Essentially, the lecture covers the period for which I have data and models. My periodization is somewhat different from Prof. Synder's and was based more on periods over which I wanted to estimate models, considerations from World-Systems Theory and consulting Wikipedia:
Feudalism (800-1400)Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of various customs and systems that flourished in medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.
The Long Eighteenth Century (1688-1815)The long 18th century is a phrase used by many British historians to cover a more natural historical period than the simple use of the standard calendar definition of the eighteenth century (1 January 1701 to 31 December 1800).
The Long Twentieth Century (1900-2000+)The phrase "the long twentieth century" refers to a period spanning roughly from the late 19th century to the early 21st century, characterized by profound transformations in global politics, economics, society, and technology.
There are a few points from the lecture that I want to emphasize:
It's difficult to make policy change without knowing history. We have to know what is possible and what is meaningful.
What Can Happen: (1) It's not true that "anything can happen". There are limits. (2) It is also not true that "Nothing is possible". Everything isn't over-determined. Some things are possible and somethings are not! The more you know about the past, the more you understand what is possible.
Lines Coming from the Past in History: If you are not on one of these lines, the present will seem confusing (see below).
No one knows what is going on right now. There is no way to start from the present and try to understand the future. You can have some confidence in things that have happened in the past!
History Doesn't Repeat. You can recognize patterns. Living people are the actors.You cannot go back to the "Golden Age". Nazism and Stalinism (and Trumpism?) are schemes about the past that are designed to disempower you.
The things that actually happened must be possible because they actually happened. If you are aware of the terrible things that have happened (mass murder, concentration camps, genocide, etc.) you can make them less likely to happen in the future.
History involves Testing Hypotheses and finding out that some hypotheses are wrong.
History, Texts and Data: History is Imperial (consuming everything) as long as there are texts. No texts, no history. For Quantitative History, no data, no history (we do have some data all the way back to the year zero from the Maddison Project).
Mental models vs. Mathematical Models From the standpoint of General Systems Theory, historians deal with mental models, flexible generalizations that can be used to explain events. Quantitative history deals with formal models (usually mathematical) that are applied to historical data. In the early days of Quantitative history, a lot of sterile academic arguments revolved around whether formal models were better. They are not; they are complementary and one cannot exist without the other.
History is a guard against simplifying narratives. For example, 19th Century Germany failed because it had a Welfare State.
In History, everything is related to everything. Good history asks what is meaningful.
The graphic above is taken from the IPCC Climate Scenarios that show actual historical CO2 emissions (the early dark black line) and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) which are possible future emissions pathways, lines of the past projected into the future. The RCPs show what is thought to be possible.
The graphic above shows Global Temperature projects from my WL20 World Model (see Global Temperature Projections) given various input variables: RW (Random Walk), W (World System), TECH (Technological Change), CO2 (Only CO2 emissions as an input variable) and BAU (Business as Usual, no input variables). Notice how the actual data from 1970 to beyond 2000 diverges from all projections.
In the sense of RCPs and WL20 World Model projections, lines of the past are projected into the future using different Geopolitical inputs, a link between Quantitative and General History. There are other links between mental and formal models; one is neither right nor wrong without hypothesis testing.
World Historya field of historical study examines history from a global perspective. It emerged centuries ago; some leading practitioners have included Voltaire (1694–1778), Hegel (1770–1831), Karl Marx (1818–1883), Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), and Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975). The field became much more active (in terms of university teaching, textbooks, scholarly journals, and academic associations) in the late 20th century.
The Maddison Projectalso known as the Maddison Historical Statistics Project, is a project to collate historical economic statistics, such as GDP, GDP per capita, and labor productivity.
Cliometricssometimes called 'new economic history'or 'econometric history',is the systematic application of economic theory,econometrictechniques, and other formal or mathematical methods to the study of history (especiallysocialandeconomic history).It is aquantitativeapproach to economic history (as opposed toqualitativeorethnographic).There has been a revival in 'new economic history' since the late 1990s.
General Systems Theorythe transdisciplinary study of systems, i.e., cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or artificial. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its structure, function and role, and expressed through its relations with other systems. A system is "more than the sum of its parts" when it expresses synergy or emergent behavior.
Complex Systemsa system composed of many components that interact with one another.Examples of complex systems are Earth's global climate, organisms, the human brain, infrastructure such as a power grid, transportation or communication systems, complex software and electronic systems, social and economic organizations (like cities), an ecosystem, a living cell, and, ultimately, for some authors, the entire universe.
Heterarchya system of organization where the elements of the organization are unranked (non-hierarchical) or where they possess the potential to be ranked a number of different ways. Definitions of the term vary among the disciplines: in social and information sciences, heterarchies are networks of elements in which each element shares the same "horizontal" position of power and authority, each playing a theoretically equal role. In biological taxonomy, however, the requisite features of heterarchy involve, for example, a species sharing, with a species in a different family, a common ancestor which it does not share with members of its own family.
Geopoliticsthe study of the effects of Earth's geography on politics and international relations. Geopolitics usually refers to countries and relations between them. According to multiple researchers, the term is currently being used to describe a broad spectrum of concepts, in a general sense used as "a synonym for international political relations", but more specifically "to imply the global structure of such relations"; this usage builds on an "early-twentieth-century term for a pseudoscience of political geography" and other pseudoscientific theories of historical and geographic determinism.
Level of Analysisused in the social sciences to point to the location, size, or scale of a research target. It is distinct from unit of observation in that the former refers to a more or less integrated set of relationships while the latter refers to the distinct unit from which data have been or will be gathered. Together, the unit of observation and the level of analysis help define the population of a research enterprise.
Spaghetti Plots(also known as a spaghetti chart, spaghetti diagram, or spaghetti model) is a method of viewing data to visualize possible flows through systems. Flows depicted in this manner appear like noodles, hence the coining of this term.
I use my blogs to make informal comments on policy topics related to my research interests in the World-System, computer simulation of the US Health Care System, the US Economy, the US Stock Market, and the US Financial System. I am retired from the University of Wisconsin -- Madison. I have taught Statistics and Computer Science and also served on the UW's HIPAA Task Force and the Bioterrorism Task Force. I have also been a member of my local planning commission, a jazz guitarist and a golfer, so some of that may find its way into the blogs.
