[lit-ideas] Cleopatra's Nose
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:46:59 EST
"You don't mean Cleopatra Williams"
Confused, in Memphis-Emphasis.
In a message dated 2/26/2009 2:34:29 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
This, only one day after once again considering in class E. H. Carr's
notion that some things don't count as historical facts because they
are too trivial. I gave as an example, flies laying eggs in Mongolia
in April of 1562.
----
Missed this earlier, but coincidentally was provoked to it, by McEvoy's
Popperian example
>Karl Popper [made up] "We are taught to think that the violent
>contests between corrupt factions is what constitutes history.
>But this is only history from a certain POV. From another
>POV the movement of a [shoe- sic] fly on a page may be
>much more important history."
Trouble is Popper didn't know the _first_ thing about Banana Republics!
From wiki's bio of Carr:
"As an example of his attack on the role of accidents in history, Carr
mocked the hypothesis of “Cleopatra’s nose”, namely that, but for the magnetism
exerted by the nose of Cleopatra on Mark Anthony that would be no affair
between the two, and hence the Second Triumvirate would not have broken up,
and
therefore the Roman Republic would have continued.[220] Carr sarcastically
commented that the male attraction for female beauty can hardly be considered
an
accident at all, and is rather what one of the most common cases of cause and
effect in the world.[221] Other examples of "Cleopatra's Nose" type of
history cited by Carr were the claim by Edward Gibbon if the Turkish sultan
Bayezid
I did not suffer from gout, he would have conquered Central Europe, Winston
Churchill's statement if King Alexander had not died of a monkey bite, the
Greco-Turkish War would have been avoided, and Leon Trotsky's remark if he not
contracted a cold while duck hunting, he would not have missed a crucial
Politburo meeting in 1923.[222] Rather than accidents, Carr asserted history
was
a series of causal chains interacting with each other.[223]"
J. L.
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