THE LEGACY OF ADAM SMITH (part 1)

The legacy of Adam Smith
(PART I)

The world of economics will not be complete without ever mentioning the name of Adam Smith (baptized June 16, 1723 – July 17, 1790), widely cited as the Father of Modern Economics. He is a Scottish philosopher, one of the key figures of the Scottish enlightenment and is a pioneer of political economy. In 1776, he wrote the book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations and became a classic of modern economics. Adam Smith was among the foremost philosophers of his age.


I
THE LIFE OF ADAM SMITH


Adam Smith was born to Margaret Douglas at Kirkcaldy, Scotland. His father, also named Adam Smith, was a lawyer, civil servant, and widower who married Margaret Douglas in 1720 and died six months before Smith was born and for that he became close to his mother. She encouraged him to pursue scholarly ambitions. He attended the Burgh School of Kirkcaldy – characterised as "one of the best secondary schools of Scotland at that period" – from 1729 to 1737. There he studied Latin, mathematics, history, and writing.


Smith entered the University of Glasgow when he was fourteen and studied moral philosophy. Here he developed his passion for liberty, reason, and free speech. In 1740, He left the University of Glasgow to attend Balliol College, Oxford. This is when he found out that the teaching at Glasgow is far superior to that at Oxford. Nevertheless, Smith took the opportunity while at Oxford to teach himself several subjects by reading many books from the shelves of the large Oxford library. He left Oxford University in 1746, before his scholarship ended.

Smith began delivering public lectures in 1748 at Edinburgh. His lecture topics included rhetoric and later the subject of progress of which he first expounded his economic philosophy. In 1750, he met the philosopher David Hume, who was his senior by more than a decade. The alignments of opinion that can be found within their writings covering history, politics, philosophy, economics, and religion indicate until the emergence of the so called Scottish Enlightenment.
In 1751, Smith earned a professorship at Glasgow University teaching logic courses. When the Chair of Moral Philosophy died the next year, Smith took over the position. Smith would continue academic work for the next thirteen years, which Smith characterized as "by far the most useful and therefore by far the happiest and most honorable period [of his life]". His lectures covered the fields of ethics, rhetoric, jurisprudence, political economy, and "police and revenue". At Glasgow, Adam Smith lectured on problems of moral Philosophy. He expounded the natural laws that underlay the seeming chaos of the universe. Those topics were broadly conceived today than it was before. But Smith became known for his accomplishments. (Heilbroner, 1986)

He published The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759, embodying some of his Glasgow lectures. This work was concerned with how human morality depends on the individual and other members of society. He bases his explanation on sympathy. Smith's popularity greatly increased due to The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and as a result, students had left their schools in other countries to enroll at Glasgow and hear his discourse.

After the publication of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith began to give more attention to economics in his lectures and less to his theories of morals. In 1762, the academic senate of the University of Glasgow conferred on Smith the title of Doctor of Laws (LL.D.). At the end of 1763, he obtained a lucrative offer from Charles Townshend (who had been introduced to Smith by David Hume) to tutor his stepson, Henry Scott, the young Duke of Buccleuch. Smith subsequently resigned from his professorship to take the tutoring position.

Smith's tutoring job entailed touring Europe with Henry Scott while teaching him subjects. Smith first traveled as a tutor to Toulouse, France, where he stayed for a year and a half. According to accounts, Smith found Toulouse to be very boring, and he wrote to Hume that he "had begun to write a book in order to pass away the time". After touring the south of France, the group moved to Geneva. While in Geneva, Smith met with the philosopher Voltaire. After staying in Geneva, the party went to Paris where he met intellectual leaders such as Benjamin Franklin, Turgot, Jean D'Alembert, André Morellet, Helvétius and, in particular, Francois Quesnay, the lea ding figure of the Physiocracy school in his time.

