On the Necessity of Error - Blueprint for a Gonzo History

Praise be for the bumbling inventors, those ramshackle pioneers, those noble experimenters who are responsible for so much. They have contributed to humanity, and not just through their toils and successes, but through their mistakes, their deviations from convention, their erroneous judgements. In error lies progress, for errors produce innovation. It is the flawed mimicry of greatness that sometimes produces greatness, the unsuccessful attempt to appropriate some vision, dream or precedent that results in a new perspective or methodology. Some regard their existing state of affairs as wrong and thus attempt to change it. Others try to perpetuate that state of affairs and are betrayed in doing so by their endeavours to translate some aspect through themselves, wishing to hold true to the original yet losing or changing something in that translation. In Art it is the inability to capture the visual essence of something or the failed adoption of some previous style that produces beauty, in literature a defiance of the rules of clear communication makes language colourful and exciting. Yet, to admit such a process seems anathema to the very basis of knowledge. Orthodoxy states that the inductive process learns from mistakes and thus corrects itself; inversion of this statement is far better – the inductive process should only be valued in its capacity to produce mistakes.

Modernity, and perhaps thinkers before that period, wishes to see the world as it really is, the truthful nature of the universe, universal and correct, free from the limits of perspective that a mere individual human has. I would wonder, though, whether they would really want this, for to see the world as it really is would make it seem cold and lifeless, bleak and futile. We would be mere collections of atoms chemically linked for a while before being dispersed into the cosmos. Rationality would defeat itself, for there would be no need to do much at all, given the obvious finalities of our existence. Thus, the irrational must be present in even the most scientific of investigations to some degree. It is its lifeblood and progenitor. This irrationality is not truthful, it is an erroneous perception of the world but it is vitally, vitally important. Of course, if we indulge in this irrationality we perhaps become as animals and would lose the many benefits of modernity, which have improved the material condition of lives. How, then, should these two aspects of the human condition interact? How is a balance to be obtained? For the most part, people find their own balance and this is probably the best way, though, those who can often try to manipulate the balance and direct it – irrationality is indeed potentially dangerous.
The point should be not to change society on some grand scale, merely a greater acceptance of a playful irresponsibility whenever possible. This is the reasoning behind the Gonzo History Journal and thus it would wholly improper to castigate, demean or condescend the defining ethos of this most academic of academic journals.