Laura Spinney in NewScientist (15 October 2016, paywall) reports on an effort to encode and process history. It’s named Seshat, for the old Egyptian god of wisdom:
Why was the New Kingdom so advanced, and what triggered its downfall? There is no shortage of theories, and each has its champions. This is the way history tends to work: theories are put forward, their strengths and weaknesses are discussed, and then they line up alongside all the alternative ideas. Like old sailors, they never really die. A new project called Seshat, after the ancient Egyptian goddess of knowledge, aims to change that.
Seshat is a vast and growing database of historical and archaeological knowledge that can be explored using scientific techniques. That makes it a powerful tool for testing and ultimately discarding hypotheses. “A cemetery for theories,” is how Seshat co-founder Peter Turchin at the University of Connecticut in Storrs describes it. By making history more evidence-based, he and his colleagues hope it will become more relevant. They believe that understanding the forces that have shaped human societies in the past will give us more power to predict the future – and perhaps even to direct it by advising politicians and lawmakers on how to avoid the pitfalls of the past.
I find that last line particularly interesting, because it’s another step along the way to specialization. They’re trying to remove any requirement that politicians have training in history, and replace it with simple advice. I have mixed feelings on this, since experts are more likely to get it right – while this would seem to be a core competency for a politician.
Which may, in fact, be one of the silliest statements I’ve ever made.
But I can’t help but remark on some of the best politicians, such as Churchill, had an active interest in history; while today, some of the worst seem motivated only by ideology and not by any well-grounded view of history. Oh, they may think their historical knowledge is excellent – but is it? My experience is that it’s often skewed. I particularly beware of auto-didacts, who tend to have strong, wrong opinions.
From the Seshat web site:
We believe that our approach is the best way to provide meaningful answers to some of the most important questions about the human experience – how and under what circumstances does prosocial behavior evolve in large societies? What roles do religion and ritual activities play in group cohesion and cultural development? What is the impact of climatic and the environmental factors in societal advance? What mechanisms translate economic growth into quality of life improvements for the average person?
Of course, “facts” can be open to dispute. Spinney explains:
The unit of information is a “fact”, which can take the form of a binary choice (presence/absence of writing, for example), a numerical value, or a range of values. Each fact is based on the consensus of specialist historians who meet periodically at workshops, first to decide which variables to consider, and then to validate the facts collected. Facts can be accompanied by text that expresses uncertainty or controversy and, critically, provides sources. The data spans 10,000 years from the dawn of agriculture to the eve of the modern era in 1900.
A fascinating foray into an area not easily modeled mathematically.
