History is often told in terms of stories across time. This person did this and it caused this. This invention was created and it caused these results. In an of itself, the study of history can be considered a study of systems and interactions.
Even more so when it is considered as a series of ideas that arose and influenced each other.
This was the framework set up by British historian Felipe Fernandez Armesto in his book Ideas that Changed the World. (You might also like this interview with Armesto at The Mind’s Construction Quarterly.)
What fascinated me was that many of the ideas most relevant to this blog came from either the last century or the ancient past.
Recent ideas:
- religious and cultural pluralism along with cultural relativism
- uncertainty (or the implicated observer of Schroedinger’s Cat)
- chaotic unpredicability
Ancient ideas:
- our senses can be deluded and a full grasp of reality is unknowable
- there is order to the universe and we can influence it indirectly
- yet the universe itself is dynamic and changing
In between there were many ideas that reflected the strength of one particular perspective, such as nationalism, a range of religious concepts, the superiority of a particular group of people, civil disobedience, and more.
We are all affected by broad, sweeping ideas like the ones in the book, but in our day to day lives we can also become aware of smaller ideas that have become part of the system we’re trying to influence.
It is typical to look at what has been done before when trying to solve a problem, but it might also be worthwhile to look for the history of ideas behind what was actually done.
Do those ideas currently hold sway? Are they related to other ideas? Can ideas that are currently prominent in other parts of the overall culture be tied into the problem under review?
