Is progress inevitable? Is it natural? Is it fragile? Is it possible?
January 5, 2017 1:14 PM   Subscribe

[I]n the middle of so many discussions of the causes of this year’s events (economics, backlash, media, the not-so-sleeping dragon bigotry), and of how to respond to them (petitions, debate, fundraising, art, despair) I hope people will find it useful to zoom out with me, to talk about the causes of historical events and change in general. Historian Ada Palmer writes about the history of the idea of progress, the role of individuals in history, the (simulated) Papal election of 2016, and what it all means for us here in 2017.

Ada Palmer Previously on Metafilter: 1 2 3 4
posted by vibratory manner of working (11 comments total) 30 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm no role-player, but I love her idea (and execution!) of roleplaying history with students to demonstrate how it comes out same-and-different every time, with historical forces and historical personalities intertwining to produce the end result.

I'm in the middle of Jonathan Sumption's history of the Hundred Years' War, and he does a pretty good job of showing these two effects at work, plus the third force - dumb luck. A wildcard like Charles ("the Bad") of Navarre can send a war spinning out of control, but nothing can overcome the fact that large armies in 14th-century Europe will quickly run out of food if they don't stay on the move. And if an unexpected rain bogs your army down, it might mean peace or it might mean another decade of war. A monarchy can fall apart like the Holy Roman Empire did, or it can survive a nadir like France's under John II and come back. History is forces and people and luck, all mixed together.

There's a similar discussion in biology about "replaying the tape of life". If you haven't guessed already, I'm closer to Gould in that one, rather than Dawkins and Co.
posted by clawsoon at 2:01 PM on January 5, 2017 [8 favorites]


That's a good piece, but very long and (to my taste) a bit too basic and repetitive in the earlier parts. If you start it and have the same impression, I suggest scrolling down to "Part 5: The Papal Election of 2016," which is completely intelligible without the prologue and is absolutely fascinating.
posted by languagehat at 2:19 PM on January 5, 2017 [6 favorites]


I want to play that simulation so bad.
posted by Iridic at 2:23 PM on January 5, 2017


I wish the conclusion was less optimistic, more neutral, than it is. I'd hoped to use this article among my peers as a way to push back against the notion of progress being inevitable, but with this ending, too many of them will miss critical points about the discussion.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 2:30 PM on January 5, 2017


I want to play that simulation so bad.

It does sound awesome! Until she releases the game though I'll be content with Crusader Kings II.
posted by nubs at 2:44 PM on January 5, 2017 [4 favorites]


History is forces and people and luck, all mixed together

History is wyrd
posted by Queen of Spreadable Fats at 4:50 PM on January 5, 2017 [3 favorites]


Oh man, I had a history teacher in high school who would run similar role-playing simulation units. We did one on Medieval Japan and one on the French Revolution, as I recall. In retrospect, they were both really great for getting surly highschoolers excited about history and also (as the author indicates) helping students to learn both the concept that a particular decision made at a particular time can change the course of history, and also that there are huge historical forces at work.

Some keener* built a workable guillotine (with a styrofoam blade) for the Terror. In the end, everyone in the class except for Jen, who was secretly Napoleon, got the chop.

*it wasn't me, honest
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:02 PM on January 5, 2017 [3 favorites]


Interesting read for sure with good points, but rather long and rambling. (Why is it, personal peeve, that all historians seem to end up with an eccentric style?) Could do without the lecturing undergrads tone too but otherwise worthwhile. I agree that the conclusion seems more optimistic than warranted: how do we know that we won't hit an exception at some point or at least one that will turn back progress much further first, especially with the exponential effects of technology? Also doesn't account for the third force of randomness as noted above. (Can't believe either that this hasn't been turned into a game of some kind yet...)
posted by blue shadows at 7:34 PM on January 5, 2017


Dragon bigotry really does have to stop, the fire breathing and gold hoarding is a horrible and unfair stereotype.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 7:39 PM on January 5, 2017


I wish the conclusion was less optimistic, more neutral, than it is. I'd hoped to use this article among my peers as a way to push back against the notion of progress being inevitable

Interesting - we have very different peer groups, it seems. If anything, the knee-jerk assumption that progress is simply a myth and Things Are Always Getting Worse seems to have a greater grip on the circles I run in.

I appreciated the article, the more so as apparently I totally missed this person's previous appearances on Metafilter. And a new blog to work back through! Just what I needed before the weekend.
posted by AdamCSnider at 7:49 PM on January 5, 2017 [3 favorites]


You know how folks will latch onto a thing in an essay to the exclusion of everything else in the essay? With an issue like progress and these peers, I've got to have something air tight.

My own view is there's really no way of knowing. Better or worse from year to year, or even decade to decade can be made out, but history is shot through with so many discontinuities I'm not even sure we can evaluate it as such. I'm much more in line with Gould as presented in the link clawsoon presented.

It's a shame I can't share it because the article is quite good. These folks are so prone to dismissal out of hand at any sign of flaws in the argument that they'll point to the final paragraph and say, see, she says progress is inevitable.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 9:20 PM on January 5, 2017 [1 favorite]


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