Ideas v. Actions

August 9, 2006 7:14 PM

I need ideas for an alternate history novel that I am thinking of writing. What changes history more, ideas or actions?

Okay, you remember in "Trading Places" when the two millionaires have a "nature vs. nurture" bet that they settle by a real life experiment? Well, this will be like that, but the two bettors will have time machines. One says that ideas, inventions, and individual genius changes history more, while the other thinks that action, leadership, and individual powerful men change history more.

To settle this bet, they each get to make a list of fifty men throughout history that they can go back in time and kill. They kill them when they are just babies, so they have no effect on the world. Idea-man kills Socrates, Newton, Guttenburg, Galileo, Copernicus, Einstein, etc. In another alternate universe or something, Action-man kills Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Lincoln, Julius Ceaser, Hitler (poor baby Hitler is always getting hypothetically killed), etc.

My problem is, I don't know which is right. Which alternate universe would be the more altered? In what ways? Or is the "Great man theory" bunk, and it would not change history hardly at all? Finally, I see that creating inventions is more of a hybrid of idea and action, rather than just an idea, but blame idea-man, not me.

posted by ND¢ to Society & Culture (39 answers total)

"Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" - Thomas Edison. So I suppose Action Man is right.
posted by muddgirl at 7:30 PM on August 9, 2006

Action man universe definitely changes the most.
posted by TorontoSandy at 7:36 PM on August 9, 2006

If an idea-man never existed, I think all that would have done is delay the discovery of that idea. If Newton is killed then Leibniz will have gotten credit for calculus. Somebody else would have developed the theory of gravity, surely.

Now if an action-man never existed, it seems to me that history would be much more greatly affected. Generals and politicians are generally remembered because they had great influence on the events of their day. If Lincoln didn't exist, we might have had a mediocre president who couldn't save the Union. No Hitler, probably no Holocaust.

Where it gets interesting is where an idea-man's ideas have cultural impact. Calculus has not changed society, but Marxism surely has. Freud made quite a mark on the 20th century. Martin Luther. Charles Darwin. I think these thinkers are in a different class than the Socrateses and Einsteins, and can hold their ground better against the Napoleons.
posted by Khalad at 7:39 PM on August 9, 2006

If he kills Guttenburg (rather than Gutenberg), nothing. But even if he kills Gutenberg, printing is still going to happen. Same for the ideas of all the others. Their time was ripe. The question is, would a delay of a few (i.e. 0-25) years make much difference. I really don't think so. Without Napoleon, much of Europe changes as well as Louisiana Purchase, Egypt, various parts of the Caribbean, etc. Without Lincoln, probably no Civil War (Douglas would have won and he would have compromised with the South). Without Caesar (also spelling), Roman Empire may have lasted longer but much of Europe may not have been Romanized. I think Hitler is the only one where the difference may have been minimal. The economic and political conditions were ripe for a Nazi Party and it would have been someone else (maybe Röhm). But, in general, without Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan, etc. history would have been different.
posted by TheRaven at 7:39 PM on August 9, 2006

I'll elaborate - I've taken a lot of History of Science courses, and some History of Philosophy courses, and "Ideas Men" don't seem that impressive when you consider all the OTHER scientists that had the same/similar ideas around the same time. I suppose the same could be said for Action Men, but being an Action Man takes a little more natural charisma, etc.
posted by muddgirl at 7:40 PM on August 9, 2006

Agh, what Khalad said.
posted by muddgirl at 7:41 PM on August 9, 2006

Or hell, throw in "idea-men" like Jesus Christ or Siddhārtha Guatama.
posted by Khalad at 7:42 PM on August 9, 2006

I think the 'great man' theory is a little misleading. There is a certainly inevitability in discovering great ideas - particularly with science. If Newton didn't 'discover' and articulate the theory of gravity, them someone else would have.

This is probably less so in the political realm, where the charisma and politiking of the man would have a lot bigger impact on the life of the man's citizens. The discovery of ideology (such as Marxism, liberalism) is somewhat impotent without 'action men' to put them into practice.

Were it not for Lincoln then perhaps the United States would still be split.. (this is equally true with Napoleon with the westward expansion the United States aided in part by the diminishing influence of France in Canada and Louisiana an indirect result of Napoleon's eventual defeat) were it not for Caesar then the legacies of the Roman empire would not be felt as strongly, and perhaps we would have missed its revival in the Renaissance.

