“When a rule is extremely complex, what is in conformity with it passes for irregular. Thus, one can say, in whatever manner God might have created the world, it would always have been regular and in accordance with a certain general order. But God has chosen the most perfect world, that is, the one which is at the same time the simplest in hypotheses and the richest in phenomena, as might be a line in geometry whose construction is easy and whose properties and effects are extremely remarkable and widespread."
---Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics, 1686.
Why should we study history? I mean, history is hopeless as a science, even more hopeless than economics. There are things very predictable in the economics. For example, you can never predict what someone will take for lunch tomorrow. Even if you get it right, it’s just pure luck unless you know him/her extremely well or tomorrow is thanksgiving. Yet it’s very easy to predict how much beef Americans will consume tomorrow. It’s something statistically stable.
History is something totally different. It can’t be put into mathematical frameworks. Nobody even tried as far as I know. Most of the time, a history theory is just an interpretation of existing resources and archeological discoveries. The most frustrating thing is whatever generalization one tried to make, there are always exceptions. In that sense, history is a science the same way zoology is a science. The purpose of studying history might be, I suppose, to find the simplest and most elegant way of interpreting historical evidences. We put things into categories and make generalizations. There are always exceptions, but we live with it when there are not better explanations.
I’m extremely fascinated by Sanders and Price’s hypothesis that agricultural productivity decides sociopolitical structure of a society. It’s a theory that societies have evolved over 6 or 7 stages: band, tribe, chiefdom, (city) state, nation, and probably civilization. Of course, the first 4 stages came from Sanders and Price’s work Mesoamerica: The Evolution of a Civilization. I added in the last three stages. It’s a social evolutionism theory. It’s a very powerful theory to explain many phenomena of Europe and Chinese history, probably Japanese history too, but when one tries to get into the details to figure out the mechanism that’s driving behind. The complexities simply exploded. I will just write down some random thoughts in this one and coming blogs, since I’m also exploring the field. Of course, you are welcome to tell me your ideas, esp if you are familiar with Indian or Middle East history.
The first thing came into mind is how it is related to the evolution of tool making materials. The traditional stone, bronze, iron, three-age system is already widely accepted. I believe we have to add two another ages or sub ages, steel and mechanization. This is more problematic than it seemed to be at a first glance. By all means, the tool making material was used implying a degree of technological sophistication. Bronze-age should have more sophisticated tools than the stone-age. Iron-age should have more sophisticated tools than the bronze-age, doesn’t it? Gee, not that simple. The bronze weapons excavated from the first emperor’s tomb was so sophisticated, many believe they were the reason of Qin’s military success over other states in spite they already had steel weapons. Though some believe the bronze was used in the tomb only because they don’t decay like the iron. I think there’s probably another reason. I think the reason might be that bronze weapons were easier to mass produce at the time. Bronze were cheaper than the iron, this might be suggested by the fact that coins were made of iron before Qin in China. Bronze metallurgy was also more mature than iron too. Maybe only bronze arrows can achieve the precision Qin army required.
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