Yes, but with another face(s)...

Wish you all healthy life my friends.

Emad

Not history perse, but more as part of a certain pattern. The repetition of patterns is the essence of live. That's why understanding patterns is so important, because you can be able to predict the future or get a general understanding of what happened in the past. And for us humans, predictability is very important.

Thank you for your participation and time Jasim Hassen

Mila Ilieva

Yes, history often repeats itself

yes, l agree. many repeated histories have been seen.

Thank you for your participation and time Ajibola Ibrahim Quadri

Can you share at least, one example?

Thank you for your time and contribution Rudi Darson

Please provide a bit of deep dive for your response Rudi Darson

Agree

Yes, I agree with you.

Dear Kheepe Lawrence Moremi , history is the study of occurrences taken place in the past as a result of human activities or behavior, which we find important because they have significant effects on other people. Any occurrence in the past by humans can technically only take place once, no two occurrences can be exact the same, even if we try to repeat them. However, patterns will and when we say, ‘history repeats itself’, we tend to look at the patterns, whether they are differences or similarities and in comparison with other occurrences. Historians try to make sense of a historic situation and for that they look at patterns. We see things through their lenses, whether they are Herodotus, Posidonius, Hydatius, Ban Gu, Bede, Capgrave, Ibn Idhari, Li Fang, Mary Bonaventure Browne, or Thomas Carlyle, to mention but a few. But historians also very often differ in their explanations, in the way they look at the same things. And in those cases we could then say 'History doesn't repeat itself'.

Thank you for your time and a detailed response Rudi Darson

I ma digesting your answer. In the meantime, is there any perspective or theory behind your response that I need to be aware of?

In our holy book, the Noble Qur’an, there are those and those days we discuss among people

Explain some more Yousif Yaqoob Shahtha so I understand your perspective.

Hello Kheepe Lawrence Moremi ,

History only can repeat itself if the system being studied is exactly the same as it was in the past, which is never the case for complex, real world systems such as the financial system, for example. The financial system evolves as regulations are introduced and new financial products are introduced in order to sometimes circumvent said regulations, i.e., the financial system 'learns' from the attempts to regulate it. The global climate is another example of a system that is a one-off in the sense that the enviromental stressors that are extant today have never been the same as they were in the past.

Regards,

Tom Cuff

Thank you for your time and contribution Thomas Cuff

I am studying your response carefully, but in the meantime, could you please share the underlying perspective behind your response. This is meant to aid understanding.

Thank you for your time and contributions Barbara Sawicka Mohammed Ismael Rushdi Isam Alkhalifawi

This statement Moremi to me is relative....to which circumstances that you are quoting George Santayana...is it about the currrent situation that is deep rooted around the world whiles stretching it branches across...which we hope Allah is in control because of our deeds?

Thank you for your time and participation Salifu Osman

Help us understand your viewpoint. What perspective, theory or concept underlie your answer/response?

There is no right or wrong response.

In Geology, repetition of history is very common. The presently studied climate change has occurred repeatedly. Catastrophic deposits of sediments from the land or near shore far into the ocean, indicating tsunamis or hurricanes, and associated mudflows are common in sedimentary rocks. Evolution and extinction of species are used to date rocks. Volcanic eruptions continue while rise and fall of sea level is not a once and for all issue. How about glaciations and ice meltings?

Obianuju P. Umeji

Thank you for the detailed response from a Geology perspective. Highly appreciated Obianuju P. Umeji

I do not agree. Why? The world is constantly changing in every sense and in every field. Over time, contexts in which things happen completely changes. This means that different models are needed to act in different contexts.Such changes do not create a recurring history.

Hello Kheepe Lawrence Moremi ,

With respect to sharing the underlying perspective behind my response (belief), here are some of the books I have consulted:

Financial System:

[1] James Owen Weatherall; The Physics of Wall Street; First Mariner Books (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt); 2013; pp. 205-225, Epilogue. Weatherall discusses how the use of models changes the thing being modelled. He also refers to an earlier more technical text by MacKenzie.

[2] Donald MacKenzie; An Engine, Not a Camera; MIT Press; 2006.

Climate and Environmental Issues:

[1] Orrin H. Pilkey, Linda Pilkey-Jarvis; Useless Arithmetic, Why Environmental Scientists Can't Predict the Future; Columbia University Press; 2007. One of the things these authors point out is the problem of obtaining accurate values of parameters needed for the models.

Extremely Simple Systems That Are Deterministic But Unpredictable:

[1] Stephen Wolfram; A New Kind of Science; Wolfram Media, Inc.; 2002. Wolfram presents simple rules involving integers, similar to Conway's game Life, which while deterministic are unpredictable, i.e., past is not prologue. In other words, you can calculate the configuration at each time step, but there is no way to have a dynamical equation giving the configuration at future times steps far removed from the present time step other than by going through each time step. It is not like predicting the future position of a cannon ball using Newtonian dynamics.

