The household revolution

Every household has it: a vacuum cleaner. For how could you clean your house without it? Especially your carpets? Impossible, you think. Nevertheless, until about 125 years ago, vacuum cleaners didn’t exist. Till then, you had to swipe your rooms and to beat out the rugs outside. You had a special instrument for that: the carpet-beater. It was a lot of work. At the end of the 19th century, the first vacuum cleaners were launched, but they were yet impractical. This changed with the invention of the portable electric vacuum cleaner in 1907 by James Murray Sprangler. One year later, the Hoover Suction Sweeper Company brought an i
mproved version on the market. Although it weighed 20kg, it was the start of the successful introduction of vacuum cleaners in every household.
The invention of the vacuum cleaner illustrates an important revolution that took place a hundred years ago: the Household Revolution. Although for centuries humanity had made progress in many respects, the organization of domestic work had hardly changed. The invention of agriculture had changed how people feed themselves, how they work, how they live together (the rise of cities), and so on. The use of metals for producing tools and weapons also had such an impact, as had many other discoveries and inventions as well. Although these innovations influenced also the daily life at home, one thing remained the same: all household work still had to be done by hand. From the time of the Roman Empire and far before till the mid-19th century all household work was done basically in the same way: peeling and cutting the vegetables; washing the cloths one by one; preserving the food; everything that you did at home had to be done by hand, for machines to make the work easier hardly existed. Only the tricks to do so were different from culture to culture. When you were rich, you could hire servants for doing the work or you could outsource the work to specialized firms, but the work itself was done in the same way: by hand. “What a slave work!”, as Henri Lefebvre remarks. There were no fridges, no washing machines, no vacuum cleaners; nothing. But this all changed around 1900. And not only the household work as such changed, because it became easier, the household appliances saved also much time that people could use for doing something else.
The revolution didn’t come suddenly. The introduction of new household appliances took decades and may not have been completed until around 1970, but in the end it changed the household work everywhere, even in that way that also rich people began to do it themselves. Moreover, the technological change was not limited to appliances that made the household work easier. At the same, time there were also many changes in the field of communication and amusement, like the introduction of the telephone, radio and television and cars. These products were not only introduced in the households, but they became also part of the world around. The result was that life at home didn’t only become easier, but life at home as such changed. People greatly changed their live patterns at home; housewives got more free time, which stimulated their emancipation; also the way people had contact with family and friends changed. While once long winter evenings at home were filled with board games, reading, talking, making music, etc., now people listened to the radio (and later watched TV). It had also become easier to go out and people had more time to go out. The amusement outdoors had become different, for instance by the arrival of the cinema and the rise of sport clubs and other clubs. Life got a new dimension.
Actually, I should call this household revolution the First Household Revolution. Not long after its end, a Second Household Revolution took place: The invention of the computer – especially the personal computer – and the internet, soon followed by the invention of the smartphone. Although this revolution is still going on, it is already certain that these inventions have revolutionized daily life. They have caused already such changes, that it is almost impossible to think how everyday life could go on without digital appliances. The essence of this revolution is that it revolutionized the way we communicate and the way we get and use information. Should I have to typify both revolutions, then I would say that the first one changed how we act, while the second one how we think. The first one made life easier, the second one fundamentally different. One main consequence of the second revolution is that humans have become more individualistic but also more impressionable.
What has been brought by the Second Household Revolution? Because it is still going on, I will limit myself to a few keywords and to brief indications: individualisation, globalisation; change in the way we communicate (that we are accessible at any time and for everybody, for instance); changes in banking, research, production, automatization, education, health care; entertainment. Should I add more? This revolution changes not only your way of life but also your style of life. Or rather, you don’t only express yourself in a different way, but this revolution makes you different as a person. With this also the household work changes. Soon, everything in your household will work fully via the internet. You only need to program your personal settings and all devices at home will work according to your wishes, unless the internet is down, of course. Oh, don’t forget the password, in case you need a new modem (but who will enter all passwords for you?)

Sources
- Wikipedia. “The vacuum cleaner”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_cleaner
- Henri Lefebvre, Critique de la vie quotidienne. Édition intégrale. Montreuil: L’Arche, 2024 ; p. 667.

