Here are presented the results of the enquiry carried out by Herodotus of Halicarnassus. The purpose is to present the traces of human events from being erased by time, and to preserve the fame of the important and remarkable achievements produced by both Greeks and non'Greeks; among the matters covered is, in particular, the cause of the hostilities between Greeks and non'Greeks.
Herodotus' Histories.
And Ozymandias
The attempt to turn memory into a concrete device but does it ever really work? Is literature, particularly the novel, an attempt to preserve the moment, the individual personality, and the deeds of people in time? How well do or can we do? Are we not as likely reconstructing reality, not replicating genuine events? The story of the war between the Ancient Greeks, a patriotic story that helped produce the ancient Greek character, is only known through Greek writings, for the Persians did not mention it.
Can we never accept entropy and learn to live with our disappearance?
Must we keep on claiming a specific space in the universe?
Am in agreement with your observation Stanley Wilkin that narratives dominate human history; in this sense, the memory of any culture is essentially a narrative and not an empirical fact.
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What is history, but a fable agreed upon?
Napoleon Bonaparte
Stephen,
Equally, it concerns how the narrative is written and the nature of evidence.
Thucydides, the academic rival to Herodotus, placed immense importance on records, invariably text based. This of course is how modern history is understood. Proof is textual not eyewitness accounts. Now, Socrates denied the ultimate reality of text because written or printed text becomes the dominant reality.
The zeroth Commandment is to remember accurately. Such memory serves as a basis for future action. That is, it is a societies consciousness. False memory results in society's decline.
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