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Post by Max Sinister on Oct 3, 2023 23:19:30 GMT
Currently I'm collecting quotes about Alternate History for this page. If you know more, please let us know them.
Translations from German by me.
"Jeder Parallelwelt-Entwurf ist sozusagen eine solche Stereo-Brille. Getreu der wohl selbstverständlichen Maxime, daß der SF-Schriftsteller immer über die eigene Welt und die ihr eigenen Probleme schreibt, tut dies natürlich auch der Parallelwelt-Autor.
Der Abstand, die Relativierung, ist sozusagen die Brille für den 3D-Effekt. Sie zeigt uns die Befangenheiten unserer eigenen Kultur, unserer Position in Zeit und Raum; und sie zeigt uns dieselben umso schärfer, je scheinbar familiärer uns die Parallelwelt anmutet."
(Every sketch of a parallel world is, so to speak, such a pair of stereo glasses. According to the probably self-evident maxim that an SF author will always write about his own world and the problems of the latter, so does the author of parallel worlds, naturally.
The distance, the relativization, is, so to speak, the pair of glasses for the 3D effect. It shows us the inhibitions of our own culture, our position in time and space; and it shows us the same that much clearer, the more seemingly familiar this parallel world seem to us.)
- Carl Amery
"Die Frage 'Was wäre geschehen, wenn das und das nicht eingetreten wäre?' wird fast einstimmig abgelehnt, und doch ist sie gerade die kardinale Frage."
(The question "What would have happened, if this or that had not occured", is refused almost in unison, and yet it is the very cardinal question.)
- Friedrich Nietzsche, 1875
"Nichts verhindert uns anzunehmen, dass Beethoven ebensogut ein Philosoph, Bismarck ein Dramatiker und Newton ein Organisator geworden wäre." (Nothing prevents us from assuming that Beethoven might just as well have become a philosopher, Bismarck a dramatist, and Newton an organizer.)
- Egon Friedell, "Ecce poeta"
"History is not merely what happened: it is what happened in the context of what might have happened. Therefore it must incorporate, as a necessary element, the alternatives, the might-have-beens."
- Hugh Trevor-Roper
"I think of the things that might have been and were not."
- Jorge Luis Borges
"Whatever happens it always appears that just that event was foreseen and decreed."
- Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, second Epilogue, chapter 7 - not contained in all editions
"To me, all the past is alive with alternatives, and nobody can show, nobody has really attempted to show, that they were not real alternatives."
- G. K. Chesterton
"When we realize that the actual outcome did not have to be, that any alteration in any step along the way would have unleashed a cascade down a different channel, we grasp the causal power of individual events. . . . Contingency is the affirmation of control by immediate events over destiny, the kingdom lost for want of a horseshoe nail."
- Stephen Jay Gould, "Wonderful Life. The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History."
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575
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Post by 575 on Oct 4, 2023 7:42:41 GMT
Once discussed AH with a Danish Historian - "well an interesting exercise".
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Post by Max Sinister on Oct 8, 2023 1:16:54 GMT
Once discussed AH with a Danish Historian - "well an interesting exercise". Did he mean it like that, or was he just polite?
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575
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There is no Purgatory for warcriminals - they go directly to Hell!
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Post by 575 on Oct 8, 2023 8:01:24 GMT
Once discussed AH with a Danish Historian - "well an interesting exercise". Did he mean it like that, or was he just polite?
He was just polite - though he did acknowledge my knowledge on History. Were talking Nap and I only have slight knowledge in that sphere. You see Danish Academics are viewing themselves (not all of course) as far beyond the shit on the floor; You can't tell them anything as stuff is only valid if its written by an Academic and peer-reviewed. Have personal experience in this.
Which of course in a strictly Academic sense is fine but flatly rules out the happy amateur. Though at times they need acknowledge a need of hands and welcome the help of the un-educated.
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Post by Max Sinister on Oct 8, 2023 8:17:59 GMT
Did he mean it like that, or was he just polite?
He was just polite - though he did acknowledge my knowledge on History. Were talking Nap and I only have slight knowledge in that sphere. You see Danish Academics are viewing themselves (not all of course) as far beyond the shit on the floor; You can't tell them anything as stuff is only valid if its written by an Academic and peer-reviewed. Have personal experience in this.
Which of course in a strictly Academic sense is fine but flatly rules out the happy amateur. Though at times they need acknowledge a need of hands and welcome the help of the un-educated.
Yeah, I can imagine that.
And our hobby isn't really taken seriously by "proper" historians anyway. (Except for Niall Ferguson, and Alexander Demandt in Germany, and...) If we're so lucky and they don't mistake us for Nazi/Confeds/kaiser apologists to start with.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Oct 8, 2023 8:24:50 GMT
Do not know this is a quote but i still like it, before WWI Kaiser Wilhelm tried to impress Queen Wilhelmina of Holland by telling her "My guards are seven feet tall and yours are only shoulder-high to them." her reply was, "Quite true, Your Majesty, your guards are seven feet tall. But when we open our dikes, the water is ten feet deep!"
