From roehner at lpthe.jussieu.fr  Fri Oct 11 02:46:39 2002
From: roehner at lpthe.jussieu.fr (Bertrand Roehner)
Date: Wed Nov 16 18:06:30 2005
Subject: QH.R: (no subject)
Message-ID: <3DA673CF.68FA074C@lpthe.jussieu.fr>

----------------- QUANHIST.RECURRENT POSTING ----------------- 
Dear list member, 
 
This message comprises two parts: firstly 
a short presentation of 
 "Pattern and Repertoire in History" and 
secondly an assessment of the list's achievements 
and perspectives. 
 
1) I'm pleased to announce the publication of 
"Pattern and Repertoire in History" (*) a book which 
has been in the making for almost ten years, and 
in many ways illustrates the comparative approach 
advocated in the present list. The key of the 
approach is to split complicated events such 
as the French Revolution into several modules corresponding 
to specific mechanisms, such as for instance 
street insurrections, confiscation of the 
Church estates, and so on. In several chapters of 
the book this approach is applied to specific historical 
problems in an attempt to convince the reader that 
it provides new insight. 
 
(*) by Bertrand M. Roehner and Tony Syme. Harvard UP 2002. 
More details can be found on my website at the address: 
http://www.lpthe.jussieu.fr/~roehner 
 
 
2) When this list was created in the fall of 1994, it's main 
objective was to set up a group of researchers from 
different countries who, together, would be able to 
carry comparative studies beyond the limits that are usually 
imposed by language barriers. At the time two facts seemed 
particularly conducive to such an endeavor: (i) The increasing 
use of English as the main language of scientific exchanges. 
(ii) The possibility of easy and quick 
communications between researchers through the Internet. 
However, the objective of setting up cross-national 
collaborations through the Internet 
turned out to be somewhat too ambitious. 
It can be observed, nevertheless, that 
the Internet indeed brought about a 
revolution in the availability of data which is perhaps 
of the same magnitude as the extension of the observation 
field achieved through the invention of the microscope 
back in the seventeenth century. 
Unfortunately, this revolution did not yet 
produce a corresponding multiplication and 
extension of comparative studies. 
 
That's why the objectives set by this list 
probably are still opportune and timely. 
I welcome in advance any 
suggestion coming from list members as to what 
should (and can) be done. 
If you wish to write 
to me personally rather than to the list, please 
use the following address: roehner@lpthe.jussieu.fr 
 
Before closing this message let me briefly summarize 
some of the list's achievements (note that all these 
documents can be found on the list archive). 
 
a) The list circulated a questionnaire among list members 
which in particular provided information about 
their language abilities. As the language barrier 
still is an important limiting 
factor in the development of comparative analysis, that 
information may be useful in subsequent stages. 
 
b) The list posted information about some of the 
world's largest libraries; that information 
in particular included number 
of volumes and Internet addresses of the catalogs. 
 
c) The list posted a comprehensive (but of course by no means 
exhaustive) set of references of books containing 
comparative studies. 
 
d) On the occasion of the 2000 Millennium the list posted 
a paper explaining how recurrent events can be used in order 
to make fairly reliable predictions. 
By the way, this methodology was 
subsequently applied to predicting the course of the 
NASDAQ Composite index over the period 2000-2006, a forecast 
which so far turned out to be fairly accurate 
(for more details see the summary of 
"Hidden Collective Factors in Speculative Trading") 
on my website (mentioned above). 
 
  With all my best wishes, 
 
          Bertrand Roehner 
 
 
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