In 1766, Henry Scott's younger brother died in Paris, and Smith's tour as a tutor ended shortly thereafter. Smith returned home that year to Kirkcaldy, and he devoted much of the next ten years to his magnum opus which was published in 1776. In May 1773 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society of London, and was elected a member of the Literary Club in 1775. In 1778 Smith was appointed to a post as commissioner of customs in Scotland and went to live with his mother in Edinburgh. Five years later, he became one of the founding members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and from 1787 to 1789 he occupied the honorary position of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. He died in Edinburgh on 17 July 1790 after a painful illness and was buried in the Canongate Kirkyard.

II
HIS MAGNUM OPUS

Adam Smith published a large body of works throughout his life, some of which have shaped the field of economics. Smith's first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments was written in 1759, A Treatise on Public Opulence (1764) (first published in 1937), Essays on Philosophical Subjects (1795), Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue, and Arms (1763) (first published in 1896), and Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. (www.wikipedia.org). Before dealing with Adam Smith's is also important to note that he published an earlier book and that is the Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759. Here, he regarded the moral sensibility as an important human concept. And for that it is important to remember that Adam Smith is a moral philosopher. But it his book “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.” That made him a leading figure in economics. His idea was a bridge in the development of economic ideas that we have today.
(Next Blog is about the book. Sources to be cited later).

Was it climate change or human activity that caused the decline of ancient civilizations?

The idea of the decline of civilization has been the object of much debate and speculation over the years. Although there are some that still exists today, most of them underwent complete collapse. The Civilization as we know it is a complex environment created by man. The world that man built could be elaborate or it could be simple, it could be anywhere as long as it can provide the needs of the society and man’s continued human spirit. But it has been vulnerable to change. This is a phenomenon that even the ancient civilizations have not been able to stay away from. The birth and decline of these civilizations have been in accordance with what nature dictates. Some others say because human activity disrupted the balance of nature. The five centers of civilization: Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China and Greece have been in constant struggle with natural causes and human activity. In geographical perspective, the birth and decline has been affected by natural means. But human activity on the one hand had something with some of the changes. How is a civilization vulnerable to the dictates of nature? Specifically that of climate change? How does human activity affected the environment and caused the gradual decline of the civilization?

Recent discoveries takes note that climate change has definitely affected the rise and fall of this civilizations. Nick Brooks quoted in his work “Cultural responses to aridity in the Middle Holocene and increased social complexity” published online that “Environmental catastrophes, particularly severe, rapid or abrupt changes in climate, are often associated in the academic literature with the collapse of civilizations.” Climatic change, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, flooding and other epidemic diseases are possible causes of the collapse of civilization. Climatic change has been suggested for all the five centers of civilization without question. The oldest civilization as we know it passed through environmental disaster and climate change which gradually ended their civilization.


The rivers of the ancient civilizations played a major role in its progress. We have the Tigris and Euphrates for Mesopotamia and the River Nile for Egypt to name a few that has been the major concentration of population. This concentration caused far more damage and the cities died slowly as the result of environmental changes. McNeill in his Plague and People mentions the idea that “Humans are treated as part of an ecological niche, are seen as part of a biological continuum or spectrum of entities.” (McNeill 1998). Every creature is placed in a delicate balance with nature. But we might say that this balance can sometimes be disrupted. Humans populating near the river banks caused imbalance. It is very clear that human agency caused the deterioration of environmental conditions as the result of over farming.

The rivers is the main source of food and had a lot to do with the settlement and the governance of the city. The river accomplished, so to speak, most of the waterworks and including fertilization. Take for example the Nile: it floods at the right time of the year of agriculture (Whitehouse 1988). It floods in August and deposits the right amount of silt on the fields. However, the Tigris and Euphrates tend to flood. The people then constructed irrigation and had to be constantly maintained. They went out to farm and do inland clearing. Farming that became persistent in the ancient times posed a threat when man tried to extensive clearing of tropical forest for grazing. When this happens, grasses would quickly invade fields and form turf layers that will be hard to cultivate. Human activity disturbs the natural vegetation cover resulting in the loss of soil fertility.

