Roman vs. American COIN ops

[marct]

Hi Chris,

I still hold onto my view that it is better to inform and shape an understanding of history as theory rather than identify historical detail as an end in itself, however the difference in my own head is nearing the point of self-defeating semantics...

Well, I would say that at an epistemological level, how we theorize history says more about us than it does about "history" per se. Coming from that, the importance of details, what type, how many, selection criteria, etc., shifts. Then again, I've been pretty heavily influenced by Carlo Ginzburg (see here) which shouldn't be too surprising since he took Anthro methods and applied them to history .

"self-defeating semantics". Now you've hit on a soap box of mine (I can hear Wilf groaning ). This is where selection criteria become crucial - what meaning are you trying to uncover in historical research? When does it come to be self-defeating? Can we learn anything now based on that?

I may differ on the 'best practice' of classical/ historical comparison, but I would never write off any comparison as being needless or ineffective. Disclaimers and caveats need to accompany every form of history, even if it is only down to the fact that we ourselves are observing it from an imperfect perspective given our own modern bias.

Definitely! There's a neat principle I use called Ginzburg's Razor - a good discussion on it is in the intro to this book. Basically, he argues that between competing hypotheses, the one that requires the least additional number of hypotheses is the most plausible (not "probable", not "true" - he's using abductive logic). It's a good principle to keep in mind if, at the same time, we also remember that as a species we have pretty much exactly the same brains as every other human throughout recorded history (in terms of potentialities).

Also, thanks marct for the small point of wisdom on connecting 'empire' with 'sphere of influence'. That is something I did not know, and will now blatantly use to impress/ fool those around me with my knowledge of latin

LOL - have fun, but point out that the word itself was stolen from the Greek (not Latin). The Romans were almost as kleptomoniacal as the English when it comes to grabbing neat words .

Cheers,

Marc