Random quote
It was accepted as a fact of civilization and an acquisition of culture that discussions degenerated when they used the argument “ad hominem”.

Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991)

A priori reasoning

A priori according to Chat GPT

In these blogs, I have often paid attention to fallacies, so false or deceptive argumentations. Fallacies are often not committed intentionally, so as a deliberate way of manipulation. On the contrary, people usually usually believe in the truth of their false reasonings. This leads often to the drama of explaining the truth: It is one thing to unmask an imposter; it is another thing to disappoint someone. Often the latter is not more than that, but in extreme cases it can also happen that disproving a false argument makes that the world of the person who believed in it collapses. Nevertheless, it is important to expose fallacies, for a world based on false truths makes no sense, even if it is the little world of one person.
It is often difficult to convince others of the falsity of their reasonings. Besides that there may be psychological barriers to accept criticism, reasonings are often complicated, even to that extent that the most-expert minds sometimes make mistakes. Initially, persons not experienced in logical reasoning can also have problems to understand them. Reasoning has to be learned. And then there may be practical reasons why false reasonings cannot be uncovered. In political discussions, for example, the time each speaker gets is often limited, and how to convince each person of the public of the debate? In practice, personal appearance, debating tricks, etc. are more important for a speaker to convince others than what the speaker is saying, even in case what the speaker says is false.
One of the most difficult false reasonings is, I think, the a priori argument; not because it is so difficult to unmask but because of the emotional consequences that this unmasking may have for the person concerned, often leading to a psychological blockade to accept the falseness of his or her argument. The a priori argument – rationalization, dogmatism or proof texting, which are all varieties of this type of reasoning – is (see link above) “a corrupt argument from logos, starting with a given, pre-set belief, dogma, doctrine, scripture verse, ‘fact’ or conclusion and then searching for any reasonable or reasonable-sounding argument to rationalize, defend or justify it.” It is a kind of reasoning much used by ideologists and fundamentalists, but, in fact, saying so would give a false picture of this fallacy, as if only some unflexible minds would use this kind of false reasoning. Actually, any argumentation from unproved suppositions belongs to this category. Such a supposition is then believed but not proved, as a kind of Archimedean point. And this is just the weak point of this kind of reasoning: Why should the argument based on the supposition be true if we don’t know that the supposition itself is true? There is nothing against reasoning from suppositions as a kind of thought experiment, but a reasoning doesn’t become true by simply supposing or believing that its suppositions and the argumentation based on it are true, while in fact there is no evidence beyond this supposing or believing. At most, we can say that the reasoning is an option, not that it is true.
The a priori fallacy is related to the fallacy “appeal to ignorance”, discussed in another blog. This is (see here, #15) “the fallacy that since we don’t know (or can never know, or cannot prove) whether a claim is true or false, it must be false, or it must be true.” But if we don’t know whether a claim is true or false, how can we know then whether it is true or false? The website just quoted mentions this example of this fallacy: “Scientists are never going to be able to positively prove their crazy theory that humans evolved from other creatures, because we weren't there to see it! So, that proves the Genesis six-day creation account is literally true as written!” No, for what we don’t know (couldn’t see, in this case) cannot prove anything. Note that this quote includes some other fallacies, namely “appeal to ridicule” and “attacking the evidence”, and a few more (see the last link above; the “appeal to ridicule” is discussed in Bad Arguments by Arp et.al.).
There are some more fallacies to which the a priori argument is related. Especially, I want to mention yet “begging the question”: A conclusion is derived from premises that presuppose the conclusion. Often, in a priori reasonings the a priori supposition is considered reasonable or true because of the argument based on it, while the argument seems reasonable because of the suppositions. Fallacies seldom come alone.