So, when there was a problem with salination or salinization of the soil, the man was not able to control it. Salinization occurs in warm and dry locations where soluble salts precipitate from water and accumulate in the soil. Athough is it a natural process, salinization may result from human activity such as inland clearing. The soil became increasingly salty and became very difficult to cultivate and so the soil became increasingly unusable.

The crowded cities of these civilizations progressed and what follows as we know are strings of other developments in the field of governance, agriculture, foreign trade and technology and of course social change. Most of the cities diverted to farming. There was an emergence of pastoralism. And for the first time in history, there were food surpluses with people in cities abandoning agricultural labor and eating the surplus produced by farmers (Priyadarshi 2008). But due to the population growth, the inhabitants of the ancient cities may have lived in conditions as over crowded or insanitary. Civilization became very vulnerable to social upheavals and internal revolutions.


The association between climatic change and social change is particularly striking. The people of the past tend to adapt to these changes. In Egypt there is the abandonment of the deserts and the people flanking close to the Nile Valley. In Mesopotamia, we have fragmentation. (Brooks 2006). The rise of civilization in these region is very much a story of different regions, populations and even political systems to be able to adapt to a changing environment. (Webster 1993). In China and the Indus Sarasvati region, the concentration was focused on the settlement near waterways. But with the growth of population followed the need to look for new sources of food. The settled way of life became associated with cattle raising and grazing.


Although, much of what we have today are accounts based on theories and archaeological evidence, it is suffice to say that nature had always had its effect on civilization whether the past or the present. Changes in the environment have always caused a change in the way man tried to adapt to these particular changes. I would say that environmental change is a driving force for man to adapt and create new strategies, new ways of living and new ways to be able to adapt to it. As noted, the five centers of civilization had its way of responding. Record emphasized that adaptation of these centers of civilization were as varied. Probably because the change can sometimes be abrupt or uneven. But one thing is certain though, civilization in itself can be that response to climate change. Man will always find a way to adapt to change and the struggling human mind will continue.

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Sources:


Brooks, Nick (2006) Cultural responses to aridity in the Middle Holocene and increased social complexity. Quarterly International, 151 (2006) 29–49. Retrieved January 07, 2009 from http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~e118/WS/Documents/QI151Brooks_reform.pdf.

Evans D., Evans S., Sanders W. (1993). Out of the past. London: Mayfield Publishing Company.

McNeill, W.H. (1998). Plagues and peoples. New York: Anchor Books

Priyadarshi, Nitish (2008). Did climate change killed ancient civilizations? Retrieved January 07, 2009 from http://network.earthday.net/profiles/blogs/

TO DEFINE PRIMITIVE AND CIVILIZED

To define the word primitive and civilized and what it takes to become one is the main thrust of some recent works such as that of of Ran Prieur (Beyond Civilized and Primitive) and that of Edgardo Civallero (Primitive peoples, Civilized peoples). Upon reading their works, I was reminded of the film Pocahontas, a 1995 animated film that tells the story of Pocahontas and the legends that surrounds her. What struck me though was one of the songs in the movie composed by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz that talks about savages and their being “barely even human” as the song goes. It was during the scene when the natives and the settlers declared an all out war against each other. And both parties believed that the other were to be considered a savage.


Similarly, from the expansion of the Empires of the ancient world, to the European conquest and colonization of America, the age of exploration of the 15th century headed by the Spain and Portugal followed by France, the United Kingdom and even the Netherlands brought about the belief that the territories they were able to explore are primitive and the inhabitants are uncivilized. History then is rich in example where a primitive culture is in brutal battle against a civilized culture. What then are a primitive and a civilized man?


