Fifth Law: All history is relevant, but the history of technology is the most relevant.
Fifth Law: All history is relevant, but the history of technology is the most relevant.
it is not obstinacy or ignorance but a sense of irrelevance that leads to the diminution of history.
Neil Postman • Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
But counterfactuals were useless. History was just hindsight after the facts. What was that Alan Bennett line? History is just one bloody thing after another. It was often hard to disagree.
Matthew Richardson • The Scarlet Papers: The Times Thriller of the Year 2023
History is the best help, being a record of how things usually go wrong. A long historical view not only helps us to keep calm in a "time of trouble" but reminds us that there is an end to the longest tunnel. Even if we can see no good hope ahead, an historical interest as to what will happen is a help in carrying on. For a thinking man,
... See moreB. H. Liddell Hart • Why Don't We Learn from History?
No matter what you call it – game theory, postmodernism or memetics – the dynamics of history are not directed towards enhancing human well-being. There is no basis for thinking that the most successful cultures in history are necessarily the best ones for Homo sapiens. Like evolution, history disregards the happiness of individual organisms. And i
... See moreYuval Noah Harari • Sapiens
frozen accidents add a retrospective component to the study of history, since the vast amount of information they collectively contain is simply not present in the lower-level laws. It can be gathered ex post facto only, by experimenting and observing.