This book is a collections of essays from Will & Ariel Durant, winners of the pulitzer prize.
1. Hesitations
The present is the past rolled up for action, and the past is the present unrolled for understanding.
We can learn enough from history to bear reality patiently, and to respect one another's delusions.
Only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions.
2. History and the Earth
Human history is a brief spot in space, and its first lesson is modesty.
History is subject to geology.
Geography is the matrix of history, its nourishing mother and disciplining home.
The development of the airplane will again alter the map of civilization.
The influence of geographic factors diminishes as technology grows.
Man, not the earth, makes civilization.
3. Biology and History
History is a fragment of biology: the life of man is a portion of the vicissitudes of organisms on land and sea.
The laws of biology are the fundamental lessons of history.
The first biological lesson of history is that life is competition.
The second biological lesson of history is that life is selection.
The third biological lesson of history is that life must breed.
4. Race and History
The rise, success, decline, and fall of a civilization depend upon the inherent quality of the race.
The degeneration of a civilization is what the word itself indicates - a falling away from the genus, stock, or race.
Some weaknesses in the race theory are obvious.
Difficulties remain even if the race theory is confined to the white man.
The ancient cultures of Egypt, Greece, and Rome were evidently the product of geographical opportunity and economic and political development rather than of racial constitution, and much of their civilization had an oriental source.
A knowledge of history may teach us that civilization is a co-operative product, that nearly all peoples have contributed to it; it is our common heritage and debt; and the civilized soul will reveal itself in treating every man or woman.
5. Character and History
Society is founded not on the ideals but on the nature of man, and the constitution of man rewrites the constitutions of states.
Known history shows little alteration in the conduct of mankind.
Evolution in man during recorded time has been social rather than biological.
The initiative individual - the great man, the hero, the genius, - regains his place as a formative force in history.
Intellect is therefore a vital force in history, but it can also be a dissolve and destructive power.
The conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it.
6. Morals and History
Morals are the rules by by which a society exhorts its members and associations to behavior consistent with its order, security, and growth.
Moral codes differ because they adjust themselves to historical and environmental conditions.
History as usually written is quite different from history as usually lived; the history records the exceptional because it is interesting.
7. Religion and History
Religion does not seem at first to have had any connection with morals.
Does history support a belief in God?
One lesson of history is that religion has many lives, and a habit of resurrection.
There is no significant example in history of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.
8. Economics and History
History is economics in action - the contest, among individuals, groups, classes, and states, for food, fuel, materials, and economic power.
Every economic system must sooner or later rely upon some form of the profit motive to stir individuals and groups to productivity.
All economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation.
9. Socialism and History
The struggle of socialism against capitalism is part of the historic rhythm in the concentration and dispersion of wealth.
The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality.
10. Government and History
Does history justify revolutions?
Democracy is the most difficult of all forms of government.
Democracy has done less harm, and more good, than any other form of government. It gave to human existence a zest and camaraderie that outweighed its pitfalls and defects.
If our economy of freedom fails to distribute wealth as ably as it has created it, the road to dictatorship will be open to any man and a martial government will engulf the democratic world.
11. History and War
War is one of the constants of history, and has not diminished with civilization or democracy.
The causes of war are the same as the causes of competition among individuals: acquisitiveness, pugnacity, and pride; the desire for food, land, materials, fuels, mastery.
12. Growth and Decay
Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation.
History repeats itself, but only in outline and in the large.
Civilizations begin, flourish, decline, and disappear.
Civilizations are the generations of the racial soul. As life overrides death with reproduction, so an aging culture hands its patrimony down to its heirs across the years and the seas.
13. Is progress real?
Our progress in science and technique has involved some tincture of evil with god.
We must not demand of progress that it should be continuous or universal.
In the debate between ancients and moderns it is not at all clear that the ancients carry off the prize.
If education is the transmission of civilization, we are unquestionably progressing.
We should not be greatly disturbed by the probability that one civilization will die like any other.
The heritage that we can now more fully transmit is richer than ever before.
History is the creation and recording of that heritage; progress is its increasing abundance, preservation, transmission, and use.
Friday, May 15, 2020
Thursday, April 23, 2020
读书笔记 - The Role of the Individual in History
Georgi V. Plekhanov
Preface.