Civilization, as we know it, is the term given to all the things that we see around us. It is something within which have all grown up and includes our personal identity. But when we come to analyze what the word ‘civilized’ means that our difficulties begin. (Whitehouse 1994). To be able to define it, we have to take into consideration everything else. We even have to leap or stand outside of our own understanding and define it according to what others think. Accordingly, we are living in the modern era – the civilized times. The ancient past is the primordial one- the time of the savages, the primitive people. But according to whose belief? Who sets the standards?


The work of Civallero mentions the three-part evolutionary process formulated by Morgan and Tylor. This school of analysis proposed a scheme of evolution from primitive to modern, through which he believed societies progressed. These include three major stages: savagery, barbarism, and civilization. I would say that this theory, focused on social organization and technology. That there is a link between social progress and technology. That society progressed from simple to more complex forms.


Similarly, Prieur had his work focused on the present state of affairs. That civilization of the moment had not much difference from those of the primitive times if we are to talk about changes. That we keep on making mistakes as our ancestors did. The author even mentioned that “but the technological system is a crazy hybrid of everything from "stone age" to "space age" -- thus refuting the very idea that we are locked into ages” clearly illustrates that there is indeed not so much difference.


Putting the idea in my own perspective, I believe that the term ‘civilized’ and ‘primitive’ is only a catch phrase. We might consider a society civilized by the strong showing it demonstrates in the field of technology but the inhabitants are more of savages pulling each other down the corporate ladder. Or consider a primitive society as it is but whose people are living in peace with the member of the community. The term ‘primitive’ and ‘civilized’ is only skin deep. Is it right to say that a person can be considered a savage because of the difference in skin color? Or that the primitive is bizarre, even repulsive, a member of a different race?


We basically have our own understanding of it. To some extent, according to Jonathan David White in his essay published by the journal of American Popular Culture (2002) “Primitivism, the artistic representation and celebration of ancestral or colonized "tribal" peoples, plays an important role in American popular culture and gains its momentum from the philosophy that technology and technological progress is alienating or destructive and that primitive peoples, who have remained closer to nature and thus further from the damaging effects of society, are more noble and pure.”


To sum up, I believe that the classification of societies as ‘primitive’ or ‘civilized’ is biased by one’s belief. It is a collective idea. We cannot classify one society on the other end or on the other because of some classifications that we ourselves created. Civilized behavior is so critically different in actuality from primitive behavior but history again will give us examples of how civilized people can be brutal at times. Such as the times when the native Indians were sent on a journey out of their own lands. Such as the times when the slavery was prevalent in the Americas. We have to think twice.


Civilization progressed but we always have to consider the idea that the primitive people are our ancestors. And that the civilized human condition is inconceivable to primitive peoples. We make mistakes and we fall. We do things for the betterment of things and we progressed. Who knows when we are going to make a mistake again and rise and fall? A society whether civilized or primitive as we classify it is always open to change and collapse. It is of our own volition to discover the monolith of human nature and consider ourselves brothers. Not as savages or civilized and exist in equilibrium.

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Sources:

Civallero, Edgardo. Primitive people, civilized people. Retrieved from http://eprints.rclis.org/4368/1/primitive.pdf.Retrieved January 06, 2008

Pocahontas. www.wikipedia.org/ Pocahontas. Retrieved January 6, 2009

Whitehouse, Ruth and Wilkins, John (1994). The making of civilization. New York: USA.

Menken, Alan (1995). Savages. On pocahontas soundtrack (CD) Walt Disney Records.

Prieur, Ran (2008). Beyond civilized and primitive. Retrieved from ttp://ranprieur.com/essays/beyondciv.html Retrieved January 6, 2009

Zinn, Howard (1999). A people's history of the united states.

Killing the primitive. www.popmatters.com/features/030328-iraq-lanzagorta.
retrieved January 06, 2009

The Narration of Danto

The book Narration and Knowledge by Anton Danto is an attempt to explain history. He believed that history is a narrative and I can’t oppose that idea because history is indeed a story. It tells us of an event that has happened in a narrative presentation.

