Old Ideas (opens on the source site)
In my years in computing I’ve noticed a fallacy akin to one described by Herbert Butterfield in The Whig Interpretation of History: It is part and parcel of the Whig interpretation of history that it studies the past with reference to the present; and though there may be a sense in which this is unobjectionable if its implications are carefully considered, and there may be a sense in which it is inescapable, it has often been an obstruction to historical understanding because it has been taken to mean the study of the past with direct and perpetual reference to the present. Through this…
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