So i am definitely with Action-man. War and politics are what shape the landscape today and a world where the cards might have fell differently in the past would be drastically different.
posted by TheOtherGuy at 7:44 PM on August 9, 2006

I don't know which is right

I don't think anyone does. Why not think through the implications of killing each of those people, describe the resulting world, and see which strikes you as more altered? In other words, write the novel?

I guess I'm saying that I don't see why you need to come down on one side or another before embarking on this project. The consensus based on the responses so far seems to be "action," so maybe it would be interesting to play against that and look for unexpected ways in which the idea-altered history is more different.

Also, I don't know what kind of storyline you have in mind (is most of the book set in the alternate presents, or does it focus on the actual going-back-in-time-and-killing?), but pulling together the ramifications of removing fifty major figures from history seems wildly ambitious and complicated. Maybe ten on each side?

But what I'd really pay money to read is an alternate-history novel in which Steve Guttenberg never existed.
posted by staggernation at 7:48 PM on August 9, 2006

It's hard to say.

A world without Hitler or FDR, I can imagine what that would be like.
A world without Marx and Engels, I can't even begin to imagine that.
posted by Khalad at 7:49 PM on August 9, 2006

If you don't mind me getting really boring for a second... then the question is invalid, since even killing a single person several hundred years ago could have a mindblowing effect on the state of the world today. It's like the butterfly effect / chaos theory. Killing ten or so people? You're looking at a significant change in population where the outcome in either case is totally unpredictable.

However, stories are not written on such technicalities, so best of luck!
posted by wackybrit at 7:53 PM on August 9, 2006

One interesting take would be some sort of "a man for his time and place" situation - one could argue that many societal, cultural, historical, and technological factors shape each and every one of our lives, and removing one person from that matrix would make little difference. Would it be a boring story if 100 important men were killed, and the worlds were changed very little?
posted by muddgirl at 7:56 PM on August 9, 2006

One could argue that many societal, cultural, historical, and technological factors shape each and every one of our lives, and removing one person from that matrix would make little difference.

Please do. :-)
posted by Khalad at 7:59 PM on August 9, 2006

Response by poster: I get the thing about simultaneous discoveries of scientific principles and inventions making idea-men less important, but (as argued above) do "great men" really affect history all that much? Wouldn't most of the stuff that happened have happened anyway due to historical, geographical, economic and cultural forces that are way bigger than individuals?
posted by ND¢ at 8:07 PM on August 9, 2006

In a related note, CSA: Confederate States of America just came out on video and is currently in a red Netflix envelope heading to my house.

I think that sometimes the turning points in history are nearly inevitable. Every tinkerer in the western world was working on a steamboat at the time of Fulton, and how many places claim the first powered flight? But as the film CSA suggests, at certain key points the actions of individuals can be a huge variable. What if Lee had triumphed at Gettysburg? What happened over the next 50 years in regards to slavery and union is hard to say with any confidence, but it could have gone very differently.
posted by LarryC at 8:46 PM on August 9, 2006

Clearly the two would return to this universe/plane/whatever and discover that they had a draw: Nothing changed in either of their worlds.

But then, if you want to be all goofy about it, their experiment changes this world in spite of the fact that it occurred in two others. Or something.

Nevermind.
posted by brina at 8:49 PM on August 9, 2006

Action Man wins. The "ideas" of Newton, Gutenberg, Gaileo and others are really discoveries or time-saving inventions, and would've been discovered or developed by someone else eventually. But only Napoleon invaded Russia at that time with that personality leading France.

A more interesting idea is the one made famous by the Simpsons, where you go back in time, do something, and then return to a changed present. Those changes could be subtle or quite shocking.
posted by frogan at 8:51 PM on August 9, 2006

Ideas are more important than action because ideas allow the great leaders to inspire others and mobilize great resources in the pursuit of those ideals.

I'm sure that Homo Erectus had great leaders, but without ideals, how could they organize and implement anything more complicated than a hunt or a raid on a rival band?
posted by jason's_planet at 8:53 PM on August 9, 2006

If we knew the answer, the book wouldn't have a purpose. Use the book to examine the question - it's an interesting premise.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 8:53 PM on August 9, 2006

Wouldn't most of the stuff that happened have happened anyway due to historical, geographical, economic and cultural forces that are way bigger than individuals?