According to Danto two distinct kind of inquiry are covered by the expression “philosophy of history.” These are the substantive and analytical philosophy. Danto made a clear distinction between the two and I would say it is a clear distinction. Substantive philosophy deals with the event in itself. Of the account of what happened in the past. On the other hand, analytical philosophy deals with the some concept on the practice of history.


According to his writing, and I quote “a philosophy of history seeks to give an account of the whole story.” (Danto, 1985) I believe that what historians indeed need to have an account of the story if not the whole of the past. That is why we need evidence and some sources to fill in the gaps that we need to recreate the story. He even mentioned the two patterns that a historian can use to rewrite history; these are the descriptive and the explanatory theory. I believe that these two are always connected in the sense that a historian should not only create history but also be able to explain it.


Another statement that I found interesting is when he said that historians are concerned only with the past. And I quote: “for all our present data come from the past; we cannot gather data from the future.” (Danto) I would agree on this statement for the simple reason that history is about the past. Probably, we can predict or tell about the future but not prophesy about what will happen or what the future will be like. But it is distorting to think that all the data that we are recreating are data to be used for future philosophers because it is important in the present. It is to satisfy our hunger for information and our hunger for knowledge. Danto presented that historical accounts are narrative in structure. I would agree because it is a sequence of events.


Danto, in his book also opposes three arguments in history. The first is a sort of positivist view. This positivist view states that history is meaningless. I would have to disagree with whomever who said this. I believe that history even if it cannot be recreated completely is still important. It is still a source of a great chunk of knowledge.


On the other hand, history is not just bunk. This is the second argument. That everything is created so as to recreate the past. This according to Bertrand Russell is what history is about. Danto’s smart reply answer is to say that everything is created like a bunk too. Just like all the sciences. “It might or might not have” according to Danto. (1985) and for that we can make a true statement of the past or perhaps we cannot just as Danto might have said it better.


The third charge and what Danto thinks is very serious is that belief that history is biased according to the political or personal agenda of the historian. Like everything written down is according to the prejudice of the historian. I would have to say that the recreation of the past is not always accurate for there are distortions somewhere made on the part of the historian who would like history to appear according to his will. But as what Danto might have put it and I quote: “For they are not saying something like ‘everything is crooked but only a certain class of things are crooked. Then there might be a class of straight things, which would make it intelligible. “

Danto wants to argue that history is neither an art nor a science but rather the elements of each. It has artistic elements in that it is a narrative, it is a story. And all stories can be told sometime with flaws. Like every narrative, it has a beginning and an end. It comes with conflict with something else to make the story more interesting and results in the end of the story. And as Danto quoted: “The past is known through a correct interpretation of something given, including certain given characters which are marks of past ness.” (Danto 1985) History has a beginning, middle and an end. We may have different views on how a particular story happened but nonetheless it is still history. We have to start from something and explain how it happened. But there is always a surface and there is something beneath those events that makes history really fascinating and endless.

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Sources:

Danto, A.C. (1985). Narration and Knowledge. Columbia University.

Staloff, D. (1995). The search for a meaningful past philosophies, theories and interpretations.
NY: The Teaching Co.

Carl Hempel and the Laws of History

Carl Gustav Hempel, a German-born philosopher was one of the prominent philosophers of science in the twentieth century. He was known as one of the proponents of the so-called logical empiricism or logical positivism which is a central concept in science and the scientific method. It states that all evidence must be empirical, or empirically based, that is, dependent on evidence that is observable by the senses. According to logical positivist, everything can be explained by science. Empirical is used in science with working hypotheses that are testable using observation or experiment. In this sense of the word, scientific statements are subject to and derived from our experiences or observations. (wikipedia)

. Hempel attempts to explain that history is a science and to check on that challenge that history claimed the methodological patterns of science. I would have to disagree with him on the idea that history is a form of a physical science and I quote: “history is concerned with the description of particular events of the past rather than with the search for general laws which might govern those events.” (Hempel, 1942)

