History Forum / General / General Topics / April 2008

Newton set up numerical solutions to the vis viva where the "number
crunching" was just not practical to do by hand.  Celestial mechanics
could only be handled to a high degree of accuracy centuries later
with high speed digital computing.

DeTocqueville plays a role similar to Newton in political science.

DeTocqueville made a big deal about historians in ages of equality
attributing everything to "general causes" when great men also play a
role.

General causes certainly play a role even in aristocratic ages.
DeTocqueville presented dozens of brilliant ones himself, i. e., why
true federations never last, etc.

One of his theories was why historians in democratic times overused or
abused theories of general causes.  The reason was it was impossible
to keep track of all the players.  Only God could handle each and
every person.

So historians and political scientists tried the best they could with
their faulty theories of general causes.

(BTW, this is about the errors by independent political scientists
_not_ corp. media pundits who have a conflict of interest with the
truth.)

All this has changed now.  It is now possible for a few people to
"number crunch" every last player.

For example, are there jihaders in the corp. media trying to keep us
in the unpopular Iraq quagmire?

If so it's not necessary to rely on faulty theories or to broad brush
all the corp. media.  Just launch a Wiki style web page soliciting the
public for the names of the jingoistic journalists.

Then out the jihaders on that web page.

The public can be just like God, at least in the political sphere.

Bret Cahill