Random quote
Economic values are the product of opinions

Émile Durkheim (1858-1917)

Chance

Fortune has many sides and can fall in many ways

The subject I am going to discuss in this blog is a bit tricky. It is not so that as such it is difficult (it is, but that’s not the problem), but the concept I want to treat is a bit difficult to translate into English. In Dutch we call it “toeval” and for this blog I have translated it as “chance”, which, to my mind, is the word that best covers the Dutch concept. However, actually both words do not cover exactly the same ideas. The internet translator reverso.net translates “toeval” also as coincidence and accident. So, if this blog is a bit confusing to you, it may have a linguistic background. Doesn’t the Sapir-Whorf thesis say that our language determines how we think? Although the strict interpretation of this thesis is not right, there is a kernel of truth in it.
Anyway, I want to try to understand what it means that things happen unexpectedly to us; that we did not foresee them; and that we couldn’t foresee them in our present situation. They are not predicted and not predictable, at least not at the moment they happen to us. They just happen and we don’t know why. If they are not random, they have at least an air of randomness. Therefore, we have to live with such ev
ents as they happen. They happen by chance or by accident.
Now you may think: “What happens happens and I can only adapt myself to what happens to me unexpectedly. If it is positive for me I have luck and if it is negative I have bad luck.” However, it is not as simple as that. For such an attitude supposes a unitary idea of chance (“toeval”), while in fact there is not one type of chance that happens and that’s it. Chance has many faces, or rather, there are several types of chance. Each type requires other reactions or makes other reactions possible. Following Jeroen Hopster in his recent book about chance (especially chapter1), I want to distinguish six types (and without a doubt you can find a few more).

1) Things happen as they happen because the world is shaped that way. Is your child a boy or a girl? You had no influence on it. It just happened. At least that is the present situation for most of us. Or take the colour of your eyes: Nobody had an influence on it. It was decided “by nature”. That such things happen is a matter of existential chance.
2) Chance as contingency. Things happen as they happen but could easily have gone in a different way. A footballer wants to score a goal, but just then a gull flies by and the ball hits the gull, so that the keeper can catch the ball. If the gull hadn’t been at the same place, because the wind was blowing a little bit harder, the match would have gone differently.
3) In a general way, I spoke already of “by accident”. However, chance as such can be accidental. In a narrow way we can say that something happens by accident or that what happens is incidental and doesn’t belong to the essence of what is happening. The steeplechase runner falls, not because he has touched one of the obstacles, but because there happened to be a stone on the track that he hadn’t seen. That he should jump over the obstacles belongs to the essence of the race, but the stone should not have been there and should have been removed by one of the officials.
4) Things can also happen by coincidence: Coincidental chance. Things happen to go together and are seen as meaningful for that reason, but they were not planned to go together. I take the train to Utrecht and meet by chance a friend in the hall of the Central Railway Station. However, my train was late and had it been in time, we hadn’t met, because we hadn’t appointed to meet.
5) Chance as a matter of statistics, so statistical chance (not to be confused with the next point). Population distributions often have a certain pattern. Statistically, pop concerts are more visited by younger people and concerts of early music more by older people. If you like both kinds of music and you want to meet young people, when you go to a concert this evening, go then to a pop concert. If you want to meet old people, go then to a concert of early music (but avoid there the musicians, since they are often young!),
6) Often we don’t know the determining factors of what happens, but we know that there are regularities in what happens. Then we can only resort to probability theory in order to explain what is happening, if we can. But I think that in the human sciences we can ignore this type of chance, since it is probably only a useful concept in physics and biology.

Chance has many faces. It is covered by many concepts: existence, contingency, accident (in a neutral meaning), coincidence, statistics and probability. In Dutch these faces are summarized by the word toeval. In English, we can call it “chance”, although this is maybe a little artificial. However, the idea is the same: What happens to us in an unforeseen way, unpredicted and unpredictably, without a known reason, or accidentally cannot be seen as the consequence of a general abstract phenomenon. For practical reasons we can say “it just happened” and we go on with what we are doing, but if we want to understand what happened, we must explain what we mean with this “it just happened”. There is no chance as such but there are only chances. But there are also chances in a different way, and not only in the way described above. For each chance is not only an event that just happens but also an opportunity and possibly a lucky coincidence you can profit by. What actually was a contingent coincidence that happened by accident and may have not been statistically very likely may turn out well for your existence, if you seize the chance.

Random quote
The learning of many things does not teach understanding

Heraclitus (about 540-480 BC)

Montaigne in Innsbruck

“a very beautiful little town and well built, standing in the bottom of the valley..."

