Panel Reflection
This panel was run by historians Prof Joan Beaumont and Dr Paul Burton. They started by talking about different possible reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire. They kept referring back to these “stories” during their presentation. I expect stories are going to be an important tool in understanding complex issues, because they bring a concrete reality rather than just talking about abstract disconnected ideas.
It was very interesting to hear that historians don’t know whether history provides tools to understand the future. It seemed that this panel was more about how historians deal with complexity rather than about using methods from history to solve complex problems in other fields.
Panel Question
I asked how they quantified the accuracy of hand-written copying of texts. I wanted to see what links there were between the way historians operate and the tools from maths and statistics.
Tutorial Reflection
A discussion started about truth and certainty, during which Bec said that there is certainty in the external physical world. Â My thinking about complex issues so far is that behind every complex issue there is a “concrete” physical reality. The physical reality needs to be understood to properly deal with the complex issue.
Connections within this course
According to Paul Kennedy’s book, economic wealth underpins military power and military power is usually needed to acquire and protect wealth. We will probably see connections to financial systems later in the course.
The panel commented that one of Europe’s strengths was the length of its coastline. This was said to be as long as the equator. However coastline lengths are hard to measure, because the closer you zoom in and the more detail you include on the map the longer the coastline measurement becomes. This is a property that can be explained using fractals, which we will look at in the maths of complex problems in week 9.
Connections to other courses
No particular connections this week.
External Connections
In The Australian, Paul Cleary advocated a larger population in the interests of the military defence of Australia. His reasoning is similar to the connection between productivity and defence that was discussed in the panel.
Tools to Address Complexity
- stories