictional. No one would condemn Tacitus for writing what Calgacus would have said had he thought about it, but he would not get away with it these days; or not in the better corridors of Oxford.

But what if a historian were sent to the Highlands with HG Wells’s time machine to listen to what the Pictish chieftain said, to see how each side armed itself?  The historian at the cutting-edge of a field of study, straining against the limitations of evidence would beg for a machine if it were possible, even just a viewer to see the things of which they can only speculate. Imagine all the undescribed events, facts that are merely speculation, unlocated battles, lost languages that could be found.

They might of course resent it.  If a pharmaceutical chemist devotes his or her life to the detailed understanding of biological processes affecting a deathly disease, thrilling in the hunt and the expanding frontiers of knowledge, then someone comes along and cures it by waving a blackthorn stick and chanting ‘alikazam!’, the chemist is entitled to be more resentful than grateful. (And the blackthorn cure is just as likely as our being able to build a time machine.)

Imagine though a historian granted a viewer into the past: would he even then get it right?  He has even then but a snippet of a view of a slice of a vast and complicated nation and age.

Hobbes again looked at how ordinary people, not necessarily historians, see the past:

As Prudence is a Praesumtion of the Future, contracted from the Experience of time Past; So there is a Praesumtion of things Past taken from other things (not future but) past also. For he that hath seen by what courses and degrees, a flourishing State hath first come into civill warre, and then to ruine; upon the sights of the ruines of any other State, will guesse, the like warre, and the like courses have been there also. But his conjecture, has the same incertainty almost with the conjecture of the Future; both being grounded onely upon Experience.

Historians have an advantage in that they have studied evidence, read contemporary accounts, seen artefacts scrabbled from the dirt and become familiar with the wider story that all these tell. Even so, theirs is a study of speculation and conjecture, based on unavoidably limited evidence.

If a future historian were to judge 1930s America by the films about the era, he might write down in a learned tome that everyone wore pinstripe, the streets were constantly raked with gunfire and all policemen were corrupt; while in Britain hordes of young, minor aristocracy spent their days solving mysteries while being being shunned by cloche-hatted girls and pursued by German agents (when it was of course the other way round).  A single golden brooch found in an excavation might convince the textbooks that everyone wore exactly that style for centuries, while a parchment describing a peculiar habit of a fleeting moment in Paris in 721 AD can be baked in as the eternal custom of the Franks for a millennium.

A time machine might show more, but any snippet is only that. Eye-witness evidence is evidence only of the moment and the people seen – not the grand sweep of cities of men and manners, climates, councils, governments; nor is it insight into thoughts and motivations.

Motivations?  An exam question asks “Why did Sienna fight Florence?”, but with hundreds involved in decisions and the actions leading to them, it would take a whole book, and still not answer the question. Alternatively, there may be many, contradictory reasons for a Siennese-Florentine war, and all be right. An eye-witness view will not answer a meaningless question any better.

For the further past we fall back more on imagination and struggle for sources. The Middle Ages revelled in fictions – Arthurian romance, spurious De Gestis works, and took them seriously. Geoffrey of Monmouth mercilessly lampooned these fantasies, and even his work became treated as a historical source. I have to wonder how much of this mediaeval mélange of mockery has so slipped into our understanding that it forms part of historical assumption.

Our understanding still starts on “Praesumtion of things Past taken from other things past also” and presumption too from projecting our own understandings back in time, while evidence serves to correct presumptions without overturning all of them.

Imagine then the diligent observer given a miraculous view of a day in the period of his study. He would learn a great deal, and many of his assumptions might fall away. He would also interpret what he sees in the light of existing presumptions, and if he has spent years developing a theory, then confirmation bias will cloud the interpretation of his observations. That is humanity. Still he sees that single brooch and projects it onto the whole of society for the whole age, and now with first-hand observation as proof. Still he sees an unexpected action from an individual and makes of it a custom of the whole nation. He hears a phrase mangled in the mouth of a careless child and from it founds a language.

The fantasy of a machine that shows the past first-hand has been with us since Wells imagined it for us. It would be a marvellous tool for the study of history and language. It would still though be subject to the flaws that hamper all historical study, and perhaps magnify them. I am no historian, but I have watched people

We are still in the Silly Season and I can allow myself these diversions.

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Where is the wise? Where is the scribe?

Not wistful but triumphant: the call of the new piercing the dark. Paul told the Corinthians of the light that had come into the world, using here a rhetorical device that we mostly hear mourning the loss of light.

When I hear from the pulpit the piece from 1 Corinthians, my mind wanders to other times. Sang the poet of old “Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago? Hwær cwom maþþumgyfa? Hwær cwom symbla gesetu? Hwær sindon seledreamas?“; ‘Where now is the warhorse, where the warrior? Where the treasure-giver? Where the seat at the feast? Where the joys of the hall?’

