Historic Recurrence Research Paper
Historic recurrence is the repetition of similar events in history.[2] The concept of historic recurrence has variously been applied to the overall history of the world (e.g., to the rises and falls of empires), to repetitive patterns in the history of a given polity, and to any two specific events which bear a striking similarity.[3]
Hypothetically, in the extreme, the concept of historic recurrence assumes the form of the Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence, which has been written about in various forms since antiquity and was described in the 19th century by Heinrich Heine[4] and Friedrich Nietzsche.[5]
Nevertheless, while it is often remarked that "History repeats itself," in cycles of less than cosmological duration this cannot be strictly …show more content…
true. That was appreciated by Mark Twain, who has been quoted as saying that "History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme."[6]
In this interpretation of recurrence, as opposed perhaps to the Nietzschean interpretation, there is no metaphysics.
Recurrences take place due to ascertainable circumstances and chains of causality. An example of the mechanism is the ubiquitous phenomenon of multiple independent discovery in science and technology, which has been described by Robert K. Merton and Harriet Zuckerman.
G.W. Trompf, in his book The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought, traces historically recurring patterns of political thought and behavior in the west since antiquity.[7] If history has lessons to impart, they are to be found par excellence in such recurring …show more content…
patterns.
Historic recurrences can sometimes induce a sense of "convergence," "resonance" or déjà vu.[8] Three such examples appear under "Striking similarity."
Contents [hide]
1 Authors
2 Lessons
3 Striking similarity
3.1 Kings kill bishops, create saints
3.2 Islands repel invaders, hurricanes defeat fleets
3.3 Gods return, civilizations fall
4 Quotations
5 See also
6 Notes
7 References
[edit]Authors
Prior to Polybius' theory of historic recurrence, ancient western thinkers who had thought about recurrence had largely been concerned with cosmological rather than historic recurrence.[9]
Western philosophers and historians who have discussed various concepts of historic recurrence include Polybius (ca. 200–118 BCE), Dionysius of Halicarnassus (ca. 60–7 BCE), Saint Luke, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975).[3]
An eastern concept that bears a kinship to western concepts of historic recurrence is the Chinese concept of the Mandate of Heaven, by which an unjust ruler will lose the support of Heaven and be overthrown.[10]
[edit]Lessons
Poseidonius
Cicero
Machiavelli
Giambattista Vico
Santayana
Niall Ferguson
G.W. Trompf notes that most western concepts of historic recurrence imply that "the past teaches lessons for... future action" — that "the same... sorts of events which have happened before... will recur..."[11]
One such recurring theme was early offered by Poseidonius (ca. 135–51 BCE), who argued that dissipation of the old Roman virtues had followed the removal of the Carthaginian challenge to Rome's supremacy in the Mediterranean world.[12][13] The theme that civilizations flourish or fail according to their responses to the human and environmental challenges that they face, would be picked up two thousand years later by Toynbee.[14]
Dionysius, while praising Rome at the expense of her predecessors[15] — Assyria, Media, Persia, and Macedonia — anticipated Rome's eventual decay. He thus implied the idea of recurring decay in the history of world empires — an idea that was to be developed by Diodorus Siculus (1st century BCE) and Pompeius Trogus (1st century BCE).[16]
By the late 5th century, Zosimus could see the writing on the Roman wall, and asserted that empires fell due to internal disunity.
He gave examples from the histories of Greece and Macedonia. In the case of each empire, growth had resulted from consolidation against an external enemy; Rome herself, in response to Hannibal's threat posed at Cannae, had risen to great-power status within a mere five decades. With Rome's world dominion, however, aristocracy had been supplanted by a monarchy, which in turn tended to decay into tyranny; after Augustus Caesar, good rulers had alternated with tyrannical ones. The Roman Empire, in its western and eastern sectors, had become a contending ground between contestants for power, while outside powers acquired an advantage. In Rome's decay, Zosimus saw history repeating itself in its general
movements.[17]
The ancients developed an enduring metaphor for a polity's evolution: they drew an analogy between an individual human's life cycle, and developments undergone by a body politic. This metaphor was offered, in varying iterations, by Cicero (106–43 BCE), Seneca (ca. 1 BCE – 65 CE), Florus (who lived in the times of Emperors Trajan and Hadrian), and Ammianus Marcellinus (between 325 and 330 – after 391 CE).[18] This social-organism metaphor would recur centuries later in the works of Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) and Herbert Spencer (1820–1903).
Niccolò Machiavelli, about to analyze the vicissitudes of Florentine and Italian politics between 1434 and 1494, described recurrent oscillations between "order" and "disorder" within states: when states have arrived at their greatest perfection, they soon begin to decline. In the same manner, having been reduced by disorder and sunk to their utmost state of depression, unable to descend lower, they, of necessity, reascend, and thus from good they gradually decline to evil and from evil mount up to good.