In time, maybe. At the time, no. Can you imagine what Cuba would look like today if Fidel Castro had, say, died on that famous motorcycle trip writing those diairies? I think Cuba would, politically, look a lot like Mexico.
posted by frogan at 8:54 PM on August 9, 2006

Furthering Brinas idea, It would be a draw with nothing changing, except when the altered universes reach the stage where the competitions are replayed there, and then these competitions are won by the opposite player (Dr A wins in the universe Dr B changed and vice versa).

This can then be extended indefinitely and is best left as an exercise to the reader.
posted by scodger at 9:08 PM on August 9, 2006

Castro didn't go on a motorcycle trip, that was Che Guevara. Unless that was an alternate history joke.
posted by borkingchikapa at 9:09 PM on August 9, 2006

Let me put in a word, respectfully late to the thread, for the unnamed actor, Accident. So much of history is neither choosing or concept, it is Accident. Accident whether or not your mother was taken by the Black Plague, or was a nun, or was raped by Viking marauders. Accident if you inherited wealth or were destined to be ground into the ground that spawned your hateful serf's life. Accident if water you drank was sweet, or laden with cholera. Accident, if born lowly, you came to the attention of any patron, before you died. Accident if blessed with wealth and station, you never met Leonardo.

Accident is mother to our race, and the powerful handmaiden of any God worth our belief.
posted by paulsc at 9:19 PM on August 9, 2006 [1 favorite]

What if there had been Hitler, but no Churchill to rally the British and appeal to Roosevelt for help?
posted by Cranberry at 9:47 PM on August 9, 2006

Castro didn't go on a motorcycle trip, that was Che Guevara. Unless that was an alternate history joke.

mea culpa ... OK, now imagine Castro gets called up from the minor leagues by the New York Yankees ... same diff ... Cuba becomes the island version of Mexico. ;-)
posted by frogan at 11:29 PM on August 9, 2006

Castro never played in the minor leagues and was never scouted for the Yankees either.
posted by LarryC at 12:08 AM on August 10, 2006

Could it be that the changes are vast enough in both cases that the men have difficulty finding a way or a reference point to determine who won the bet?

Or (more likely) could it be that the changes are of a predicatable nature such that each man thinks it is perfectly clear that he won the bet, thus showing that the very same difference in values (regarding what is important in the world) that led to the dispute, precludes it ever being settled. The man arguing that ideas are more important may do so because he world revolves around ideas, while the man who argues people are more important may do so because his world revolves around people. The same change to history is going to be seen to each in the light of that, and so preclude a mutually agreeds resolution. (and leave it to the reader to figure out which side they think really won, but make it hard, so they end up struggling with the question too, in a way that isn't a southpark "you're BOTH right!" copout :-)
posted by -harlequin- at 12:41 AM on August 10, 2006

Well, action of course - an idea will have absolutely no effect until it's actioned. Even taking your solitary idea and behaving slightly differently just because you know it is an action.

There's plenty of examples through history where somebody had or developed an idea, but did nothing with it - it wasn't until someone later took that idea and put it into action that events were changed. And they're only the ones where we know someone else had the idea - if they didn't pass it on in any way, we'd have no way of knowing they had the idea.

To take an example: history tells us of at least a dozen people who believed the world was round. Only one of those is (mistakenly) credited with proving it, kick-starting a whole new outlook in astronomy, physics, and natural history, and affecting the lives of everybody since. How many hundreds of others - sailors, travellers, even contemplative children sitting by the seaside - figured it out for themselves beforehand?

In your hypothetical example, it's a little trickier - it can be argued that "action man's" targets were just the instrument for the idea to take action - Napoleon & Alexander the great, while ... er, "great" ... were just one amongst dozens who could have done the same job at the same time. Abe Lincoln, too. Julius Caeser is remembered more as an accident of history and narrative than anything else. Hitler was just the focal point for growing German dissatisfaction with the restrictions forced on them after WWI, and plenty of other people were already making scapegoats out of the Romanys & Jews - it's a fairly natural progression to co-opt that feeling for your own purposes (c.f. Muslims nowdays).

Now, if you'd proposed killing Einstien or Neils Bohr vs Oppenheimer...
posted by Pinback at 1:14 AM on August 10, 2006

Tricky... would we need Einstein if there wasn't a Hitler? or would we have been defeated by Hitler uf there hadn't been an Einstein?

