Posted by Duncan on December 04, 2002 at 11:15:49 from 205.188.209.46 user Duncan.
In Reply to: Re: The evolution of language; was Re: Semaphore - needs practice posted by Peter R on December 04, 2002 at 09:19:53:
Two things.
A: Semaphore - characters are looking towards us, in one book (WH?) Nancy drew in a face to make that clear.
B: Eh? Peter? Yes, clearly language is always evolving and history doesn't stop evolving between the publication of each revision, etc. but the idea that history (and for that matter language) evolve of their own volition and without the intervention of people - whether we consider individuals or - more particularly to my mind - social movements, classes, civilizations, etc. - seems a rather frightening, fatalistic and depressing view to me. Are you suggesting that Tom Paine just simply couldn't help himself from writing the Rights of Man, because the on-going flow of history was guiding his hand?
I don't entirely reject out of hand all of the rather more teleological views of history that have existed in history (! this is getting complicated!) I probably should have used the word historiography for one of those histories but I've been out of the game too long! - but am I right in assuming that your 'historiography' is quite an anarchic or 'chaotic' one; you're not suggesting that everything is on a uni-linear path from the primative to the civilised, or the feudal to the communistic; you are not suggesting that you can extrapolate a future state of affairs from the forces that are driving history along; you simply suggest that history is a fluid moving thing that cannot be changed other than in interpretation (only historians can change history). It's interesting, probably going off the topic AR a little (although not entirely, after all his 'histories' of the Russian revolution are very different from the histories of the 'victors' - if you like, first in Stalinist Russia and, more especially, in the post-Cold War capitalist world).
I don't agree, I think people make history both as they live it AND as they record it; but it is certainly an intriguing debate.