politics – theparsnipoftime

History and Historians

I have discovered a lurking monster in the minds of the semi-academic people who popularise history. The assumption is so enormous and so absurd that I cannot describe it as anything else; for when one cannot make a head or tail of something, it may have a hundred heads and a thousand tails. Indeed, itsContinue reading “History and Historians”

Smatterings of the Philosopher’s Stone – Conclusion: On History

Humour me a little history as I begin to conclude. This whole extended essay on that English knight, Thomas Browne, has been about history, and remarkably few historical facts have been mentioned. I have written at length about modernity in the abstract, an abstract I would not venture to assert exists, though I am certainContinue reading “Smatterings of the Philosopher’s Stone – Conclusion: On History”