How about Darwin and Freud? hmm....
posted by Izzmeister at 1:20 AM on August 10, 2006

Don't forget, the Ideas men influence the Action men - Alexander the Great was a huge fan of Greek philosophy, for example. Kill of one and you might not get the other.
posted by Jilder at 1:21 AM on August 10, 2006

The action men never would have acted if they hadn't had ideas. We never would have heard of the idea men if they hadn't acted. Each is impotent without the other. You know this...maybe your two time travelers will figure it out, too.

I think you should just get writing and see what happens. I imagine there probably won't be a clearcut winner.
posted by lampoil at 3:39 AM on August 10, 2006

the end of the book should be that things are the same- that they cancel each other out....

read "the lady, or the tiger?"
posted by Izzmeister at 3:45 AM on August 10, 2006

I guess I'm saying that I don't see why you need to come down on one side or another before embarking on this project.

Yeah, forgive me, but it's not going to be a very good novel if you're focused on "proving" one side or the other of what is, after all, a totally hypothetical debate. What you need to do is create interesting characters and have them do exciting and intriguing things, with some thought-provoking speculation about history. Who "wins" 1) is unimportant and 2) will depend on the needs of the novel and not some imagined real-world "truth."
posted by languagehat at 5:44 AM on August 10, 2006

history tells us of at least a dozen people who believed the world was round. Only one of those is (mistakenly) credited with proving it,

are you thinking of the geocentric model? because there's never really been a significant portion of people who thought the earth was flat... it's been generally acknowledged as spherical since the greeks.

A world without Marx and Engels, I can't even begin to imagine that.

One thing about the idea men is that they will commonly work off each other - without Kant (and Aristotle), you wouldn't have got Hegel, and without Hegel, you wouldn't have got Marx, at least not in the same form. And Kant works off both Plato & Aristotle, who at least wouldn't have been the same without Socrates, so you could probably even argue for a link all the way...

Personally I tend to think we overestimate individual greatness, and that probably someone else would come along and rise to the occasion... with discoveries and inventions this is definitely true, as we can tell from people fighting over who published first etc - it would normally make a difference of months or years, not of centuries (wallace for darwin, eg). For great men who healed, I would think again that someone else would probably have come along - if not lincoln, someone else would have been in the difficult position of presiding over america's civil war - depending who the alternative presidents were, it could have gone any number of ways, but I don't think there's reason to think Lincoln is the only one who could have achieved a northern victory.

But those whose 'greatness' is in conquest, like Alexander, Napolean, Hitler - it is possible no one else would have made the move, depending on the situation. However, to really have a good idea, you'd have to do pretty extensive research on the various pressures that may have influenced these choices, aside from the personality of the dictator.

"Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration"

apply this to your project - you've got the 1% covered. Now you have to do research and imagine various scenarios to actually come up with a solid plot. Asking mefites is kinda research-esque, but seriously, if you're gonna do this, you have to go read a bunch of history books and work through various possible consequences, and actually write the book.

I also second choosing a smaller cast of characters - 5 each would be tough enough to keep track of.
posted by mdn at 9:37 AM on August 10, 2006

Kill Alexander Graham Bell, and Elisha Gray invents the telephone. Didn't Newton say he could only see better than others because he stood on the shoulders of giants? Kill Bush, and Gore is president.

The effect of people on history comes at turning points. What happens when an important decision comes down to a single individual. Put Halifax in as PM in 1940 instead of Churchill and imagine the results.

And I'm with languagehat. OK, you've got an interesting premise. You're a few leagues away from an interesting book, though. You'll need characters and a plot next. Good luck.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 9:54 AM on August 10, 2006

In Spengler's The Decline of the West, he says "Doers" make history, and "Thinkers" just write about it. If you haven't read it, I think it would be helpful . . . wouldn't hurt, anyway . . .

Oh, the abridged version, of course.
posted by revonrut at 10:31 PM on August 10, 2006

"Didn't Newton say he could only see better than others because he stood on the shoulders of giants?"

Yes, but it was a barbed comment that is misinterpreted for the more humble meaning. Newton was not a humble man. :)
posted by -harlequin- at 3:26 PM on August 11, 2006

This is a massive undertaking. Authors have written entire novels of alternate history based on one drain backing up. killing 100 people would create 100 alternate timelines each with their own people to kill. What if the 2 bettors find out that they are man of Ideas or action for some future guy and get killed themselves?
posted by Megafly at 1:14 PM on May 16, 2007

uh duh forgot this was an old thread
posted by Megafly at 1:14 PM on May 16, 2007