That is where the term “law” came into picture. The main function of these laws according to Hempel, is to connect events in a pattern usually referred to as explanation and prediction. If I may say, the function of the general law is to explain the event in such a way that there is a cause and an effect or preceding and causal conditions. Hempel brought about two explanations for these:

First, A set of statements asserting the occurrence of certain events C1 through CN at certain times and places and second, a set of universal hypothesis such that: a) The statement of both groups are reasonably well confirmed by empirical evidence, and, b) From the two groups of statements, the sentence asserting the occurrence of event E can be logically deduced.

The first group which according to my understanding would mean the initial conditions before the event and the event itself is definitely undeniable. . It is like the boundary conditions that creates the event. History is about events so there is no question about it. The second group however, And in fact one could argue that the same thing would hold for history doesn’t follow because history cannot follow a specific model. Although, an event may seem to happen in the same pattern as another event like some Great Wars and revolutions or the aftermath of a bloody election, we will see that history have shown that it is not always that way. We should always consider the context of the event. And I quote Hempel: “...is impossible to give a complete explanation of an individual event in the sense of accounting for all its general characteristics by means of universal hypothesis. All explanations are connected to a particular description or set of descriptions. It is ideographic or concerned with the Individual. The determining conditions are not always the same in all events. “(Hempel)

And then there’s what is called as the pseudo explanations. I disagree on this issue because it is not right to explain things historical events using false explanations. It’s like a guess. There should always be a document, a source to prove the event. There must be a scientific explanation rather than by just mere understanding of the conditions. It must be valid. Although, according to Hempel, there are events that has an incomplete explanation or can be summed up and explained without the pseudo explanation because we have reason why we have to believe such an event and some events cannot be explained but also cannot be dismissed as not important.

Another statement that I would like to discuss is the Nomothetic and ideographic. Nomothetic is based on what Kant described as a tendency to generalize, and is expressed in the natural sciences. It describes the effort to derive laws that explain objective phenomena while Idiographic is a tendency to specify and the effort to understand phenomena. I would have to stress that these two although related in the sense that they both explain an event they are quite different. But I would have to say that Hempel made quite a good notion using this on his theories. The nomothetic model tries to find the variables that account for the differences in the historical events (because not all events will happen the same way if I may say) and the idiographic focuses on the completeness of the event.

As a whole, I believe that Hempel made a good discussion of his general laws of history. I believe that history is unique.

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Sources:

Logical positivism. Retrieved September 21, 2008 from www.wikipedia.org

Hempel, C.G. (1942). The function of general laws in history. In The Journal of Philosophy, 39, 35-48.

R .G. Collingwood's The Idea of History

History begins with a question. It proceeds through research of the evidence filtered and critiqued by our own rationality and experience. It is the longing for the accurate reenactment of the event. To understand historical reading, or to write history, there is a need for us to understand the discipline behind history writing. As Robin George Collingwood wrote, "All history is the history of thought."


The book the “Idea of History” made a great impact to me as a future historian and I must say it has already contributed a lot to history writing. His historical work gave him a special interest in the activity of understanding and interpreting the past, an activity that he saw as continuous with our self-understanding and self-interpretation. I would have to agree with Collingwood’s theory on the idea of history for some reasons.


First, history according to Collingwood has an inside and an outside and these are two basic features of a historical event that we cannot deny. The outside is the physical manifestation. It’s the event by itself. What has happened? Who were the characters involved. So the outside of events is always the physical. The inside on the other hand is the rational thought behind the event. When we say rational we mean the thought process behind the event. What is the person thinking of when the event happens. Collingwood made a good definition of the inside and the outside by talking about the physical and the rationale behind the event. It’s as if to say that every event happens because a character is thinking of something that he may or may not expect to happen.

