TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Five Are Executed at Salem for Witchcraft
On Tuesday 19 August 1692—333 years ago today—five persons accused, tried, and found guilty of witchcraft were hanged, probably at Procter’s Ledge in Salem, Massachusetts. Was this an historical anomaly, an exception to what we should expect in the course of human events, or was it, rather, a predictable instance of mass hysteria driven by a moral panic? Is it, in fact, so predictable that we find ourselves acting out a script of cyclical history despite our insistence upon our free will and historical agency?
The Paleontology of Knowledge.—A fossil observation could be defined as an observation made under a different epistemic regime than that of today, so that to treat it as an observation for the purposes of contemporary knowledge it has to be interpreted within the contemporary epistemic paradigm. This translation from one epistemic paradigm to another will always pose problems of translation (pace Quine on the indeterminacy of translation). A later human civilization may have to translate our science into terms that made sense for them, allowing for our ellipses and our eccentric biases, as we attempt to translate past systematic attempts to formulate knowledge into our own systematic attempt to formulate knowledge, but there will never be any precise equivalents because of the indeterminacy of translation. This is a humbling realization for us, since our epistemic regime places a high value on precision, but another interesting consequence follows from this. All historical observations are fossil observations, with the possible exception of the history of the present. But the history of the present might just as well be called primary source material and not really history at all; we might with some justification reserve the term “history” only for accounts of the past written in an era following an era which has lapsed. Or we could simply distinguish history based on fossil observations and history based on living observations, but however we do it, the longer the period of history that we cover, the more likely we are to make use of fossil observations. Is it this that has prevented history from becoming a science, because history attempts to combine into a single synthesis fossil observations from several distinct epistemic regimes, none of which are commensurable?
Friday 08 August 2025 Grand Strategy Newsletter The View from Oregon – 353 How many Charlemagnes are there? mailchi.mp/7a374499b78d/the-view-from-oregon-353 …in which I discuss evolutionary convergence, the rare Earth hypothesis, the rare humanoid hypothesis, peer complexity, historical convergence, a disturbing SETI transmission, being “close enough” to be “the same,” cosmological-scale cyclical history, inevitability, the Fermi paradox, a universe full of Caesars and Charlemagnes, and The Precipice…
Observational Fossils.—Given that a lone contemporary (or even predecessor) of Copernicus could have formulated heliocentricism with evidence then available, and that this discovery might have gone entirely unnoticed, we could frame another speculative scenario in which the lost and re-discovered astronomical work contained some innovation not known to Copernicus, and possibly not even known to us. In this scenario, the lost and re-discovered manuscript is not a mere historical curiosity, but a striking and perhaps even revolutionary contribution to thought. We have long passed the point where ancient observations could force any revision in our scientific theories, so we can rule out the possibility of any contribution in the form of improved techniques or technologies of observation. However, the discovery of an observation since lost or forgotten, like the lunar observations on 18 June 1178 recorded by Gervase of Canterbury, postulated to have been the impact that formed the Giordano Bruno crater on the moon, might make us aware of something we didn’t otherwise know about, which can then be assimilated not only into contemporary knowledge, but also the observations themselves can be assessed from the perspective of contemporary methodology. Precisely because we do subject such observations to contemporary critique, the further any observations recede into the past, the more likely they are to be questioned and the less compelling the evidence appears. The 1178 observations remain controversial because of the vernacular in which they were described and the lack of confirmation from independent sources. Such observations can be theoretically fruitful in the sense that they pose a problem for the explanation of what exactly was observed. Past observations, then, can be of some value, but can we say the same for theory? Can we make a clean distinction between observation and theory that would allow for theory to remain viable even as observation becomes problematic? Could any past theoretical innovation be valuable to contemporary science, so that some long lost manuscript contained unknown secrets of the cosmos? While for the purposes of philosophy of science we may want to distinguish observational and theoretical terms, in practice observation and theory are tightly-coupled: observations drive theory and theory drives further observation. This means that the increased precision of observation drives increased precision in theory, and both are carried forward together by increased precision of measurement. Once the error bars of measurement exceed the observational parameters of past theory, both observation and theory of two distinct periods of human knowledge increasingly diverge, and their relevance to each other declines. This may be one mechanism of paradigm shift, but it’s not only such mechanism.
TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Formal and Informal Institutions
An Addendum on Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America’s treatment of its theme raises interesting questions about role of democracy and religion in American society, and de Tocqueville’s analysis of pre-Revolutionary French society is parallel in some ways in regard to the role of centralization in French government. I employ a distinction between formal and informal institutions, and the relationship between the two, to illuminate the method of de Tocqueville’s foundationalism.
Counterfactual Heliocentrism.—Suppose someone searching in a neglected archive comes across a manuscript by an astronomer that lays out the Copernican heliocentric theory of cosmology. Further suppose that this predates Copernicus, and suppose that subsequent research reveals that the author in question had access to astronomical observations of at least the level of sophistication of those to which Copernicus had access, so his conclusions are as well-founded as those of Copernicus. Any late medieval astronomer could have had copies of Ptolemy’s Almagest and the Alphonsine Tables, both of which Copernicus relied upon, and Copernicus had no decisively new observational technique or technologies. And seeking to soften the blow of his conclusions, Copernicus, in the best medieval tradition, deferred to an ancient authority: Aristarchus of Samos, none of whose works survive, but Archimedes in The Sand Reckoner records Aristarchus’ heliocentrism. Any medieval astronomer could have had this reference too. Now further suppose that our fictional astronomer died in obscurity, and no one looked at his manuscript until its discovery in the 21st century. We cannot know that there is no manuscript like this. Copernicus did not have especially good astronomical data, what he had was what others at the time had, and his innovations were primarily theoretical. Others could have reached the same conclusions. To what degree would we need to re-write the history of astronomy and of modern science in the light of such a discovery? If we count Copernicus as the beginning of the scientific revolution, should we shift our identification of the advent of modern science to this earlier figure? What is the value, and what is the historical status, of a scientific discovery that influences no one at the time, and no one in subsequent history until it is rediscovered at a time when it is a mere curiosity? Science has many instances of anticipations, more or less explicit, and of simultaneous discovery, so this is question that recurs to us with some regularity. In this fictional scenario is the heliocentric anticipation the origin of anything? Or in its isolation, its position outside customary frameworks of influence, is to not rather a dead end?
Friday 01 August 2025 Grand Strategy Newsletter The View from Oregon – 352 The Role of the Ineffable in Science mailchi.mp/e51e80471f35/the-view-from-oregon-352 …in which I discuss Leonard Woolley, Digging Up the Past, excavation, a science of science, ineffable observations, the gap between the knowable and the communicable, naturalistic explanations, post hoc rationalizations, paradigms of exposition, the rise of the journal article, and Bernard Bolzano on writing a treatise…
A Spengerlian Thought.—Consider the difference between the enthusiastically Faustian man, who is eager both to transcend and to transgress, who never sees a mountain he doesn’t want to climb, and who, in climbing, is fascinated with every step forward, drawn as though by a magnet, and the tragically Faustian man, who dreads the spur to action that goads him forward. The enthusiastically Faustian man is bursting with energy, difficult to restrain, headstrong in making his way and scarcely noticing those who fall by the wayside. He not only knows triumphs, but glories in them as his just due; he celebrates the deeds of his life with a clean conscience. Theodore Roosevelt was the very embodiment of enthusiastic Faustian man. The tragically Faustian man, on the other hand, is unhappily compulsive in the expansiveness of his life. He is driven forward in a kind of torment, always doubting, always hesitating, but driven forward nevertheless. He envies the sage of the East his perfect quietude in the lotus position, admiring that which we cannot bring himself to do. If he rests, he is discontent, and if he continues, he is discontent. He is a man at cross purposes with himself. Goethe’s Faust is an obviously tragic Faustian man, and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus the more so. Insofar as Spengler took Goethe as his model, his Faustian man was tragic, but Faustian man is not intrinsically tragic. And Goethe’s tragedy was a tragedy with salvation in the end, so not even the most tragic of tragic Faustians—he is, in a sense, the Aristotelian mean of Faustian man.
TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Alexis de Tocqueville on Democracy in America
Tuesday 29 July 2025 is the 220th anniversary of the birth of Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, comte de Tocqueville (29 July 1805 – 16 April 1859), better known to posterity as Alexis de Tocqueville, who was born in Paris on this date in 1805
Alexis de Tocqueville was the author of the undisputed classic, Democracy in American, but despite the epic scope and scale of the book, there’s something unfinished and incomplete about it. His further writings build on the themes of Democracy in America, but they literally remain unfinished, as he didn’t live to complete his work on the French Revolution.
The Penumbra of Logic.—Outside the boundary of logic proper, inhabiting the penumbra of logic, if you will, are theories of truth, the nature and role of definitions, and the structures of formal systems. Other modes of formal thought, such a mathematics and mereology, also employ or imply these penumbric ideas. Axiomatics, being the paradigmatic structure of a formal system, has been so thoroughly assimilated into mathematics it is often taken to be a part of it, but the axiomatic method—long called the geometric method because of its association with the exposition of geometry since Euclid—is equally applicable to any of the formal sciences, and indeed is employed in the natural sciences as well when rigor appears to demand it. But axiomatics didn’t appear in a work on logic until the Port-Royal Logic in the seventeenth century (La logique, ou l’art de penser, 1662). Nevertheless, these auxiliary sciences of formal thought have a closer relationship to logic than the other formal sciences, as various systems of logic down through history have included them or excluded them as the logic in question was conceived with a narrower or wider scope. Aristotle gives his theory of doctrine of definition in the Posterior Analytics, so if we take this book to be a part of logic (and it is traditionally part of the Organon), then definition is a part of logic. But the Posterior Analytics is widely recognized as a work in the theory of science (at least, science in the Platonic sense of demonstrative knowledge), so that the position of this work within logic itself is the question of the position of definition within logic writ large. Being shared, then, among the formal sciences, serving as the common language of the formal sciences, are these disciplines in the penumbra of logic actually the essence of formal thought? Rather than being in the gray area of formal thought, ought they to stand out as the most sharply defined exemplars of formal thought?
Nick Nielsen
TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Five Are Executed at Salem for Witchcraft
On Tuesday 19 August 1692—333 years ago today—five persons accused, tried, and found guilty of witchcraft were hanged, probably at Procter’s Ledge in Salem, Massachusetts. Was this an historical anomaly, an exception to what we should expect in the course of human events, or was it, rather, a predictable instance of mass hysteria driven by a moral panic? Is it, in fact, so predictable that we find ourselves acting out a script of cyclical history despite our insistence upon our free will and historical agency?
