"If you put any event under a microscope, you will find a whole dimension of completely weird, incredible things going on. It's as if there's the macro level of historical research, where things sort of obey natural laws, and the usual things happen and unusual things don't happen. And then there's this other level, where everything is really weird.-- Errol Morris, The Umbrella Man
"On Nov. 22, in rained the night before ..."
Excellent.
ReplyDeleteThe metaphor is pertinent, but I would not talk about anything "obeying natural laws" in history. I think that's a pretty unhelpful way to think about things.
However, it's certainly true that the broad generalizations you make on a wide scale pretty much always break down the closer you zoom in. The mistake I think a lot of the historical community makes now is assuming that since generalizations are imprecise, they must therefore be false. John Lukacs is fond of saying that generalizations, like brooms, are meant to sweep.
Also, Lukacs loves to think about things like the uncertainty principle and modern physics within historical thinking.
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