[2] Douglas R. Hofstadter; Godel, Escher, Bach: An External Golden Braid, 20th -anniversary Edition; Basic Books; 1999 & 1979; p. 354. Hofstadler mentions the unsurmountable difficulty that Newton had with the dynamics of the motion of the Moon due to the fact that both the Earth and Sun have equal influence on this body resulting in a 3-body problem, which still has not been solved although Laplace introduced perturbation methods to approximate the solution provided you have enough observations. For a detailed history of this problem see the following books:

[3] Ivars Peterson; Newton's Clock, Chaos in the Solar System; W. H. Freeman and Company; 1993.

[4] David H. Clark, Stephen P. H. Clark; Newton's Tyranny; W. H. Freeman and Company; 2001.

Regards,

Tom Cuff

Thank you very much Thomas Cuff

This enriches the investigation and discussion even further. Allow me some time to digest these. At first glance I can say I understand your premise on finance and environmental aspects.

Thank you Dragoljub Šarović

I get the disagreement. WhatI do not get, is the theoretical footing on which you base your disagreement. Do you mind to share that?

My sense though is that perhaps we need to break down and unpack the phrase; "History repeats itself."

Once we have done the above, I suspect we will be best positioned to determine and test the recurring part.

I have heard this a number of times. History does not repeat but it rhymes. Take for example the silk route which is being constructed under Belt and Road Initiative. The Fall of Roman Empire and Aryans make us reflect history repeating itself. The repeat happen in a changed and diversified way.

Thank you for your time and participation Munira Tharwani . Just to make sure I understand your response, you are saying that there is some level of repeats, but the repeats have some level of deviation and divergence from that which is being repeated?

Marx in his work "the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte", when he cites this Hegelian thought, accompanying it with his reference: "Hegel observes somewhere that all great world-historical events and personalities are repeated twice: the first time as a tragedy, and the second as a farce." It is used literally. I think it really repeats itself. This is because historical processes follow certain patterns.

First as a "tragedy" and secondly as a "farce." That is profound Eugene Veniaminovich Lutsenko

What did Karl Marx base that observation on?

Marx writes that Hegel said this.

I think people act similarly in similar situations. history is the behavior of large masses of people. In similar historical situations, large masses of people also act similarly. So history repeats itself

A Romanian historiam said: "History is cheating the ones who don't know it by repeating itself"!

Thank you for your contribution and insights Eugene Veniaminovich Lutsenko and Morariu Iuliu-Marius

To Mr.Kheepe Lawrence Moremi ,

My claim that history is generally not repeated is based on the application of chaos and complexity theory to human society.

Kind regards,

Dragoljub Šarović

I understand now, Dragoljub Šarović

Thank you.

هذه العبارة لكارل ماركس عندما قال ان التاريخ يعيد نفسه مرة كمسرحية تراجيدية والثانية كمسرحية كوميدية هزلية اي ان الانسان لم يتعلم من اخطائه لذا فهي تتكرر بمرور التاريخ .

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم اِنْ يَّمْسَسْكُمْ قَرْحٌ فَقَدْ مَسَّ الْقَوْمَ قَرْحٌ مِّثْلُهٗ ۗ وَتِلْكَ الْاَيَّامُ نُدَاوِلُهَا بَيْنَ النَّاسِ ۚ وَلِيَـعْلَمَ اللّٰهُ الَّذِيْنَ اٰمَنُوْا وَيَتَّخِذَ مِنْكُمْ شُهَدَآءَ ۗ وَا للّٰهُ لَا يُحِبُّ الظّٰلِمِيْنَ ۙ

Allah Subhanaho Wataala said:

(( If a wound should touch you - there has already touched the [opposing] people a wound similar to it. And these days [of varying conditions] We alternate among the people so that Allah may make evident those who believe and [may] take to Himself from among you martyrs - and Allah does not like the wrongdoers((

Surat. Aal-i-Imraan: Verse 140

Thank you for your time and participation Marwan Abdulkhaleq Al-Yoonus and thank you for sharing the verse above. I respect your believe and your viewpoint, but for the sake of this thread, I want to know your viewpoint about whether History repeats itself or not. Yes/No and then provide your reason and the philosophy or theory that you base your response on.

Thank you in advance for understanding.

Thank you brother Kheepe for illustration.

