>1) The world is just a series of endless particularities; generalizations are impossible. That >makes theory impossible, too.
>2) History just happens; we can't predict events or explain them after they occur.
>Doug
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If you didn't make a caricature of what Carrol had been saying over many years, you would admit that you actually agreed with him.
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(Chuckle) Ain't it the truth!
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To take just one example, it is extremely difficult to make a prediction about political development even in the near future, let alone in the distant future, and I haven't seen you venture too many of them. As a matter of fact, you are probably more conservative about making a bet on a future direction of economy than most people making a living writing about it.
As for the size of any unprecedented political gathering, it doesn't necessarily tell you anything about its future prospect. How many people attended the first convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women at Seneca Falls in 1848? About 300. How many of them signed the Declaration of Sentiments? 68 women and 32 men (at <http://www.nps.gov/wori/senecafalls1848.htm>). I'm sure those who organized or attended it were told not to waste time holding such a tiny assembly and to wait until the idea caught on and they got more women and men on their side.
Yoshie --------------
The Abolitionist movement is, of course, the classic example of a universally despised political grouping whose program became reality in fairly short order. Unfortunately, only after a bloody civil war, because the mainstream crackpot realism of the time, just as now, could not pull its head out of its derriere.
Well, I'm all set to be taken down to that Million Worker Bash...part of my daughter's education. She saw Seattle (at 6) and now she'll see this.
-Brad Mayer
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