The second idea is the reenactment of past events. A central motif of R. G. Collingwood's philosophy of history is the idea that historical understanding requires a re-enactment of past experience. How do we go about recreating past events? That is where the argument of Collingwood comes into picture. The human past comes from interpreting primary sources -- the evidence. A historian is like a lawyer who argues a case by presenting evidence to produce a reasonable answer to questions. The problem, however, is that the answers may sometimes be the 'Truth,' sometimes not.


Historians require “active” critical thinking. Collingwood is telling us about “re-thinking” what the source or person in history was thinking and I quoted “a re-enactment in the historian’s own mind” I believe this is correct because historians do reenact past events. And I quote once more: “A historical imagination reconstructs events and this autonomous thinking may begin inside the historian but must be based on scrutiny of source-evidence. Yet this cannot be merely ‘scissors-and-paste’ history but must be re-thought through various sources and scenarios. The historian must locate the most accurate basis and interpret the outcome, not just present the sources pasted together.” If a historian cannot show that the reconstruction of the event is not as accurate or cannot be reconciled with the evidence, the historian must suspend judgment. Paul Edwards (1967) on the Encyclopedia of History states that “Historians must not only show what happened but also must be able to explain it. “


I couldn’t argue more on Collingwood because historians I would say need an open mind. There must also be some sort of imagination. However, the term imagination all depends on how well we are going to make use of it in history writing or up to what extent should our imagination aids in explaining past events? There should always be a critical analysis of the source. The work of Collingwood tells about history in itself. There is a need to present an event as fully and accurately as possible, how the people of that particular event saw themselves, and not the way the historian wants to present it.

In Collingwood’s term, we call it the a priori imagination. It is the event before the facts or before the event happens. It is the criteria that a historian sets for himself to describe an event. It is the criticism of evidence presented and recreating the event according to documents, evidences and of course the imagination. History is done in accordance with the a priori imagination. Historians of course may not have all the evidence possible but with imagination and sound judgment, they can narrate an event. There must be something to fill the gap and that is the imagination. Of course, Historians begin by wondering, not by knowing.


To sum up, I would say that Collingwood’s work is safe. It doesn’t require a great mind to understand his stand on the writing of history. His work although not as grandiose as the other philosopher’s of the past is still remarkable. WE can never deny the fact that history and the event that has happened in the past is a rational balance between evidence and of imagination. The retelling or narrating of the event should be a balance between a great source and a great imagination. It is not always an interpretation of the writer’s perspective but there exists the idea that it cannot be separated because those ideas and those events. History changes and there is always a flaw somewhere. It may never be perfectly re-created. But Collingwood had never denied the fact that history is about evidence but one thing that is good about his work is that it has given us the idea that historians need an experienced imagination to be able to recreate the past.

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Sources:

Collingwood, R. G. (1946). The idea of history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Pp. 205-334 .

Staloff, D. (1995). The search for a meaningful past philosophies, theories and interpretations.
NY: The Teaching Co.


Roger Collingwood. www.wikipedia.com/ Collingwood. Retrieved September 14, 2008


Collingwood. http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/philosophy/history/r_g_collingwood_history. Retrieved September 14, 2008

Paul Edwards (ed) Collingwood. The encyclopedia of social sciences. NY: Macmillan Company 1967

The walls of Rome

The main thrust of Arnold Toynbee’s work in his book “A Study of History” is the theory of Challenge and Response. That a civilization progress or fall as an answer to the challenge inflicted on it by the following factors: a hard environment; a new environment; one or more ‘‘blows,’’ such as a military defeat; pressures, such as a frontier society subjected to frequent attack; and penalizations, such as slavery or other measures in which one class or race is oppressed by another.


As an example, I will make use of the Holy Roman Empire to prove the claim of Arnold Toynbee. In ancient Rome, there stood a wall now known as The ‘Roman Limes.’ It represents the border line of the Roman Empire at its greatest extent in the 2nd century AD. It stretched over 5,000 km from the Atlantic coast of northern Britain, through Europe to the Black Sea, and from there to the Red Sea and across North Africa to the Atlantic coast.