This is not a song of triumph but a lament for loss of glorious times, and so we see the same turn of rhetoric used for loss of the things of the world throughout poetry of our age: Where are the joys  of the hall? Où sont les neiges d’antan? Whatever happened to the Likely Lads?

Paul means his words in a very different way. Maybe it is marking the passing of beloved things of the world – as the exiled warrior laments the loss of the thunder of hooves into battle, and man may lament the loss of wisdom and teachers of the law, which gave confidence to life. In Corinth, philosophers, ‘lovers of wisdom’, were prominent in creating the culture of the gentile city, and  scribes kept the Jews faithful to the law and the prophets – they were not gone by any means when Paul wrote, but the Gospel made them irrelevant, even repugnant. It was a challenge, to built anew casting away the centuries of the Greek poets and Aristotle, and the minutely reasoned conclusions of the Talmud.; all this must be cast away, thousands of scholars’ work and the apparent wisdom of ages, discarded as  wastepaper, as we start afresh with the new Gospel.

It is a hard wrench, to give up all you understand of what wisdom is. In Corinth the vices that had grown in the city reeked to the heavens, which drives the honest man to the comforting wisdom of the ages.

Where is the wise though, and where the scribe? They are insufficient because they provide only the fallible wisdom of man. Like the warhorse and the warrior and the snows of old, they are things of the world, the world in which we live and can grasp and feel. We may think of philosophy and religious scholarship as spiritual, but they are born of man’s mind, and so are creatures of the world as we are. We naturally mourn for the loss of things of the world, as part of ourselves.

Think again – what is in the glory of the field, the loss of which the poet laments with such depth? The charging horse, the young warrior, the generous prince handing out the spoils and the loud feasting in the mead-hall after victory: the glory and joy are there, but what of the widow and the fatherless left after battle? What of the farms devastated and families starving before their lost harvest? Even Villon’s snows of yesteryear, beautiful to the child’s eye, are harsh for the poor widow. Où sont les neiges d’antan? Où indeed.

It tempts rebuke for a blog founded upon the ideas of a seventeenth century philosopher to make mock of those who cling to philosophies. Hobbes himself though rejected ‘Aristotelity’, and stands up today rather well.

Our own age affects to despise old wisdom, but its faults are greater – many of the clergy of our day embrace new, untested ideas with the tenacity of the devotees of Epicurus in Corinth. They provide simplistic answers, which are a worldly comfort, and to see the faults in the worldly doctrine is beyond them.

Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

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Of Anger in Rhetoric

The common opinions concerning anger are therefore such as follow. They are easily angry, that think they are neglected. That think they excel others; as the rich with the poor; the noble with the obscure,&c. And such as think they deserve well. And such as grieve to be.. hindered, opposed, or not assisted; and therefore sick men, poor men, lovers, and generally all that desire and attain not, are angry with those that, standing by, are not moved by their wants. And such as having expected good, find evil.

Those that men are angry with, are: such as mock, deride, or jest at them.
And such as shew any kind of contumely towards them.
And such as despise those things which we spend most labour and study upon; and the more, by how much we seem the less advanced therein.
And our friends, rather than those that are not our friends.
And such as have honoured us, if they continue not.
And such as requite not our courtesy.
And such as follow contrary courses, if they be our inferiors.
And our friends, if they have said or done us evil, or not good.
And such as give not ear to our entreaty.
And such as are joyful or calm in our distress.
And such as troubling us, are not themselves troubled.
And such as willingly hear or see our disgraces.
And such as neglect us in the presence of our competitors, of those we admire, of those we would have admire us, of those we reverence, and of those that reverence us.
And such as should help us, and neglect it.
And such as are in jest, when we are in earnest.
And such as forget us, or our names.

An orator therefore must so frame his judge or auditor by his oration, as to make him apt to anger: and then make his adversary appear such as men use to be angry withal.

– Thomas Hobbes:  The Art of Rhetoric

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Missing role models?

I was surprised that anyone should complain of losing a few male role models, when we have such a richness of them: models of behaviour, and warnings of what to avoid; bad models as well as good.

The first and greatest male role model is ones own father, and then there are endless books and films and stories. Sitting through Zulu will cure a hundred losses of modern limp literature.

The whole swelling sea of literature and culture has ideals and reproaches in the myriad. A couple of weeks ago when an MP bemoaned the loss to maleness of a main character in a children’s fantasy programme, I had to laugh.

There are good books aplenty, bristling with heroes and villains, with dash and excitement and lessons for life, and films bulging out of every screen. It is only modern works which have had the life scoured out of them.

