Fractal History

One generation hasn’t a clue. Another generation can track footprints while mama finds cookie crumbs on Junior’s clothing. Another generation can ID from fingerprints. Then we ID from DNA. We don’t know what tools we’ll have tomorrow. We don’t know that we’ll have a tomorrow.

bk just gave me Shays’s Rebellion: never heard of it: till very recently. Oh, I don’t mean it never crossed my ears; I mean it never came to my attention. Author Leonard L. Richards is a history teacher who, apparently like many another, had thought he knew all about it: until he did some research: research he didn’t have to climb Mt. Everest for; just through the annoyance and drudgery of reading some old records in difficult hand-writings. Presto: his, and now others’, views are changed: permanently.

Never mind what the views were, or are: just register that they’re different. View A was based on X information and a set Y of opinions; view B is based on X information and a set Y of opinions plus Y information and a set Z of unearthed old opinions.

Bull-headedness is immune to evidence; science changes with the evidence. And even history can have scientific moments.

I’ve only just begun the book. But I’m not writing about Shays’s Rebellion; I’m pondering the nature of evidence: is it fractal? Real onions can’t have infinite layers, but how about layers of evidence? What of what’s beyond our reach will ever come within our reach?

Once upon a time scholars of John Henry Cardinal Newman knew that he had written a book of a certain title. They knew that Newman had never published that book. Every Newman scholar knew that there must have been a manuscript, and that that "book," that manuscript, was missing. Let’s call the title X. One scholar went to the late cardinal’s office, had permission to look through his desk. It was one of those old desks with a row of dividers? pigeonholes? There he discovered the missing manuscript: in a compartment clearly labeled X! No one had looked for it! at least not very hard.

In the case of Shays’s Rebellion Leonard L. Richards noticed something anomalous (anomaly : difference : information): there was an odd quantity of records detailing who participated in the rebellion. There were records on these people. It seemed that other historians hadn’t bothered to look. The records were right in or around Boston: a Massachusetts scholar could walk, take the bus ... look into the neglected.

But again, I’m not talking about this rebellion, about which I still know little; I’m wondering: is evidence fractal? Infinite? Or finite? and we just need a bit more of it?

If information is infinite, we may as well give up right now: one point on the spectrum of ignorance is hardly more ignorant than any other point: knowledge will remain out of reach to infinity. Or ae we lazy prejudiced bastards who just need to wake up a little?

PS I’ll tell you one thing: my "desk" is full of evidence: evidence against the intelligence of publishers, the integrity of teachers, of governors ... My desk is replete with messages essential for survival: messages I’ve received and tried to relay, messages I’ve initiated ... none to few of them reaching their targets: no matter what I did. I’ve nearly run out of things to try. Mass murder I’m saving till last. But there are no pk scholars. Well, there are a couple. A couple have come to my desk and poked around. But no one has inventoried the whole, photographed the originals, looked for evidence to date them, logged all into a safe ...

So: either god has his own copies; or society’s evidence rooms are a joke.