This essay substantiates and defends Marxism and advocates Marxian theory of social development. This essay might be regarded as the one of the best in Marxist literature.
Human history as a process expresses laws, but does not proceed independently of man; history is made by men who set the problems of progress and solve them in conformity with the historical conditions of the epoch.
A great man is great because he possesses qualities which make him most capable of serving the great social needs of his time, needs which arise as a result of general and particular causes.
A great man is precisely a beginner because he sees further than others and desires things more strongly than others.
Stalin says: "Only the people are immortal. Everything else is transient. That is why we must be able to value the confidence of the people."
1.
When we say that a certain individual regards his activities as an inevitable link in the chain of inevitable events, we mean, among other things, that for this individual, lack of free will is tantamount to incapability of inaction, and that this lack of free will is reflected in his mind as the impossibility of acting differently from the way he is acting.
As the man is, so is his philosophy.
2.
Men who have repudiated free will have often excelled all their contemporaries in strength of will, and asserted their will to the utmost.
It is freedom that is identical with necessity, it is necessity transformed into freedom.
3.
Being conscious of the absolute inevitability of a given phenomenon can only increase the energy of a man of the forces which called it into being.
This sum of circumstances will include my replacement as a negative magnitude; and it will also include, as a positive magnitude, the stimulating effect on strong-minded men of the conviction that their savings and ideals are the subjective expression of objective necessity.
4.
The science of history must have in view, not only the activities of great men, and not only political history, but historical life as a whole.
We cannot make history, we must wait while it is being made. We will not make fruit ripen more quickly by subjecting it to the heat of a lamp; and if we pluck the fruit before it is ripe, we will only prevent its growth and spoil it.
Historians are too much in the habit of paying attention only to the brilliant, clamorous and ephemeral manifestations of human activity, to great events and great men, instead of depicting the great and slow changes of economic conditions and social institutions.
5.
In the eighteenth century the students of the philosophy of history reduced everything to the conscious activities of individuals. The great majority of the thinkers of the eighteenth century regarded history exactly in the way we have described.
The mental and moral qualities of a man who is playing a more or less important role in public life, his talent, knowledge, resoluteness or irresoluteness, courage or cowardice, etc cannot help having a marked influence on the course and outcome of events; and yet these qualities cannot be explained solely by the general laws of development of a nation; they are always, and to a considerable degree, acquired as a result of the action of what may be called the accidents of private life.
6.
A man can "by the sudden decision of his will" introduce a new force into the course of events which is capable of changing their course considerably.
By virtue of particular traits of their character, individuals can influence the fate of society. Sometimes this influence is very considerable; but the possibility of exercising this influence, and its extent, are determined by the form of organization of society, by the relation of forces within it.
The extent of personal influence may also be determined by the talents of the individual.
In everything finite there are accidental elements. Accident is something relative, it appears only at the point of intersection of inevitable processes.
Influential individuals can change the individual features of events and some of their particular consequences, but they cannot change their general trend, which is determined by other forces.
7.
In order that a man who possesses a particular kind of talent may, by means of it, greatly influence the course of events, two conditions are needed. First, this talent must make him more conformable to the social needs of the given epoch than anyone else. Second, the existing social order must not bar the road to the person possessing the talent which is needed and useful precisely at the given time.
It is well known that quantitative differences ultimately pass into qualitative differences. This is true everywhere, and is therefore true in history.
8.
Individual causes cannot bring about fundamental changes in the operation of general and particular causes which, moreover, determine the trend and limits of the influence of individual causes.
A great mean is great not because his personal qualities give individual features to great historical events, but because he possess qualities which make him most capable of serving the great social needs of his time, needs which arose as a result of general and particular causes.
A great man is precisely a beginner because he sees further than others, and desires things more strongly than others.
It is not only for "beginners", not only for "great" mean that a broad field of activity is open. It is open for all those who have eyes to see, ears to hear and hearts to love their neighbors. The concept great is a relative concept. In the ethical sense every man is great who "lays down his life for his friend."
Preface.
This essay substantiates and defends Marxism and advocates Marxian theory of social development. This essay might be regarded as the one of the best in Marxist literature.
Human history as a process expresses laws, but does not proceed independently of man; history is made by men who set the problems of progress and solve them in conformity with the historical conditions of the epoch.
A great man is great because he possesses qualities which make him most capable of serving the great social needs of his time, needs which arise as a result of general and particular causes.