Lessons in life start in earliest youth. I once spoke to a publisher of children’s books, and she explained that the only books most young children read are those which are in the school library, and schools only buy books which tie in with themes in the curriculum, and so there is no point in their considering interesting  books for publication: there is no market. It was an eye-opening conversation. This may go some way to explain the insipid nature of most children’s literature. It also explains why parents who read with their children, and encourage them to read books that have actual substance, bring up stronger, wiser children.

Teenagers are another matter, but the less said about teenage ‘literature’ the better. Dig up instead the many books of an older age suitable for teenage boys: these books loved by past generations, adventure books, all have worthy heroes.

Looking for old-fashioned adventure stories, there are few authors in recent generations who stick in the mind, but there are some good ones. We have more books than ever, but those with the hero narrative are lessened, to leave a trail of pointless or pretentious books, well written but not suitable for educating the mind. Perhaps it is because the writers of old had lived out their stories: the Biggles books were written by an actual pilot of the Great War; the Richard Hannay stories by one who served in the ‘Wild South’ of diamond-rush South Africa and on the Western Front, and James Bond was the invention of someone not much different in his real life. Few modern writers can draw upon such experience. There is little life or heroism to be learnt in the reflection of dull suburbia.

Of the adventure novel, few will be found in a  school library, and there are active moves to banish them. The vision of modernity which activists promote is a dull, mechanistic one.

Even so, they do not have a monopoly of imagination, and the heroes are still plentiful to find, and there are still books and films being made, both sides of the Atlantic as well as Australia and of course Bollywood, and a voracious market for them. The heroic male role model is not vanishing.

It is just ‘received opinion’ amongst those who affect to despise the heroic model which would see an end to it, who know that in their petty selves they cannot match up to the ideal and would bring everything low to their level – but even they sometimes cannot help themselves when pen is set to  paper.

If I were to write a novel, would it be full of thrill and adventure, with a larger than life definitely male hero defying impossible odds, with gritty fights and grim weapons, unflinching against a relentless foe in exotic locations with women swooning over him?  Of course I would. Any first novel is implicitly autobiographical, after all.

Now, with all that said, I have written only of male role models, and that is only half the population, and the half already oversupplied with all that our culture bestows.  What of female role models? They are just as entitled to see themselves reflected, and to have a good pattern for life placed before them. I cannot take seriously any wail about a story being feminised, if it still works. (Just leave the established characters alone.) My complaint is that when a character is reimagined in feminine guise, it is too often done badly.

To promote good female role models we do not want not male characters put in a dress, but strong women with feminine reactions.  That though is another article and I have to question my fitness to write it.

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Insignificant Speech as madness

There is yet another fault in the Discourses of some men; which may also be numbred amongst the sorts of Madnesse; namely, that abuse of words, whereof I have spoken before in the fifth chapter, by the Name of Absurdity.

And that is, when men speak such words, as put together, have in them no signification at all; but are fallen upon by some, through misunderstanding of the words they have received, and repeat by rote; by others, from intention to deceive by obscurity. And this is incident to none but those, that converse in questions of matters incomprehensible, as the Schoole-men; or in questions of abstruse Philosophy.

The common sort of men seldome speak Insignificantly, and are therefore, by those other Egregious persons counted Idiots. But to be assured their words are without any thing correspondent to them in the mind, there would need some Examples; which if any man require, let him take a Schoole-man into his hands, and see if he can translate any one chapter concerning any difficult point; as the Trinity; the Deity; the nature of Christ; Transubstantiation; Free-will. &c. into any of the moderne tongues, so as to make the same intelligible; or into any tolerable Latine, such as they were acquainted withall, that lived when the Latine tongue was Vulgar.

What is the meaning of these words. “The first cause does not necessarily inflow any thing into the second, by force of the Essential subordination of the second causes, by which it may help it to worke?” They are the Translation of the Title of the sixth chapter of Suarez first Booke, Of The Concourse, Motion, And Help Of God. When men write whole volumes of such stuffe, are they not Mad, or intend to make others so?

And particularly, in the question of Transubstantiation; where after certain words spoken, they that say, the White-nesse, Round-nesse, Magni-tude, Quali-ty, Corruptibility, all which are incorporeall, &c. go out of the Wafer, into the Body of our blessed Saviour, do they not make those Nesses, Tudes and Ties, to be so many spirits possessing his body? For by Spirits, they mean alwayes things, that being incorporeall, are neverthelesse moveable from one place to another.

So that this kind of Absurdity, may rightly be numbred amongst the many sorts of Madnesse; and all the time that guided by clear Thoughts of their worldly lust, they forbear disputing, or writing thus, but Lucide Intervals. And thus much of the Vertues and Defects Intellectuall.

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