Hegel And The Psychotechnic History

Hegel (scroll down) thought that his philosophy applied to history so what is his philosophy and does it apply to Poul Anderson's future histories? Hegel argued that concepts are deduced from each other by the triadic process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, meaning a concept, its contradiction and their combination. Thus, according to Hegel:

the most general concept is being because everything is;

nothing is deduced from being because to say of anything only that it is is to say nothing about it;

becoming synthesizes being and nothing and transforms abstract being, identical with its opposite, into determinate being, differentiated by distinct qualities.

However, we reply, history happens not because of allegedly rational deliberations and deductions but because of apparently random decisions and deeds. At most, history is a mixture of arbitrary and patterned events. Also, even if the two sides in a historical conflict are described as a thesis and its antithesis, it is not necessarily the case that either arose directly from the other. They might have originated and developed independently.

On the other hand, all of history is interconnected, e.g.:

American nations began as European colonies;

Islam sprang from other prophetic traditions which it now confronts as an antithesis;

Western thought is analytic and precise whereas Eastern thought is unitive and vague but both are thought and their insights might be synthesized.

Thus, schemes like Hegel's can seem to be relevant. I have analyzed Anderson's Psychotechnic History into ten triads although, disagreeing with Hegel, I present each new thesis as identical with, not as deduced from, the preceding synthesis.