Quora: philosophyofhistory.quora.com/
Discord: discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD
Links: jnnielsen.carrd.co/
Newsletter: eepurl.com/dMh0_-/
Text post: geopolicraticus.substack.com/p/five-witches-are-ex…
Video: https://youtu.be/q5ojPn_64Qo
Podcast: open.spotify.com/episode/4HAzDJUwloZlwnSy6q86XL?si…
#philosophy #history #PhilosophyofHistory #witchcraft #Salem #witchcraze #hysteria #MoralPanic #Trevor-Roper #CyclicalHistory
18 hours ago | [YT] | 1
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Nick Nielsen
The Paleontology of Knowledge.—A fossil observation could be defined as an observation made under a different epistemic regime than that of today, so that to treat it as an observation for the purposes of contemporary knowledge it has to be interpreted within the contemporary epistemic paradigm. This translation from one epistemic paradigm to another will always pose problems of translation (pace Quine on the indeterminacy of translation). A later human civilization may have to translate our science into terms that made sense for them, allowing for our ellipses and our eccentric biases, as we attempt to translate past systematic attempts to formulate knowledge into our own systematic attempt to formulate knowledge, but there will never be any precise equivalents because of the indeterminacy of translation. This is a humbling realization for us, since our epistemic regime places a high value on precision, but another interesting consequence follows from this. All historical observations are fossil observations, with the possible exception of the history of the present. But the history of the present might just as well be called primary source material and not really history at all; we might with some justification reserve the term “history” only for accounts of the past written in an era following an era which has lapsed. Or we could simply distinguish history based on fossil observations and history based on living observations, but however we do it, the longer the period of history that we cover, the more likely we are to make use of fossil observations. Is it this that has prevented history from becoming a science, because history attempts to combine into a single synthesis fossil observations from several distinct epistemic regimes, none of which are commensurable?
18 hours ago | [YT] | 7
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Nick Nielsen
Friday 08 August 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 353
How many Charlemagnes are there?
mailchi.mp/7a374499b78d/the-view-from-oregon-353
…in which I discuss evolutionary convergence, the rare Earth hypothesis, the rare humanoid hypothesis, peer complexity, historical convergence, a disturbing SETI transmission, being “close enough” to be “the same,” cosmological-scale cyclical history, inevitability, the Fermi paradox, a universe full of Caesars and Charlemagnes, and The Precipice…
Substack: geopolicraticus.substack.com/p/how-many-charlemagn…
Medium: jnnielsen.medium.com/how-many-charlemagnes-are-the…
Reddit: www.reddit.com/r/The_View_from_Oregon/comments/1mr…
2 weeks ago | [YT] | 6
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Nick Nielsen
Observational Fossils.—Given that a lone contemporary (or even predecessor) of Copernicus could have formulated heliocentricism with evidence then available, and that this discovery might have gone entirely unnoticed, we could frame another speculative scenario in which the lost and re-discovered astronomical work contained some innovation not known to Copernicus, and possibly not even known to us. In this scenario, the lost and re-discovered manuscript is not a mere historical curiosity, but a striking and perhaps even revolutionary contribution to thought. We have long passed the point where ancient observations could force any revision in our scientific theories, so we can rule out the possibility of any contribution in the form of improved techniques or technologies of observation. However, the discovery of an observation since lost or forgotten, like the lunar observations on 18 June 1178 recorded by Gervase of Canterbury, postulated to have been the impact that formed the Giordano Bruno crater on the moon, might make us aware of something we didn’t otherwise know about, which can then be assimilated not only into contemporary knowledge, but also the observations themselves can be assessed from the perspective of contemporary methodology. Precisely because we do subject such observations to contemporary critique, the further any observations recede into the past, the more likely they are to be questioned and the less compelling the evidence appears. The 1178 observations remain controversial because of the vernacular in which they were described and the lack of confirmation from independent sources. Such observations can be theoretically fruitful in the sense that they pose a problem for the explanation of what exactly was observed. Past observations, then, can be of some value, but can we say the same for theory? Can we make a clean distinction between observation and theory that would allow for theory to remain viable even as observation becomes problematic? Could any past theoretical innovation be valuable to contemporary science, so that some long lost manuscript contained unknown secrets of the cosmos? While for the purposes of philosophy of science we may want to distinguish observational and theoretical terms, in practice observation and theory are tightly-coupled: observations drive theory and theory drives further observation. This means that the increased precision of observation drives increased precision in theory, and both are carried forward together by increased precision of measurement. Once the error bars of measurement exceed the observational parameters of past theory, both observation and theory of two distinct periods of human knowledge increasingly diverge, and their relevance to each other declines. This may be one mechanism of paradigm shift, but it’s not only such mechanism.
