{"pk":38156,"title":"Meta-History’s Dangerous Dream","subtitle":null,"abstract":"“Big History” and “meta-history” are grounded in an ancient lamentation over the segmentation of human existence, the alienation from an original sense of oneness.  In this paper I am doing my disciplinary duty by providing a deflating historical counterweight to the desire to overcome those last remaining obstacles on the path to a complete account. For me at least, the difficulties in reaching a complete account in a common language remain; nor am I persuaded that the difficulties are merely technical.  The difficulties are deeply engrained not just in modern disciplinary thought but in cognition as such.  Indeed, the very goal of a complete account in a common language seems to me to be based on a false view of disciplinary distinctions as well as a false understanding of what we ought to wish for, our real interests.","language":"en","license":null,"keywords":[{"word":"History"}],"section":"Article","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1d91g56g","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Geoffrey","middle_name":"G","last_name":"Harpham","name_suffix":"","institution":"National Humanities Center","department":"None"}],"date_submitted":"2011-03-22T08:00:00+01:00","date_accepted":"2011-03-22T08:00:00+01:00","date_published":"2011-03-31T09:00:00+02:00","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cliodynamics/article/38156/galley/28721/download/"}]}