Machiavelli accounts for this oscillation by arguing that virtù (valor and political effectiveness) produces peace, peace brings idleness (ozio), idleness disorder, and disorder rovina (ruin). In turn, from rovina springs order, from order virtù, and from this, glory and good fortune.[19]
Machiavelli, as had the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, saw human nature as remarkably stable—steady enough for the formulation of rules of political behavior. Machiavelli wrote in his Discorsi:
Whoever considers the past and the present will readily observe that all cities and all peoples... ever have been animated by the same desires and the same passions; so that it is easy, by diligent study of the past, to foresee what is likely to happen in the future in any republic, and to apply those remedies that were used by the ancients, or not finding any that were employed by them, to devise new ones from the similarity of events.[20]
Hypothetically, in the extreme, the concept of historic recurrence assumes the form of the Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence, which has been written about in various forms since antiquity and was described in the 19th century by Heinrich Heine[4] and Friedrich Nietzsche.[5]
Nevertheless, while it is often remarked that "History repeats itself," in cycles of less than cosmological duration this cannot be strictly …show more content…
true. That was appreciated by Mark Twain, who has been quoted as saying that "History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme."[6]
In this interpretation of recurrence, as opposed perhaps to the Nietzschean interpretation, there is no metaphysics.
Recurrences take place due to ascertainable circumstances and chains of causality. An example of the mechanism is the ubiquitous phenomenon of multiple independent discovery in science and technology, which has been described by Robert K. Merton and Harriet Zuckerman.
G.W. Trompf, in his book The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought, traces historically recurring patterns of political thought and behavior in the west since antiquity.[7] If history has lessons to impart, they are to be found par excellence in such recurring …show more content…
patterns.
Historic recurrences can sometimes induce a sense of "convergence," "resonance" or déjà vu.[8] Three such examples appear under "Striking similarity."
Contents [hide]
1 Authors
2 Lessons
3 Striking similarity
3.1 Kings kill bishops, create saints
3.2 Islands repel invaders, hurricanes defeat fleets
3.3 Gods return, civilizations fall
4 Quotations
5 See also
6 Notes
7 References
[edit]Authors
Prior to Polybius' theory of historic recurrence, ancient western thinkers who had thought about recurrence had largely been concerned with cosmological rather than historic recurrence.[9]
Western philosophers and historians who have discussed various concepts of historic recurrence include Polybius (ca. 200–118 BCE), Dionysius of Halicarnassus (ca. 60–7 BCE), Saint Luke, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975).[3]
An eastern concept that bears a kinship to western concepts of historic recurrence is the Chinese concept of the Mandate of Heaven, by which an unjust ruler will lose the support of Heaven and be overthrown.[10]
[edit]Lessons
Poseidonius
Cicero
Machiavelli
Giambattista Vico
Santayana
Niall Ferguson
G.W. Trompf notes that most western concepts of historic recurrence imply that "the past teaches lessons for... future action" — that "the same... sorts of events which have happened before... will recur..."[11]
One such recurring theme was early offered by Poseidonius (ca. 135–51 BCE), who argued that dissipation of the old Roman virtues had followed the removal of the Carthaginian challenge to Rome's supremacy in the Mediterranean world.[12][13] The theme that civilizations flourish or fail according to their responses to the human and environmental challenges that they face, would be picked up two thousand years later by Toynbee.[14]
Dionysius, while praising Rome at the expense of her predecessors[15] — Assyria, Media, Persia, and Macedonia — anticipated Rome's eventual decay. He thus implied the idea of recurring decay in the history of world empires — an idea that was to be developed by Diodorus Siculus (1st century BCE) and Pompeius Trogus (1st century BCE).[16]
By the late 5th century, Zosimus could see the writing on the Roman wall, and asserted that empires fell due to internal disunity.
He gave examples from the histories of Greece and Macedonia. In the case of each empire, growth had resulted from consolidation against an external enemy; Rome herself, in response to Hannibal's threat posed at Cannae, had risen to great-power status within a mere five decades. With Rome's world dominion, however, aristocracy had been supplanted by a monarchy, which in turn tended to decay into tyranny; after Augustus Caesar, good rulers had alternated with tyrannical ones. The Roman Empire, in its western and eastern sectors, had become a contending ground between contestants for power, while outside powers acquired an advantage. In Rome's decay, Zosimus saw history repeating itself in its general
movements.[17]
The ancients developed an enduring metaphor for a polity's evolution: they drew an analogy between an individual human's life cycle, and developments undergone by a body politic. This metaphor was offered, in varying iterations, by Cicero (106–43 BCE), Seneca (ca. 1 BCE – 65 CE), Florus (who lived in the times of Emperors Trajan and Hadrian), and Ammianus Marcellinus (between 325 and 330 – after 391 CE).[18] This social-organism metaphor would recur centuries later in the works of Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) and Herbert Spencer (1820–1903).
Niccolò Machiavelli, about to analyze the vicissitudes of Florentine and Italian politics between 1434 and 1494, described recurrent oscillations between "order" and "disorder" within states: when states have arrived at their greatest perfection, they soon begin to decline. In the same manner, having been reduced by disorder and sunk to their utmost state of depression, unable to descend lower, they, of necessity, reascend, and thus from good they gradually decline to evil and from evil mount up to good.
Machiavelli accounts for this oscillation by arguing that virtù (valor and political effectiveness) produces peace, peace brings idleness (ozio), idleness disorder, and disorder rovina (ruin). In turn, from rovina springs order, from order virtù, and from this, glory and good fortune.[19]
Machiavelli, as had the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, saw human nature as remarkably stable—steady enough for the formulation of rules of political behavior. Machiavelli wrote in his Discorsi:
Whoever considers the past and the present will readily observe that all cities and all peoples... ever have been animated by the same desires and the same passions; so that it is easy, by diligent study of the past, to foresee what is likely to happen in the future in any republic, and to apply those remedies that were used by the ancients, or not finding any that were employed by them, to devise new ones from the similarity of events.[20]