Yes, me too. I am so thoroughly confused some quiet time with my head in my
hands is called for. For some it appears that something is historical if it
is taken as such (deemed historical by someone). For others anything that
has existed for a measurable time has a history (whether or not we have
discovered it). Phylogeny is included but not ontology. Memory is history.
The Law of Falling Bodies is history. A causal chain (replicable or not)
MIGHT be history if it has an effect or is noticed.
I once heard a historian describe history as stories about historically
interesting objects. There are infinite objects but historians operate by
distinguishing some of them that they find interesting. But isn't that what
we all do?
Maybe Lily Tomlin was right: Reality in nothing but a collective hunch.
TTFN..........djc
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul H.Dillon [mailto:illonph@pacbell.net]
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2002 11:28 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Sudden, immediate, confessorial, self-understanding as perhaps
others might understand me - entering xmca history as agent
Esteemed xmca all,
After answering Donald's zen-like query, I suddenly realized that my very
insistence on suddenly answering with a snappy one-up-yours reply, even if
no matter how truthful was still what it was from that perspective even
though I wasn't really thinking about that when I got "on the roll" as it
were on a subject that really, really is quite dear to my heart even though
I make money crunching numbers. And I do think it's central to
understanding the possibilities of CHAT for the purposes of human liberation
as flowering of the human spirit and maybe that's why I become so suddenly
deaf, on a roll, sorry, just never really saw it that way.
I'll try to allow more silence during and not just between the
conversations.
Paul H. Dillon
----- Original Message -----
From: Cunningham, Donald <cunningh@indiana.edu>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2002 5:31 PM
Subject: Butterflies
> Is a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil a historical event if it leads
> to a tornado in Kansas?
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Mar 01 2002 - 01:00:20 PST