History in the Space-Time Continuum

Deep history is history viewed across time. That sounds a bit tautological, right? That's because, usually, deep history is what we implicitly mean when we use the word 'history' on its own.

A detailed description of a historical event, just like a painting, a photograph, an artifact, a period film or anything that remains bounded to a single point in space and time, is a snapshot of history. It can't, by itself, provide a deep or a broad view.

History, which contains literally everything that has happened to human civilization, is the data of the social sciences.

As The Scholar's Stage puts it: The problem with history is that it is too big. It is impossible to get a fine grained picture of every people and era on the planet. There is just too much of it.

TWO DIMENSIONS OF HISTORY:

The fir... See more

Attempts at history in 4D are impressive. They are masterful attempts at compressing all of history in the least lossy way possible. But you immediately see the limitations. They're hard to read. They take a lot of space. They involve a lot of choices as to what information should be included.

Broad history is very much non-narrative, which is why, I think, it's a somewhat less common approach than deep history. Because h umans like stories. They're one of the major ways we make sense of the world.

Get enough of each, and you will understand the data of the world.

The 2D view of history you get from a computer game isn't accurate, but I know of no better way to viscerally feel, as opposed to read or watch, the forces that underlie human affairs. Plus, games have the benefit of being, you know, fun to play. You're never going to learn any history if you don't find it fun.

you can't really make a good mental image of a 4D object, in its full detail, because that's not a thing human brains do. History across both breadth and depth is the same deal. You can never quite grasp it fully. But you can sort of see it if you project it cleverly and squint really hard.

Art and photography give you a snapshot of a time and place, a detailed idea of what it would have been like to be there. Narratives and timelines make history coherent and interesting by hijacking our love of stories. Maps provide a large-scale overview of an entire period, joining together distinct narratives.