When the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) was 47 years old, he decided to make a long journey through Europe. Why exactly he made this journey is not known. Was it only for pleasure? A kind of “Grand Tour”? Did he have a secret mission? We don’t know. What we do know is when he made the trip and which places he visited, for Montaigne kept a diary of his journey. It has apparently been written for private purposes only. He didn’t mention it in his Essays and it was found 180 only years after his death.
Montaigne didn’t travel alone. He was accompanied by four other gentlemen, including his youngest brother, plus a number of servants. After having arrived in Rome, Montaigne travelled without the company of the other gentlemen. They left Paris in September 1580, and went via Augsburg and Munich in Germany through Austria to Venice, Florence and Rome in Italy. From Rome Montaigne made also a round trip through central Italy. He returned to France in 1581, when the king had ordered him to do so, because he had appointed him mayor of Bordeaux. Montaigne did so reluctantly and he didn’t hurry to reach Bordeaux. 

Fernand II

One of the places where Montaigne stayed during his travel was Innsbruck, in Tirol in Austria. This summer I spent a holiday near this town, and I decided to take photos of places visited there by Montaigne. After his stay in Seefeld in Austria, which I have described in another blog (see here), Montaigne’s next stop was Innsbruck, where he (and his company; but I’ll leave this mostly implicit) arrived in the evening. Innsbruck was (and still is) the capital of Tirol, and it was also the residence of Fernand II, Archduke of Austria. Montaigne describes Innsbruck as “a very beautiful little town and well built, standing in the bottom of the valley and full of fountains and running water… The houses are almost all built terraced, and we found lodgment at the ‘Rose’.”

The Golden Rose today

There are still many fountains in Innsbruck, and also “the Rose”, usually called “the Golden Rose”, is still there, although it is no longer an inn. Since about 40 years this old inn from the 14th century houses a shop of a well-known glass crystal company. The day after his arrival, Montaigne makes a trip to Hall, a town situated two miles east of Innsbruck and known by its salt industry. Hall has several beautiful churches, so Montaigne, and he tells us that he visited the church of the Jesuits there (just as he had visited the church of the Jesuits in Innsbruck).

Hall, Church of the Jesuites

When I was in Hall, I found the church closed, but an information board on the front wall told me that the present church dates from 1608, so it must have been the chapel of the Jesuits, built in 1573, that Montaigne visited. Also the church of the Jesuits in Innsbruck visited by Montaigne was another one than the present baroque church from the 17th century.
On their way back from Hall to Innsbruck Montaigne and his company decides to pay a visit to Archduke Fernand, who stayed at that moment in his castle in Amras, halfway Hall and Innsbruck. Also in the morning, on their way to Hall, Montaigne c.s. had tried to see the archduke, but the archduke had given the message that he was too busy to receive them. Actually, it was, as a court official told them, because the archduke didn’t like the French. They even didn’t get permission to visit the castle, built in 1563 and

The Ambras Castle

housing a large art collection. So, Montaigne returned a bit irritated to Innsbruck, where he turned his steps to the Hofkirche (Court Church): “We next saw in a church eighteen magnificent bronze statues of the princes and princesses of the house of Austria.” What Montaigne doesn’t tell us is that this church houses the tomb of the Austrian Emperor Maximillian I (1459-1519) (The tomb is a cenotaph and the body of the Emperor has been

Innsbruck, Hofkirche

buried in Vienna). It’s true that the tomb was then still under construction, so Montaigne will not have seen it in all its glory. The bronze statues, which Montaigne does mention, surround the tomb as a guard of honour. Maximilian’s idea was that he wanted to be surrounded by his ancestors and role models. Montaigne writes that he saw eighteen statues there, though in fact there are 28, the last one being cast already in 1550. A mistake?

Cenotaphe of Maximilian I surrounded 
by bronze statues

After having left the church, Montaigne “went to sup with the Cardinal of Austria and the Marquis of Burgant, sons of the archduke”. No, not as a guest but as a spectator, for in those days it was customary to watch the meals of princes, as if it were a spectacle, as my Dutch edition of Montaigne’s travel diary explains.
The next day Montaigne left Innsbruck and travelled via the Brenner pass to Sterzing (Vipiteno) (see here).