Grand Strategy: The View from Oregon

Sunday

In my last post, Axes of Historiography, I mentioned in passing that a more detailed and comprehensive schematic taxonomy of the axes of history could be obtained by interpreting the axes of historiography in terms of ecological temporality. This post will be my first attempt to sketch this in barest outline. What follows is sufficiently complex that it may of of little practical use, even of little practical intellectual use in terms of thinking things through, nevertheless the impulse to elaborate is there.

Here are the categories of historiographic methodology that I formulated in Axes of Historiography:

● nomothetic synchrony

Law-like interaction of all elements within a broadly-defined present

● ideographic synchrony

Contingent interactions of all elements within a broadly-defined present

● nomothetic diachrony

Law-like succession of related events through historical time (especially “deep time”)

● ideographic diachrony

Contingent succession of related events through historical time

Keeping this in mind, with its very sketchy distinction between the synchronic and the diachronic scope of the present, respectively, consider a more detailed breakdown of temporal scope. In my post ecological temporality I distinguish five levels of temporality from the personal lived experience of micro-temporality flowing from the punctiform present to the greatest sweep of history that I call meta-temporality:

●Micro-temporality: The temporal setting in which the individual lives; immediate “lived” time and individual time consciousness, as well as the finest grained temporal structure of non-conscious events.

●Meso-temporality: Relations between micro-temporalities or connections between immediate temporal contexts.

●Exo-temporality: Links between a temporal setting in which the individual does not have an active role and the individual’s immediate temporal context.

●Macro-temporality: The historical era in which individuals live, linking into a single history the exotemporal structures that lie outside immediate temporal experience or fine-grained temporal interactions.

●Meta-temporality: The whole of metaphysical history in which the individual and other lesser temporalities (Meso-temporality, Exo-temporality, and Macro-temporality) are embedded, and the temporal scope at which ideas unfold in history.

As I explained in Metaphysical Ecology Reformulated and Ecological Temporality, I derived this quinquepartite schema from a modification of Urie Bronfenbrenner’s conception of biosocial ecology.

Using ecological temporality to define the scope of time, and using the axes of history to define the methodology used to study a given scope of time, there are twenty permutations of historical study, as follows:

● Micro-temporal nomothetic synchrony

Law-like, predictable interactions of all elements across the immediate lived present of the individual

● Micro-temporal ideographic synchrony

Contingent, unpredictable interactions of all elements across the immediate lived present of the individual

● Micro-temporal nomothetic diachrony

Law-like, predictable succession of related events in the immediate lived present of the individual

● Micro-temporal ideographic diachrony

Contingent, unpredictable succession of related events in the immediate lived present of the individual

● Meso-temporal nomothetic synchrony

Law-like, predictable interaction across micro-temporalities or connections across temporal contexts of micro-temporalities

● Meso-temporal ideographic synchrony

Contingent, unpredictable interactions across micro-temporalities or connections across temporal contexts of micro-temporalities

● Meso-temporal nomothetic diachrony

Law-like, predictable succession of related events in relations between micro-temporalities or connections between temporal contexts of microtemporalites

● Meso-temporal ideographic diachrony

Contingent, unpredictable succession of related events in relations between micro-temporalities or connections between temporal contexts of micro-temporalities

● Exo-temporal nomothetic synchrony

Law-like, predictable interactions of all temporal elements across temporal settings in which the individual does not have an immediate, active role

● Exo-temporal ideographic synchrony

Contingent, unpredictable interactions of all temporal elements across temporal settings in which the individual does not have an immediate, active role

● Exo-temporal nomothetic diachrony

Law-like, predictable succession of related temporal events linking temporal settings in which the individual does not have an immediate, active role and the individual’s immediate temporal context

● Exo-temporal ideographic diachrony

Contingent, unpredictable succession of related temporal events linking temporal settings in which the individual does not have an immediate, active role and the individual’s immediate temporal context

● Macro-temporal nomothetic synchrony

Law-like, predictable interaction of all elements across the historical era in which individuals live

● Macro-temporal ideographic synchrony

Contingent, unpredictable interactions of all elements across the historical era in which individuals live

● Macro-temporal nomothetic diachrony

Law-like, predictable succession of related events through historical time

● Macro-temporal ideographic diachrony

Contingent, unpredictable succession of related events through historical time

● Meta-temporal nomothetic synchrony

Law-like, predictable interaction of all elements across the temporal scope at which ideas unfold in metaphysical history

● Meta-temporal ideographic synchrony

Contingent, unpredictable interactions of all elements across the temporal scope at which ideas unfold in metaphysical history

● Meta-temporal nomothetic diachrony

Law-like, predictable succession of related events through the temporal scope at which ideas unfold in metaphysical history

● Meta-temporal ideographic diachrony

Contingent, unpredictable succession of related events through the temporal scope at which ideas unfold in metaphysical history

This looks and sounds too complicated to be of much help in illuminating any understanding of history, but if you take the time to think it through, you may see some virtues in this.

How can it make any sense to speak of micro-temporal synchrony when I have been characterizing synchrony in terms of a broadly defined present, while the micro-temporal is by definition narrowly defined? This is a matter of taking a present just large enough to be larger than the narrowest interpretation of micro-temporality (which would be the punctiform present), but not so large as to encompass the next level of temporality, that of meso-temporality. So micro-temporal ideographic synchrony would be something like situational awareness, while micro-temporal nomothetic synchrony would be those things in your immediate environment (perhaps those events within the lived experience of one’s own mental life) that you expect to happen because of the predictable regularities of experience.

It takes a little effort and a little sympathetic interpretation to make the whole structure work, but when it is interpreted charitably not only is the whole a coherent and systematic structure, but it actually eliminates some ambiguities by stretching out the boundaries of temporal categories until they abut neighboring categories. For example, the upper bound of micro-temporality stretched upward and outward by a synchronic interpretation abuts the lower bound of meso-temporality stretched downward and inward by a synchronic interpretation. Thus there is a certain usefulness for this schema, and it is not merely a theoretical indulgence.

The next step in this exposition of ecological temporality and the axes of history would be to produce a particular, concrete example of each of the twenty instances of historical thought outlined above in order to intuitively illuminate the idea of each category. I don’t have that many examples to hand at the moment, however, so I will save that effort for another time.

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