The Latin noun limes had a number of different meanings: a path or balk delimiting fields, a boundary line or marker, any road or path, any channel, such as a stream channel, or any distinction or difference. The word limes was utilized by Latin writers to denote a marked or fortified frontier. This latter sense has been adapted and extended by modern historians concerned with the frontiers of the Roman Empire. The Latin word limes originally was an expression used by land surveyors and indicated the boundary between two fields, for example the path between two meadows. Several ancient authors, however, use the expression to describe the outer frontiers of the Roman Empire. Modern scholars use the word in an even wider sense to describe several aspects of the imperial system of defense, which includes tactical and strategic aspects, the diplomatic and military means, fortifications, economic means, religion, and so on.

Roman writers and subsequent authors who depended on them presented the limes as some sort of sacred border beyond which human beings did not transgress, and if they did, it was evidence that they had passed the bounds of reason and civilization. To cross the border was the mark of a savage. They wrote of the Alemanni disrespecting it as though they had passed the final limitation of character and had committed themselves to perdition. They tried to make use of the wall as a symbol of holiness, of some sort of understanding of what a Roman soldier or citizen should be like.

But the truth is that the wall was built in order to protect the empire from invasions. More so of invasions from a small yet powerful tribe. (Chatti" eventually became "Hesse" through a series of sound shifts.) The barbarians of the northern bordern sometimes known as barbaricum are a threat to the empire. This is where a tribe known as the Chatti used to invade the borders of the empire. While Julius Caesar was well informed about the regions and tribes on the eastern banks of the Rhine, he never mentions the Chatti. But the Chatti were disciplined warriors famed for their infantry, who (unusually for Germanic tribes) used trenching tools and carried provisions when at war. Instead of invading the barbaricum, the Roman Empire created the limes.


In Brittania the Empire built two walls one behind the other (known as the Walls of Hadrian), for Mauretania there was a single wall with forts on both sides of it. In other places, such as Syria and Arabia Petraea, there wasn't a continuous wall; instead there was a net of border settlements and forts occupied by the Roman army. In Dacia, the limes between the Black Sea and the Danube were a mix of the latter and the wall defenses: the Limes Moesiae.


The remains of the Limes today consist of vestiges of built walls, ditches, forts, fortresses, watchtowers and civilian settlements. Certain elements of the line have been excavated, some reconstructed and a few destroyed. The two sections of the Limes in Germany cover a length of 550 km from the north-west of the country to the Danube in the south-east. The 118-km-long Hadrian’s Wall (UK) was built on the orders of the Emperor Hadrian c. AD 122 at the northernmost limits of the Roman province of Britannia. It is a striking example of the organization of a military zone and illustrates the defensive techniques and geopolitical strategies of ancient Rome According to Arnold Toynbee’s challenge and response theory, when a civilization responds to a challenge, it will grow but when it fails to respond to it, the civilization will undergo a period of decline or may even fall. In the case of Rome, the walls are built not just as a defensive strategy but for some other reasons.

According to Arnold Toynbee, when a civilization responds to a challenge, it will grow but when it fails to respond to it, the civilization will undergo a period of decline or may even fall. In the case of the Roman Empire, it did not fall but rather made its empire stronger by preventing the attacks of the invaders from all its frontiers. The civilization went on because it responded to the challenge and that is the blows or invasion from other tribes. Toynbee is correct saying that a civilization is constantly being bombarded by challenges and it has to make a way to continue or if not, it will collapse.

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Sources:

Limes. http://www.wikipedia.org/limes/html. Retrieved 14 September 2008

Toynbee, A. J. (1935-1948). A study of history (Vol. 1). London: Oxford University.

Staloff, Darren (2000) “The search for a meaningful past,philosophies,theories, and interpretation of human history”. New York: The Teaching Company