Positivism

Vridar offers a few observations. Past the theatrical land-acknowledgement headtilting, we learn of Positivism. I haven't really evolved a philosophy of history; just hearing about Foucault last year.

For Vridar, Positivism comes from Hempel. Hempel argued to discover predictable cause-effect relationships. The aim is for historical laws. If such laws exist... first up, that's Asimovian psychohistory, so woohoo. But also we can apply Bayes' theorem to solve ancient mysteries like, was Henry Beauclerc of the Normans aware that brother William II Rufus was about to die.

For Vridar, at stake is if we can say anything about the historical Jesus. He's in a conflict with Richard Carrier. Carrier is a Positivist. Carrier suggests that the Jewish Scriptural Canon, as of our first century, was already setting up messianic expectations. Maybe the Psalter wasn't intended as prophecy, but prophets were already mining, say, Psalm 72.

All this, Vridar warns, means that a hero was being set up. We barely need the man. This is what Life of Brian was getting across, that even a total loser could be imbued with the mantle, whether he wanted it or not. The Joke^TM was that this was happening to luckless Brian in his own time, the Romans reacting with trademark semiïnformed callous brutality.