A great man is precisely a beginner because he sees further than others and desires things more strongly than others.
Stalin says: "Only the people are immortal. Everything else is transient. That is why we must be able to value the confidence of the people."
1.
When we say that a certain individual regards his activities as an inevitable link in the chain of inevitable events, we mean, among other things, that for this individual, lack of free will is tantamount to incapability of inaction, and that this lack of free will is reflected in his mind as the impossibility of acting differently from the way he is acting.
As the man is, so is his philosophy.
2.
Men who have repudiated free will have often excelled all their contemporaries in strength of will, and asserted their will to the utmost.
It is freedom that is identical with necessity, it is necessity transformed into freedom.
3.
Being conscious of the absolute inevitability of a given phenomenon can only increase the energy of a man of the forces which called it into being.
This sum of circumstances will include my replacement as a negative magnitude; and it will also include, as a positive magnitude, the stimulating effect on strong-minded men of the conviction that their savings and ideals are the subjective expression of objective necessity.
4.
The science of history must have in view, not only the activities of great men, and not only political history, but historical life as a whole.
We cannot make history, we must wait while it is being made. We will not make fruit ripen more quickly by subjecting it to the heat of a lamp; and if we pluck the fruit before it is ripe, we will only prevent its growth and spoil it.
Historians are too much in the habit of paying attention only to the brilliant, clamorous and ephemeral manifestations of human activity, to great events and great men, instead of depicting the great and slow changes of economic conditions and social institutions.
5.
In the eighteenth century the students of the philosophy of history reduced everything to the conscious activities of individuals. The great majority of the thinkers of the eighteenth century regarded history exactly in the way we have described.
The mental and moral qualities of a man who is playing a more or less important role in public life, his talent, knowledge, resoluteness or irresoluteness, courage or cowardice, etc cannot help having a marked influence on the course and outcome of events; and yet these qualities cannot be explained solely by the general laws of development of a nation; they are always, and to a considerable degree, acquired as a result of the action of what may be called the accidents of private life.
6.
A man can "by the sudden decision of his will" introduce a new force into the course of events which is capable of changing their course considerably.
By virtue of particular traits of their character, individuals can influence the fate of society. Sometimes this influence is very considerable; but the possibility of exercising this influence, and its extent, are determined by the form of organization of society, by the relation of forces within it.
The extent of personal influence may also be determined by the talents of the individual.
In everything finite there are accidental elements. Accident is something relative, it appears only at the point of intersection of inevitable processes.
Influential individuals can change the individual features of events and some of their particular consequences, but they cannot change their general trend, which is determined by other forces.
7.
In order that a man who possesses a particular kind of talent may, by means of it, greatly influence the course of events, two conditions are needed. First, this talent must make him more conformable to the social needs of the given epoch than anyone else. Second, the existing social order must not bar the road to the person possessing the talent which is needed and useful precisely at the given time.
It is well known that quantitative differences ultimately pass into qualitative differences. This is true everywhere, and is therefore true in history.
8.
Individual causes cannot bring about fundamental changes in the operation of general and particular causes which, moreover, determine the trend and limits of the influence of individual causes.
A great mean is great not because his personal qualities give individual features to great historical events, but because he possess qualities which make him most capable of serving the great social needs of his time, needs which arose as a result of general and particular causes.
A great man is precisely a beginner because he sees further than others, and desires things more strongly than others.
It is not only for "beginners", not only for "great" mean that a broad field of activity is open. It is open for all those who have eyes to see, ears to hear and hearts to love their neighbors. The concept great is a relative concept. In the ethical sense every man is great who "lays down his life for his friend."
DevOps 101
DevOps = culture + processes + automation(tools)
What is DevOps?
DevOps is an approach that focuses on bringing the Development and Operations team together to obtain products and services with maximum efficiency and quality.
DevOps is the practice of operations and development engineers participating together in the entire service lifecycle, from design through the development process to production support.
DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and information-technology operations (Ops) which aims to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality.
DevOps is short for development and operations. It bridges the gap between three traditionally siloed departments: development (dev), quality assurance (QA), and operations (ops). Its goal is to deliver high-quality software in a shortened systems development lifecycle.
DevOps is nothing but a set of philosophies, practices, and tools that help an organization to deliver better products faster by facilitating an integration of the development and operations functions.