2 weeks ago | [YT] | 2
View 0 replies
Nick Nielsen
TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Formal and Informal Institutions
An Addendum on Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America’s treatment of its theme raises interesting questions about role of democracy and religion in American society, and de Tocqueville’s analysis of pre-Revolutionary French society is parallel in some ways in regard to the role of centralization in French government. I employ a distinction between formal and informal institutions, and the relationship between the two, to illuminate the method of de Tocqueville’s foundationalism.
Quora: philosophyofhistory.quora.com/
Discord: discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD
Links: jnnielsen.carrd.co/
Newsletter: eepurl.com/dMh0_-/
Text post: geopolicraticus.substack.com/p/formal-and-informal…
Video: https://youtu.be/D8GeE0W7ovQ
Podcast: open.spotify.com/episode/4KmNKqBUfhkLwdDvxdEIM0?si…
#philosophy #history #PhilosophyofHistory #AlexisdeTocqueville #America #France #democracy #aristocracy #institutions #formal #informal #foundationalism #PinkyPromise
2 weeks ago | [YT] | 2
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Nick Nielsen
Counterfactual Heliocentrism.—Suppose someone searching in a neglected archive comes across a manuscript by an astronomer that lays out the Copernican heliocentric theory of cosmology. Further suppose that this predates Copernicus, and suppose that subsequent research reveals that the author in question had access to astronomical observations of at least the level of sophistication of those to which Copernicus had access, so his conclusions are as well-founded as those of Copernicus. Any late medieval astronomer could have had copies of Ptolemy’s Almagest and the Alphonsine Tables, both of which Copernicus relied upon, and Copernicus had no decisively new observational technique or technologies. And seeking to soften the blow of his conclusions, Copernicus, in the best medieval tradition, deferred to an ancient authority: Aristarchus of Samos, none of whose works survive, but Archimedes in The Sand Reckoner records Aristarchus’ heliocentrism. Any medieval astronomer could have had this reference too. Now further suppose that our fictional astronomer died in obscurity, and no one looked at his manuscript until its discovery in the 21st century. We cannot know that there is no manuscript like this. Copernicus did not have especially good astronomical data, what he had was what others at the time had, and his innovations were primarily theoretical. Others could have reached the same conclusions. To what degree would we need to re-write the history of astronomy and of modern science in the light of such a discovery? If we count Copernicus as the beginning of the scientific revolution, should we shift our identification of the advent of modern science to this earlier figure? What is the value, and what is the historical status, of a scientific discovery that influences no one at the time, and no one in subsequent history until it is rediscovered at a time when it is a mere curiosity? Science has many instances of anticipations, more or less explicit, and of simultaneous discovery, so this is question that recurs to us with some regularity. In this fictional scenario is the heliocentric anticipation the origin of anything? Or in its isolation, its position outside customary frameworks of influence, is to not rather a dead end?
