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diff --git a/ch10.tex b/ch10.tex new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7f74959 --- /dev/null +++ b/ch10.tex @@ -0,0 +1,78 @@ +\chapter{} + +Enter cliometrics. If legend, folktale, myth +is a form of information and meta-history, +featuring un-individualized heros as variables, then cliometrics is meta-meta-history --- +the kind that makes it easier to match events +up to number-series and can incorporate +genetics-as-coded-logic --- which itself can +be used as a kind of history (as history can be +used as a kind of genetics). Each particular +person, each event generated becomes a variable in a statistical series. Chosen events in +a time series are matched up to chosen sets of +self-transmitting individuals. Cliometrics is +a sub-branch of those statistical time-series +that computer archeologists are so found of +retrojecting back to creation in the attempt to +make history compatible with logical operations. Cliometrics is quantified history in +which people and events are graded along +an importance-scale and matches up to a +time-scale established by archeology and +evolution. Cliometrics, more than any other +kind of historiography, is computer-compatible history. + +But then, ascent-mythology reenters. All +event-clusters on an evolutionary series are +in fact fungible. The billions-years-trajectory +is mapped onto a short stretch of human +history, just as an infinity of natural whole +numbers can be, say, mapped onto all the +possible fractions between one and two. But +like any series, such a construct depends on +the measurable regularity of events. Catastrophe, the unexpected, must be integrated, +smoothed out. The catastrophe is cut apart into small segments, the compression stretched +out and we see that event in regularized, even +fragments. Why evolution --- which is supposed to move in glacially incremental +steps --- is matched up to history --- which +takes place in only a short time --- is an +obsession --- progress, growth, incremental +gain --- that the 19th century foisted on us. +Humans have not changed, not evolved, in +all the time they have been on earth. + +Then the proposition that evolution, as +applied to humans and their history, is the +movement from simple to complex, from +less to more, from worse to better, from chaos +to order, from primal virus to sub-human to +human to angelic to god, doesn't work. +Whereas the latest studies are purported to +demonstrate that more than fifty percent of +the economy is information work, a case can +be made that whatever the conditions, peasant, primitive, +factory worker, more than +fifty percent of the work was \emph{always} informational. (Which intrudes a touch of the +miraculous, for when, how and with what +blinding speed, did humans become the way +they are?) + +The very act of selection, grading and +valuation, in order to constitute part of the +latest national rememberance-treasury of +our enterprise, to make it fit to be good will, +it must now be said that these events are +convertible into these numbers, these increments. For it is part of the equity, the capitalization placed retroactively into the start +up of the enterprise; a set of past events +converted into numbered, stored and convertable values. After all, even eventless, +invested capital must have some history. In +any pool of money, there lurks an implicit +collage of time series. + +Now if cliometrics is to have any usefulness, not only must religious history and +mythology be quantified and arranged into +an accretive time series, but it must be valued. Once quantified they may be translated +into other metrical disciplines through a +complex series of conversions shuttling +back and forth in time. (Although, before +this can happen, a rewriting and re-evaluation of the meaning oftime itself is required.) + |