Yes

As psychologist and psychotherapist it is my experience, that you could fourtimes speak with a client about the same matter but it will not be the same outcome. If psychotherapy is fuctioning well you climb up with the client spiral stairs and if you arrive at the same point you are one level higher. The inverse is possible if you are treating badly but it should not occur.

In history you see that it is no repetition: compare wold war I and wold war II, compare the three punic wars etc. History never is a repetition. Wolf Dietrich

Thank you for your time, participation and contribution Wolf Dietrich Dr. Zuzan

Your key argument is that history is never a repetition. Is that a fair summation.

Hamed Mardan Sharwan

Your viewpoint is important to me. Could you please post a translated version of your response is you can.

In which language should I translate? WD

Dragoljub Šarović

I glanced through "chaos theory." From what grasped, the foundational aspects include amongst other things, complexity and volatility. There is however, some reference to repetition/recurring events.

The foundational aspects of "history repeat itself" include; 1) past event/events and; 2) repetition/recurrence.

You could, I guess, look at "past event" from different perspectives; 1) cause; 2) effect; 3) agents/players; 4) location etc.,

With the above in mind, do you still hold onto your view? NB: The presentation of the above, is meant to persuade/dissuade, but to understand.

Thank you Wolf Dietrich Dr. Zuzan

The "translation" comment was meant for somebody else, not yourself.

Thomas Cuff Rudi Darson

How would you react the link and excerpt below:-

" When a set of factors that have panned out in the past tends to repeat itself in the future, we expect the same outcome to occur, as was observed in the past.

Therefore, based on this assumption, this time around, we can expect the stock price to go up ..."

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/markets/history-repeats-the-most-important-assumption-in-technical-analysis-2710931.html

https://www.fool.com/investing/value/2006/02/08/history-repeats-itself.aspx

Dear Mr.Kheepe Moremi,

I am just thinking without pretension and fear. Believe my words, by just a glance insight into chaos theory we cannot understand its essence. It takes months(maybe years) of hard work. And when things seem to happen to us, they happen to be repeated, but with one important notation: never in the same way. Aside from the theory of chaos and complexity which say that our future is unpredictable, are we sure that we fully, truly, know our past? It depends on the observer. So how can we claim that history repeats itself if we cannot determine our past with complete certainty?

Kind regards,

Dragoljub Šarović

Dragoljub Šarović

"Not in the same way." I would agree with that.

I also agree that it would take a little longer to grasp the essence of chaos theory.

Hello Kheepe Lawrence Moremi ,

Re your excerpt: expectation is not certainty. The excerpt is full of weasel words and/or tenuous terms: "panned out" [like panning for gold, a very uncertain activity], "tends" [an inclination not a certainty, just a suggestion], "we expect" [we do not and cannot know for sure, but we believe], and '"based on this assumption" [indeed, we are all assuming, even the experts, and we know the defintion of an expert: someone who has made all the mistakes - none so blind as the expert, eh?].

To reprise the arid wit and wisdom of Sergeant Joe Friday on the TV show "Dragnut [sic]": "Just the facts, ma'am."

Regards,

Tom Cuff

Thank you for your response Thomas Cuff

The point I was drawing your attention to is "Technical Investors" reliance on "history."

Rightly or wrongly, they believe somehow that history repeats itself.

Hello Kheepe Lawrence Moremi ,

I wonder how the "Technical Investors" cite history in the last several weeks of multiple thousand point gains and losses in the Dow on, sometimes, consecutive days? Is there a quantum of solace to be found in these times, which we hope are one-off but suspect otherwise. History is a messy thing: people are still arguing about the root cause(s) of WWI; one suspects that even historians regard history with the same enthusiasm as a police officer regards a traffic accident. "Rightly or wrongly": any port in the storm, eh? History depends, of course, on who wrote it, and, even more importantly, who reads and believes it. Words, mere words.

Regards,

Tom Cuff

I would be interested to know as well Thomas Cuff

What they see as history may not be what the 2nd person see as history.

Without being prejudicial, let's also be mindful that some analysts are not necessarily only interested in analysing the past nor the present for its sake, but are also interested in altering the future trajectory.

Thank you for your thoughtful and insightful contributions.

Hello Kheepe Lawrence Moremi ,

Re your last point, the singer Jackson Browne said it best in his song "Fountain of Sorrow":

"And while the future's there for anyone to change, still you know it seems It would be easier sometimes to change the past"

Regards,

Tom

I understand where you are coming from Thomas Cuff

There is more to say about this, but for now I will leave it here.

And what about Albert Camus and his novel "Plague"?!

Thank you Siniša Srečec for your time and contribution. I am assuming that your reference to Albert Camus is a proxy for an affirmative answer to the question. Is this a fair assumption?

Definitely- it is cyclic.