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575
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There is no Purgatory for warcriminals - they go directly to Hell!
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Post by 575 on Oct 8, 2023 8:49:40 GMT
He was just polite - though he did acknowledge my knowledge on History. Were talking Nap and I only have slight knowledge in that sphere. You see Danish Academics are viewing themselves (not all of course) as far beyond the shit on the floor; You can't tell them anything as stuff is only valid if its written by an Academic and peer-reviewed. Have personal experience in this.
Which of course in a strictly Academic sense is fine but flatly rules out the happy amateur. Though at times they need acknowledge a need of hands and welcome the help of the un-educated.
Yeah, I can imagine that.
And our hobby isn't really taken seriously by "proper" historians anyway. (Except for Niall Ferguson, and Alexander Demandt in Germany, and...) If we're so lucky and they don't mistake us for Nazi/Confeds/kaiser apologists to start with.
Thing is the Anglo-Saxon historians oft have a counterfactual angle or at least discussion of what might have happened otherwise but a Danish wouldn't; at most write other possibilities of course exist we just don't know. They work on written material and its interpretation and if the one with the biggets Turban say "this is the way things be" then its settled. A 100 years ago the Social Liberal generation of Historians decided in accordance with their Political View that they wouldn't have the "big man" effect upon history. History was formulated by the Peoples - well not Chairman Mao style - and events and circumstances.
100 years ago the usual interpretation be that Queen Thyre (Drotning Thorvi - of Drot = Ruler in female) WAS a ruler but as this was founded on basically stories annals and saga's by the use of source critique it was ruled out as totally ureliable bordering on wild fantasy! About 50 years ago peoples with an interest in History began questioning this FACT and was refused by Academe. Some 10/15 years ago it was realized that at least part of saga's were based on actual events and peoples. And they were recognized as historical documents at first in Norway.
Within the last three years the scales have tipped - Academe have reached CONSENSUS on subject. Thyre/Thorvi was of Royal Lineage in South Jutland. Herself an independent ruler/Drotning who by marriage to a lesser member of some Royal Line - Gorm so much lesser that nobody apparently is going/have gone to the troubles of finding out which - was able to have her offspring if not herself rule all of Denmark. Also the major Scandinavian memorial to ANY ruler - Jelling Monument is attributed to HER following her death in 958. A Stoneship 360 meters long the largest EVAH and in the WORLD with the largest burialmound of Denmarks in its center; itself the center of an even larger Royal Complex surrounding it attributed to King Harold Bluetooth or Gode (Pagan Priest called so by his wife on a Runic Stone) build 968.
Today the Royal Line of Denmarks begin not with Gorm or his alleged father Harthaknut but with Thyre/Thorvi though they don't dare mentioning that only say Thyre/Thorvi had inherited the accession to the Throne of Denmarks and passed that to Gorm and Harold by Marriage and Birth - which they both acknowledge on their Runic Stones.
(got it out!)
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575
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There is no Purgatory for warcriminals - they go directly to Hell!
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Post by 575 on Oct 8, 2023 8:54:32 GMT
Do not know this is a quote but i still like it, before WWI Kaiser Wilhelm tried to impress Queen Wilhelmina of Holland by telling her "My guards are seven feet tall and yours are only shoulder-high to them." her reply was, "Quite true, Your Majesty, your guards are seven feet tall. But when we open our dikes, the water is ten feet deep!" Well he lived to see his Guards being disbanded.
Another quote: prior to landing troops in Norway somebody said to Churchill: "what if the Norwegians resist us?" to which Churchill replied "then our big strong Guardsmen will just carry them off" (24. Guards Brigade being part of the Expeditionary Force)
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Post by Max Sinister on Oct 8, 2023 9:06:51 GMT
Yeah, sometimes the amateurs discover the truth (or at least something's that's closer to truth than what we knew before) than the professionals. Of course, they may not be able to prove it.
But yes, if some guy with impressive credentials blocks a discussion even if his opponents have good reasons for their PoV - then he should rather step back.
Some great scientists have stated that new opinions only win because its opponents die off. If true: Sad!
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Oct 8, 2023 9:22:20 GMT
Did he mean it like that, or was he just polite?
He was just polite - though he did acknowledge my knowledge on History. Were talking Nap and I only have slight knowledge in that sphere. You see Danish Academics are viewing themselves (not all of course) as far beyond the shit on the floor; You can't tell them anything as stuff is only valid if its written by an Academic and peer-reviewed. Have personal experience in this.
Which of course in a strictly Academic sense is fine but flatly rules out the happy amateur. Though at times they need acknowledge a need of hands and welcome the help of the un-educated.
Not sure about that to be honest. You do need to have checks on accuracy of sources and thought on the quality of analysis but excluding non-professional thought totally automatically would tend towards group-think and hence make actual ability to accept/understand new ideas very limited.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Oct 8, 2023 9:29:00 GMT
Is it okay to bring this thread back to the OP, thanks.
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