Name: A Study of History
ISBN: 9780500250518

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kwhitefootJan 2017

Then D.C. Somervell's abridged version of Arnold Toynbee's Study of History. Don't worry that the original is controversial and you don't have to believe every word but read it for its passionate delivery and scope and that it should make you think.

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amadeuspagelFeb 2025

Metaphors matter[1].

"Strong-link problem" is an oxymoron.

Any kind of chain is a "weak-link problem".

If an individual scientific work stands on its own, if it's not a link that is part of a chain, it can't be a strong link. If it is a link, than it can also be a weak link, making science a "weak-link problem".

In The Study of History, Lord Acton referd to "shining precepts which are the registered property of every school"[2].

> learn as much by writing as by reading; be not content with the best book; seek sidelights from the others; have no favourites; keep men and things apart; guard against the prestige of great names; see that your judgments are your own; and do not shrink from disagreement; no trusting without testing; be more severe to ideas than to actions; do not overlook the strength of the bad cause of the weakness of the good; never be surprised by the crumbling of an idol or the disclosure of a skeleton; judge talent at its best and character at its worst; suspect power more than vice, and study problems in preference to periods.

The point that this article makes doesn't seem more then this "shining precept" that was a cliché even in 1895, but with an absurdly confusing metaphor.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphors_We_Live_By

[2]: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_...

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polished85Mar 2022

This was discussed shortly in: A Study of History by Arnold Toynbee

Another anecdote that speaks to the sentiment of the beginning of the war is Britain’s initial deployment of troops. The troops were literally marching towards Germany with music and percussionists that was supposed to motivate the troops and strike fear into the enemy. I imagine an army like you would see in Game of thrones (walking from point A to point B and making camp in between). Germany used their planes and promptly dispatched the British troops which suffered devastating losses. After this event Britain changed their tactics and took the war seriously.

(This event may have been WW2 which would make the story even more ridiculous).

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mosiuerbarsoFeb 2022

I love stuff like this. Thanks to the OP for suggesting this podcast, i'll be adding it to pocket casts.

As for history podcast suggestions, there are many decent podcasts for specifics historical eras or events. Here's a few of my favourites:

https://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/

https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/

and old one but still an excellent:

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-history-of-rome/id...

I have more on my phone, but they're specific to UK history (where i live).

I've not listened to first two in a while as I'm listen to a lot of history books via audible. But I've listened to the first 100 episodes of the Byzantium podcast and the Russian Revolution episodes in the Revolutions Podcast - both are really well researched and produced.

If any one loves listening to things about the rise/decline of civs I can recommend the audio book version of Oswald Spenglers Decline of the West:

https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-Decline-of-the-West-Audiobo...

I plan to read the book version at some point but it's a bit of a tomb. So thought I'd approach it via the audio book first to get a better idea of the main concepts before reading it.

And i'm currently reading Arnold J. Toynbee - A Study of History, which is a fascinating look at the rise and fall of civs. It adds a different point of view to Spenglers theory and work.

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dredmorbiusJul 2021

I found the quote I was looking for, it's in Arthur S. Iberal, Toward a General Science of Viable Systems (1972), and he's quoting Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (1962). The passage concerns looking backwards rather than forwards, though the sentiment is similar:

There is a strong tendency to depreciate works ... which are created by single mids, and the depreciation becomes the more emphatic the nearer such works approximate to being 'Universal Histories'. For example, Mr. H. G. Wells', The Outline of History was received with unmistakable hostility by a number of historical specialists. They criticized severely the errors which they discovered at the points where the writer, in his long journey through time and space, happened to traverse their tiny allotments. They seemed nnot to realize that, in re-living the entire life of Mankind as a single imaginative experience; Mr. Wells was achieving something which they themselves would hardly have dared to attempt -- something, perhaps, of which they had never conceived the possibility. In fact, the purpose and value of Mr. Wells' book seem to have been better appreciated by the general public than by the professional historians of the day.

As to specificity of predictions, the example I like to use is of distinguishing between chronological predictions, that a specific even will happen on a specific schedule, and trigger or relational predictions, that one event or set of relationships predicates another.

If a few minutes after 9 a.m. on the morning of 10 September 2001, you'd been standing on the corner of Liberty and West streets in lower Manhattan, looking north, and somebody were to ask you how much longer the two towers across the way would stand, your guess might have been decades to a century or more. If someone asked you the same question 24 hours later, your estimate might have been revised downwards considerably.

Geology is a study which is remarkably imprecise in predicting when specific large-magnitude events will occur (earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, etc.), though it has developed a very strong facility for suggesting where such indcidents are likely (and more pointedly, where not). The temporal uncertainty is a given due to the domain, characteristics, and timeline. The locational certainty is due largely to the predictability of what dynamics and structures give rise to events. (Yes, there are still surprises in both dimensions, though these tend to accrue additional knowledge.)

All of the social and behavioural sciences have the handicap that the studies themselves exist within the system they are studying. Psychology, economics, sociology, political science, etc., operate within domains in which they are themselves among the variables and causal agents. Physical and biological sciences, for the most part, do not. This is seems to me a principle further confounding factor for the behavioural sciences, though it's not an insurmountable one. Even within those domains, activities and actions exist within constraint parameters, and eventually those constraints (one might call them ... limits) interpose.

Peter Turchin is among those who's been doing interesting work in computational history, with some success.

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mikhailfrancoDec 2019

Glubb's theory of the arc of empires is strongly influenced by Toynbee's A Study of History, which was in turn informed by the 20th century zeitgeist of historicism (a belief in recurring patterns of history), initiated by Marx, refuted by Popper, but ultimately going back to Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah.

Strauss and Howe's Fourth Turning follows in this tradition.

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