2 weeks ago | [YT] | 6
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Nick Nielsen
Friday 01 August 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 352
The Role of the Ineffable in Science
mailchi.mp/e51e80471f35/the-view-from-oregon-352
…in which I discuss Leonard Woolley, Digging Up the Past, excavation, a science of science, ineffable observations, the gap between the knowable and the communicable, naturalistic explanations, post hoc rationalizations, paradigms of exposition, the rise of the journal article, and Bernard Bolzano on writing a treatise…
Substack: geopolicraticus.substack.com/p/the-role-of-the-ine…
Reddit: www.reddit.com/r/The_View_from_Oregon/comments/1mk…
1 month ago | [YT] | 6
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Nick Nielsen
A Spengerlian Thought.—Consider the difference between the enthusiastically Faustian man, who is eager both to transcend and to transgress, who never sees a mountain he doesn’t want to climb, and who, in climbing, is fascinated with every step forward, drawn as though by a magnet, and the tragically Faustian man, who dreads the spur to action that goads him forward. The enthusiastically Faustian man is bursting with energy, difficult to restrain, headstrong in making his way and scarcely noticing those who fall by the wayside. He not only knows triumphs, but glories in them as his just due; he celebrates the deeds of his life with a clean conscience. Theodore Roosevelt was the very embodiment of enthusiastic Faustian man. The tragically Faustian man, on the other hand, is unhappily compulsive in the expansiveness of his life. He is driven forward in a kind of torment, always doubting, always hesitating, but driven forward nevertheless. He envies the sage of the East his perfect quietude in the lotus position, admiring that which we cannot bring himself to do. If he rests, he is discontent, and if he continues, he is discontent. He is a man at cross purposes with himself. Goethe’s Faust is an obviously tragic Faustian man, and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus the more so. Insofar as Spengler took Goethe as his model, his Faustian man was tragic, but Faustian man is not intrinsically tragic. And Goethe’s tragedy was a tragedy with salvation in the end, so not even the most tragic of tragic Faustians—he is, in a sense, the Aristotelian mean of Faustian man.
1 month ago | [YT] | 13
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Nick Nielsen
TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Alexis de Tocqueville on Democracy in America
Tuesday 29 July 2025 is the 220th anniversary of the birth of Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, comte de Tocqueville (29 July 1805 – 16 April 1859), better known to posterity as Alexis de Tocqueville, who was born in Paris on this date in 1805
Alexis de Tocqueville was the author of the undisputed classic, Democracy in American, but despite the epic scope and scale of the book, there’s something unfinished and incomplete about it. His further writings build on the themes of Democracy in America, but they literally remain unfinished, as he didn’t live to complete his work on the French Revolution.
Quora: philosophyofhistory.quora.com/
Discord: discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD
Links: jnnielsen.carrd.co/
Newsletter: eepurl.com/dMh0_-/
Text post: geopolicraticus.substack.com/p/alexis-de-tocquevil…
Video: https://youtu.be/GarzPKBT-UA
Podcast: open.spotify.com/episode/1qSu5F1p2LA33c0Y7QftLG?si…
#philosophy #history #PhilosophyofHistory #AlexisdeTocqueville #America #democracy #Guizot #aristocracy
2 months ago | [YT] | 3
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Nick Nielsen
The Penumbra of Logic.—Outside the boundary of logic proper, inhabiting the penumbra of logic, if you will, are theories of truth, the nature and role of definitions, and the structures of formal systems. Other modes of formal thought, such a mathematics and mereology, also employ or imply these penumbric ideas. Axiomatics, being the paradigmatic structure of a formal system, has been so thoroughly assimilated into mathematics it is often taken to be a part of it, but the axiomatic method—long called the geometric method because of its association with the exposition of geometry since Euclid—is equally applicable to any of the formal sciences, and indeed is employed in the natural sciences as well when rigor appears to demand it. But axiomatics didn’t appear in a work on logic until the Port-Royal Logic in the seventeenth century (La logique, ou l’art de penser, 1662). Nevertheless, these auxiliary sciences of formal thought have a closer relationship to logic than the other formal sciences, as various systems of logic down through history have included them or excluded them as the logic in question was conceived with a narrower or wider scope. Aristotle gives his theory of doctrine of definition in the Posterior Analytics, so if we take this book to be a part of logic (and it is traditionally part of the Organon), then definition is a part of logic. But the Posterior Analytics is widely recognized as a work in the theory of science (at least, science in the Platonic sense of demonstrative knowledge), so that the position of this work within logic itself is the question of the position of definition within logic writ large. Being shared, then, among the formal sciences, serving as the common language of the formal sciences, are these disciplines in the penumbra of logic actually the essence of formal thought? Rather than being in the gray area of formal thought, ought they to stand out as the most sharply defined exemplars of formal thought?
2 months ago | [YT] | 8
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