View Topic

Just FYI, since you've used the terms twice already, bottom-up and top-down history are terms already commonly used in historiography, with bottom-up history being a equivalent for social history or people's history.

Historians do look at interactions between individuals, though; they study them to understand the social climate of the time, analyze cultural movements, see the general thoughts and opinions of the populace, etc. But unless there's an actual connection to be made, they can't make statements about how these beliefs shaped the success of the overall societies. And because such evidence is always open to interpretation, you end up with people drawing conclusions to support their own needs, such as Max Weber using the Protestant work ethic as a more subtle way to paint Catholics as lazy. (Though sociologists did eventually find that his idea did have basis in fact, they've also found that his hypothesis that it led to capitalism to be incredibly wrong.)

Not sure why you're bringing up pschohistory here... if anything, that's the top-down approach, treating people in society like molecules in the Kinetic Theory of Gases (stealing that analogy directly from Asimov himself). And in any case, it's arguable that psychohistory is among the more unrealistic things in Foundation; even Hari Seldon probably didn't expect it to work, given how he ended up creating a Second Foundation of psychics.

Just FYI, since you've used the terms twice already, bottom-up and top-down history are terms already commonly used in historiography, with bottom-up history being a equivalent for social history or people's history.

Historians do look at interactions between individuals, though; they study them to understand the social climate of the time, analyze cultural movements, see the general thoughts and opinions of the populace, etc. But unless there's an actual connection to be made, they can't make statements about how these beliefs shaped the success of the overall societies. And because such evidence is always open to interpretation, you end up with people drawing conclusions to support their own needs, such as Max Weber using the Protestant work ethic as a more subtle way to paint Catholics as lazy. (Though sociologists did eventually find that his idea did have basis in fact, they've also found that his hypothesis that it led to capitalism to be incredibly wrong.)

Not sure why you're bringing up pschohistory here... if anything, that's the top-down approach, treating people in society like molecules in the Kinetic Theory of Gases (stealing that analogy directly from Asimov himself). And in any case, it's arguable that psychohistory is among the more unrealistic things in Foundation; even Hari Seldon probably didn't expect it to work, given how he ended up creating a Second Foundation of psychics.

"A people's history, or history from below,[1] is a type of historical narrative which attempts to account for historical events from the perspective of common people rather than leaders. There is an emphasis on disenfranchised, the oppressed, the poor, the nonconformists, and otherwise marginal groups. The authors are typically on the left and have a Marxist model in mind, as in the approach of the History Workshop movement in Britain in the 1960s"

That's not anything like what I'm talking about, heh. Particularly the Marxist bit. Leaders have a major role to play in history, this looks like revisionism to me. Also, none of the theories you've quotes so far on East vs. Western belief systems have used this approach or any approach like it, so these works don't have much relevance. Though, honestly, I'd like the conversation to move on away from East vs. West.

My mention of psychohistory was just an aside because I noticed a weird thing, not because I thought it had any bearing on the conversation.

"A people's history, or history from below,[1] is a type of historical narrative which attempts to account for historical events from the perspective of common people rather than leaders. There is an emphasis on disenfranchised, the oppressed, the poor, the nonconformists, and otherwise marginal groups. The authors are typically on the left and have a Marxist model in mind, as in the approach of the History Workshop movement in Britain in the 1960s"

That's not anything like what I'm talking about, heh. Particularly the Marxist bit. Leaders have a major role to play in history, this looks like revisionism to me. Also, none of the theories you've quotes so far on East vs. Western belief systems have used this approach or any approach like it, so these works don't have much relevance.

Yep, I pointed it out so that you don't cause confusion in the future by accidentally associating your ideas with a completely unrelated but already existing term.

Though, honestly, I'd like the conversation to move on away from East vs. West.

That was the only thing we were discussing, and as you might notice we're the only two posting on this thread, so it's more that the conversation will be ending for now than moving on.

Yep, I pointed it out so that you don't cause confusion in the future by accidentally associating your ideas with a completely unrelated but already existing term.

Fair enough.

That was the only thing we were discussing, and as you might notice we're the only two posting on this thread, so it's more that the conversation will be ending for now than moving on.

Makes sense to me. That was where the conversation went, but it's not really the idea I want to explore.. Anyway, yeah we can call it quits for now.