Other people argue that it is all down to charismatic individuals, individuals who shape history. The Alexanders, the Napoleons, the Prophets and the Hitlers. One hesitates to call Stalin charismatic, but he clearly had something going for him. And maybe there is even a bit of room for free will for those charismatic individuals. Maybe some people will have something big to answer for when they get to the Pearly Gates.
Other people again argue that pondering about what might have happened if such and such is a waste of time. One should concentrate on what actually did happen, rather than on what might have happened. Not a bunch with whom I happen to agree because I think that looking at variations on the past enriches history, gets more out of history. First, thinking about what might have happened, for example, had Napoleon turned left instead of right when he marched out of the village of Austerlitz, helps us to get inside Napoleon’s mind. Why did he turn right rather than left? So thinking about the left option seems to me to be to be a line of enquiry which is both elementary and interesting. Second, we get more about how we might avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Was there any other way, given the circumstances of the time, for the municipalities of Ancient Greece to organise themselves? And if there was, why not? Would the Athenians have done better to stick with biremes, rather than being seduced by the arms corporations of their time into the more expensive & flashy triremes? Third, it often easier to have a sensible discussion about options in the past than options in the present; people are not usually committed to the past, particularly the ancient past, in the way that they are committed to the present and they really can have a full and frank exchange of views without getting too steamed up. A useful proxy for a full and frank exchange of views about the present – and particularly useful in places where the rulers do not encourage discussions about the present. Or in pubs where people who have taken strong drink can get a bit heated.
So let us suppose that we have a grand model of the world and all its affairs on a suitably grand computer, perhaps a scaled up version of one of those models that economists like to build, but including agents and events as well as statistics, something the Treasury Model did not do, at least in years gone by when I was close enough to see. A model into which you could add, subtract or modify agents and events. Perhaps more like Eve Online than the Treasury Model. See reference 1.
An agent might be a person like Napoleon or a company like Lidl. A modification of an agent might be the assassination of Napoleon.
An event might be an earthquake, a hurricane, a plague of locusts or a record breaking soya bean crop. Or Napoleon’s horse throwing a shoe at some critical moment. Or the Saudi’s flooding the market for oil.
And if one wanted to just sit back and watch, rather than participate in a more active way, one might go in for a game master who threw the dice of fate from time to time.
If the model was really clever it could say things like ‘you have really got an opportunity to make a difference here’. An opportunity, say, for someone like a Luther or a Hitler. You might then specify such an agent, pop it into the model and see how things panned out.
Or you might think about the probability that a Hitler would pop up – with a Hitler being a rather specialised requirement and one could not be at all sure that reproductive diversity would produce one at the right time. But if the opportunity required something slightly more mundane, like a gang of first rate bricklayers, one might be more confident. In the real world, one might even have notice of upcoming opportunities and manufacture the necessaries to order, rather as we expect the government to organise the training of suitable numbers of teachers against some expected bulge in schools’ admissions – without the lags the free market offered in the sinusoidal pig cycles of yore. See reference 2.
It might be that the model came up with the collapse of capitalism or a flood of Biblical proportions without offering any opportunities which made a difference. It didn’t matter what you or anybody else did, within reason, the collapse or the flood was still going to happen. Maybe you could change a few details or the timing, but not the big picture. In this case the model would be with the tides and currents of history school of thought.
But, alternatively and more probably, there might be opportunities to make a difference. Opportunities for Buddhas, Hitlers and Stalins. One might think of these opportunities as taking take the form of a complicated lock. If you happen to have, or perhaps rather to be, the key to the lock and you get yourself into the keyhole in time, the opportunity will open up before you. You have rubbed the magic lamp and the genie has appeared.
Another analogy might be an opportunity in a football match. An opportunity which pops up, quite suddenly, perhaps more or less at random, an opportunity for a really good, goal scoring sort of move. Will the player on the spot see the opportunity in time to be able to act on it? Presumably being able to do this is part of what makes a good footballer. And part of the interest in watching a match is being able to see such stuff going on, in real time, as it were. Not that I watch football matches myself.
I offer a last example, adapted from ancient history. An Asiatic horde is pressing through a pass in the Alps and is about to gush out onto the fertile plains of northern Italy, where they plan to settle, to be fruitful and to multiply. As luck would have it, there had been a lot of snow and there are great masses of snow lodged on the high ground, just above the pass. Masses of snow which happen to have fallen in just the right way that they can be set in motion by a seven second blast on seven alpenhorns. The Lord sees fit to send a message down about this, by archangel, to the shepherd, overwintering in his hut up on the high pasture. The shepherd just has the time to gather up his mates from the pub, to gather up their alpenhorns from the shed around the back and for the necessary blast to ring out over the snow. The snow turns into an avalanche and sweeps down into the pass. The Asiatic horde is utterly destroyed, and Italy can go on to be the country we know and love now, Popes and all.
The lesson for the Cameron & Osborne team might be to look to the manufacture of alpenhorns.
The lesson for the most of the rest of us is that more or less chance events and individuals really can make a difference, at least at the sort of scales of space and time which interest us humans. And for the non-believers mentioned at the outset of this post, I can only suggest a course of model building.
But I don't think we have done much for free will. The fact that there happens to be a rather mechanical attraction between a key, that is to say you, and the lock out there which you happen to fit, that is to say the opportunity, does not advance the case for your free will that much. And what about all the other keys out there who might have got there first? See reference 4.
PS: I should like to add that I have the jigsaw of the picture of Napoleon used as an illustration to this post. To be more precise the jigsaw discussed quite extensively in January 2008 in the other place. See reference 3.
Reference 1: http://www.eveonline.com/.
Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_cycle.
Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/2008_01_01_archive.html. See, for example, the first post for January 6th.
Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/free-will-1.html.
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