Thank you for your contribution Neil Dagnall

Yes Accept

Thank you for your response Qusay Kh. Al-Dulamey

Highly appreciated

En cierta forma si, parece que a nosotros los humanos, por lo menos a algunos, nos cuesta aprender de las experiencias, bueno de forma racional, nuestra parte emocional se apodera de nosotros y no permitimos que la razón aprenda de las buenas y las malas experiencias.

History repeats itself. The fidelity of the repetition depends upon the time between events.

In my career as a computer scientist, I have seen four different resurgences of artificial intelligence - each starts with wild fanfare, claims that AI is new and powerful, and each (including the most recent) fades slowly into oblivion. In each case, there is something new and powerful, but once the breakthrough is assimilated into practice, it turns out to be an evolution, not revolution in the field. This is an example of a short time between events which repeat with relatively high fidelity.

Genocide is an oft-repeated pattern in history. Each recurrence is different in detail, but alike in pattern. War is another often repeated event in history. Once again, each recurrence is different in detail, but alike in pattern - if you abstract the event enough.

Humans are notoriously pattern-oriented, so seeing patterns in history may be a symptom of being human. We see patterns when there is no pattern which results in superstitions and prejudice.

However, just as with the joke about paranoia "You're not paranoid if someone is really trying to kill you" - you're not seeing false patterns if they really exist. In the case of history repeating itself, you need to dig into the details and possible reasons for repetition to determine if there really is something there.

For digging into details of history, I cannot recommend enough the method I learned from an excellent teacher. Look at events from multiple points of view and describe them - if there is a similiarity then you aren't just seeing false patterns. The views I learned are hidden in the initialism "SPEME". Social, political, economic, moral, and emotional effects and changes of a historical event can provide the link to another historical event with the same effects and changes.

Thank you for your time, participation and contributions Manuel Rodriguez Raymond Parks

Manuel Rodriguez would you mind to translate for the everyone's benefit. Your viewpoint is important.

Raymond Parks thank you for citing specific historical phenomena such as "genocide." This makes it possible for us to examine the idea of "history repeating itself or not" in a more directed fashion.

I agree along the line

Thank you for your contribution Asma Ben Yahia

Yes

Thank you for your contributions Amer B. Dheyab

So so.

Yes, most definitely. This current Covid-19 spread is an example of how we have financial disasters or natural disaster, going back to the 1920 World depression and Spanish flu. In this case, we have a world heath disaster, which has triggered recession.

Thank you for your contribution Chung Tin Fah

As I moderator, I will stay neutral, but I have my views.

Broadly, there are two (2) ways to interpret this statement; "History repeats itself." You could look at the statement objectively or contextually.

On a more light-hearted note. Several years ago I recall my Mother (Manchester United supporter) telling my Father (Man City fan) that he would never see City win another League title or FA Cup after he started reminiscing about City's great team of the late 60s, which won the League, FA Cup and Cup Winners Cup in successive seasons. Roll forward a decade .. I am now hoping the decline also repeats itself - haha

Kheepe Lawrence Moremi, history repeats itself not, it is we who are committing the same mistakes over and over.

Yes.. if we are doing the same mistake.

Thank you for the light hearted account from a footballing perspective Neil Dagnall . Your words sound like a "repeat" of what your mom said. Let's see whether that happens in reality.

Frankly,some historical events frequently recur but in different places and by different persons.

That makes a lot of sense Eman Riyadh Adeeb . Recessions recur at different times all over the world, but the "historical agents" driving them may be different.

Dear Kheepe there are some historical events recur more than once but with different agents as you have said.Cordial thanks.

Dear Kheepe Lawrence Moremi

Yes

We have heard many times about the side effects of smoking

We know what smoking does to people's lungs;

But doctors are still face patients who continue to smoke....

Yes, relatively I agree.

Thank you Mohammad Abdulhai Nasim Imani Eman Riyadh Adeeb for your participation and insights. Highly appreciated.

Thanks dear Kheepe,for this stunning discussion.

Thank you for your contribution Jasim Hassen

Yes, I agree with you.

Thank you for your response and participation Isam Alkhalifawi

Yes, I agree. The same story happened every where by just changing the colour and characters.

Yes, I agree

Thank you for your time and contributions Mustafa Musa Salih Saswatik Tripathy

You are welcome Kheepe Moremi

Yes, I agree and also it reminds us of its powerful lessons of the past.

Thank you for your time and insights Sneha Rajput

Thank you all for your contribution and time. Much appreciated.

Yes!

Thank you for your time and contribution Neeraj Pandey

I agree with Sneha Rajput

Thank you Mustafa Musa Salih for your time and contribution.

My pleasure my dear Kheepe Moremi