In a nutshell, it is culture, mindset, methodology, framework.
How is DevOps?
DevOps requires a philosophical and cultural change combined with a more practical implementation of tools and best practices.
DevOps is achieved through tools, processes, and automation, but, even more than that, through a change in organizational culture. DevOps requires strong teams, communication, and transparency between departments. Everyone is involved throughout the software creation process and, therefore, everyone gains a sense of ownership over the final product.
A brand-new team that is rolling out a new software service would require someone with good experience in infrastructure provisioning, deployment automation and monitoring. A team that supports a stable product might require the service of an expert who could migrate home-grown automation projects to tools and processes around standard configuration management and continuous Integration tools.
DevOps engineer must be able to understand and use a wide variety of open-source tools and technologies.
DevOps brings a holistic approach to the complete business delivery system.
The DevOps lifecycle is all about agility and automation. Each phase in the DevOps process flow focuses on closing the loop between development and operations and driving production through continuous integration, delivery, deployment, and feedback.
The DevOps strategy has a few steps to be followed for a successful implementation process.
Why is DevOps?
DevOps is used in the software development life cycle (SDLC) to improve the methodologies.
If we can consider the Software Life Cycle divided into these five processes:
DevOps will automate all these processes with the following benefits
What is DevOps?
DevOps is an approach that focuses on bringing the Development and Operations team together to obtain products and services with maximum efficiency and quality.
DevOps is the practice of operations and development engineers participating together in the entire service lifecycle, from design through the development process to production support.
DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and information-technology operations (Ops) which aims to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality.
DevOps is short for development and operations. It bridges the gap between three traditionally siloed departments: development (dev), quality assurance (QA), and operations (ops). Its goal is to deliver high-quality software in a shortened systems development lifecycle.
DevOps is nothing but a set of philosophies, practices, and tools that help an organization to deliver better products faster by facilitating an integration of the development and operations functions.
In a nutshell, it is culture, mindset, methodology, framework.
How is DevOps?
DevOps requires a philosophical and cultural change combined with a more practical implementation of tools and best practices.
DevOps is achieved through tools, processes, and automation, but, even more than that, through a change in organizational culture. DevOps requires strong teams, communication, and transparency between departments. Everyone is involved throughout the software creation process and, therefore, everyone gains a sense of ownership over the final product.
A brand-new team that is rolling out a new software service would require someone with good experience in infrastructure provisioning, deployment automation and monitoring. A team that supports a stable product might require the service of an expert who could migrate home-grown automation projects to tools and processes around standard configuration management and continuous Integration tools.
DevOps engineer must be able to understand and use a wide variety of open-source tools and technologies.
DevOps brings a holistic approach to the complete business delivery system.
- Other skills necessary for the job are more about mindset.
- Most of the steps in this process are automatically done.
- DevOps mainly works in a sense by automating a lot of the tasks.
- DevOps initiates on automating as much as possible using multiple tools.
The DevOps lifecycle is all about agility and automation. Each phase in the DevOps process flow focuses on closing the loop between development and operations and driving production through continuous integration, delivery, deployment, and feedback.
- Coding – code development and review, source code management tools, code merging
- Building – continuous integration tools, build status
- Testing – continuous testing tools that provide quick and timely feedback on business risks
- Packaging – artifact repository, application pre-deployment staging
- Releasing – change management, release approvals, release automation
- Configuring – infrastructure configuration and management, infrastructure as code tools
- Monitoring – applications performance monitoring, end-user experience
The DevOps strategy has a few steps to be followed for a successful implementation process.
- 1) Initiating the DevOps culture
- 2) CI/CD process
- 3) Containerization
- 4) Integrating DevOps tools
- 5) Continuous testing
- 6) Monitoring application performance
Why is DevOps?
DevOps is used in the software development life cycle (SDLC) to improve the methodologies.
If we can consider the Software Life Cycle divided into these five processes:
- Continuous Development
- Continuous Testing
- Continuous Deployment
- Continuous Monitoring
- Continuous Integration
DevOps will automate all these processes with the following benefits
- Improve team leaders' experience and effectiveness
- Continuous delivery
- The ability of different disciplines (development, operations, and infosec) to achieve win-win outcomes
- Increase organizational performance
- Avoid deployment pain
- Lean management practices
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