“History never repeats itself, but it rhymes”. This is something Mark Twain never said. It is attributed to him, though. It doesn’t matter. It’s both a beautiful and tragic quote. We are not condemned to repeat history. History is itself repetition. Yet, as we know, history never repeats. Not identically. But what is repetition but am evolving pattern? This is where history and music cross. History is a display of themes and their variations. History rhymes, it is periodic. That’s why it seems familiar, no matter how far in time. Yet we can’t predict it. Sometimes, as we study it, we convince ourselves to have heard the big symphony of human time… the structures dissolves into a rhapsody. We could say that history is fractal, as it exhibits the exotic property of self-similarity along its infinite display.
Arturo Romero Contreras Profesor Investigador en Filosofía BUAP/ Professor Researcher in Philosophy BUAP, Mexico