Eternal history
Hi
I have some questions and ideas about history. I think, for example, mankind and our achievements are in some way eternal. Of course they are not physically eternal. But we have our place in universe, we are part of it, we have place there, somehow humanity has come into existence. If humanity falls down, we will have our place in history of universe. In history of everything. In this way we and everything we made will in some way be eternal. In history. So we are part of it all apart from our physical existence and time.
What do you think?
Thanks!
I have some questions and ideas about history. I think, for example, mankind and our achievements are in some way eternal. Of course they are not physically eternal. But we have our place in universe, we are part of it, we have place there, somehow humanity has come into existence. If humanity falls down, we will have our place in history of universe. In history of everything. In this way we and everything we made will in some way be eternal. In history. So we are part of it all apart from our physical existence and time.
What do you think?
Thanks!
Comments (15)
History started about 5,000 years ago, when the first writing was developed. That makes sense, because the etymology of "history" is "story." History is a story. If there is no one there to hear or tell stories, there is no history.
Humanity won't last forever. If we are part of the history of the universe told by someone in the future, we'll be a very, very, very, very small part of it. Which is a good thing.
In that case, how will humanities mark on the universe be any more than a small sun that never had any planets and died out after 10 billion years somewhere in a galaxy we've never seen and is just sitting there doing nothing except providing a bit of gravitational pull.
Unless you're speaking spiritually or religiously.
Sorry, I didn't want to. I wanted only heard opininon about my my think. I wanted to confirm whether my thoughts on the subject that we will always be in the past of universe and we have our place in timeline are meaningful at all.
An exception would be natural history. There is a history of nature that is independent of the records we create.
It is not known if there are any other self conscious beings capable of thought in the Universe, but we are part of the universe, the result of its evolution. Man is how the Universe became aware of itself. We are part of nature so our history is natural history, a history which could not exist without us.
Man thinks therefore the universe is.
One thing I find confusing about the analytic approach, which people have explained to me in different ways without my understanding so far, is - are facts tenseless? If so, as many claim, then the facts of our existence are, as it were, eternal, just as you allege, not placed in time somehwere. I carp about this because I think of everything as historically situated, even supposed facts.
That's kind of indicative of something I consider an all-too-common folly--the fact that we're so self-centered at times. We even have a word ("history") that only refers to our story about ourselves, and there's no comparable word for the set of events that occurred prior to our story about ourselves.
As someone pointed out there's "natural history" of course, but natural history often deals with things that are prehistoric--still kowtowing to that self-centered notion of "history."
What's self-centered about that? Assuming you're using the word negatively.
Oral history existed prior to written history which began about 5,000 years ago. Oral history captured sequences of events that were important to a people and could be packaged in an epic format which was easier to remember and pass on than just a collection of assorted facts. Natural history, of which we are a part, began relatively recently -- in that we started to read the physical record more carefully. In the last few hundred years, and in the last few years (or months) we have pushed the beginning of natural history ALMOST back to its beginning -- something like a few trillionths of a second before it began 13.82 billion years, give or take 15 minutes, either way.
Quoting gunner
You could go further and say that the physical history of life on this planet (of which we are a small part) is eternal. Life, in one form or another, began perhaps 4 billion years ago on earth. That's about 33% of the age of the universe itself. We are here because 4 billion years of life preceded us. Life is the major achievement.
You go still further and say that the physical history of the universe, and everything contained within it, is eternal.
How long is your "eternal"? Infinity?
This "eternal" mean that everything have their place in time. When our universe dies, he will be still in the past.
Is there time (and therefore a past) without the universe?
Yes, there is no time. But if universe die and time will end, somewhere and sometime was our universe. It existed.
We have contradiction. But I can't find a term that describes a period in which there is no time, but something has existed in other place and time. Because it occurred. In another time and place but existed, right?