Would you seize a chance to rewrite history if you could ? It might seem tempting, but a bigger question is even if you do so, does it really matter ? Changing a leaf or two doesn’t redefine an entire tree. What it does is throw your life’s worth into the noise — since the changes you make, whether over a few decades or a few days, won’t endure. History isn’t defined by our attempts to alter it; it’s defined by how those interferences are eventually cast aside.

Imagine a river, a continuous and flowing entity shaped by countless drops of water. Each drop, following its own unique path, can be seen as a metaphor for individual human experiences or events in history. If you were to ask a single drop to recount the history of the river, it could only tell you about its personal journey — its path, its encounters with other drops, and its interaction with obstacles. This story, while true, is just a tiny fraction of the river’s complete history, and might even diverge from the grand narrative. To get the bigger picture, one needs a broader perspective, one needs to observe the flow as a whole, looking at how it evolves over years, decades and centuries. This involves examining the patterns of flow, how erosion changed the landscape, and how the river responded to weather and terrain. Instead of riding in a boat on the river and flow along it, this requires stepping back and observing the water body from above.

Similarly, to grasp the full scope of human history, one must move beyond isolated events and personal stories to consider holistic changes influenced by the collective human actions. Each person (like the drops) involved in an event has a unique perspective, shaped by personal emotions, experiences, biases, and circumstances. These personal narratives provide valuable insights into specific moments in time, but they are inherently limited in scope. Biases stem from the individual’s limited understanding of the broader context or unawareness of the grand scheme of things. For instance, a soldier may not fully grasp the true motives or far-reaching intentions of the commander, just as the commander may be unaware of any changes in the chief’s decisions that shape the course of the war. Some play the game, while most are merely played. The approach focusing on the path of individual actions while provide a rich and detailed view of specific experiences, it does not offer a comprehensive understanding of the broader dynamics at play, just as tracking individual drops fails to reveal the overall behavior of a river.

Collective trend vs. isolated events: To gain a more complete understanding of history, we must adopt a holistic perspective. This means looking at history from a distance, examining the collective movements and patterns that emerge over time. It involves studying broad trends and shifts, such as technological advancements, economic developments, social structures, and cultural transformations, rather than focusing solely on individuals. This broader approach helps understand how civilization rises and falls, how societies adapt and sustain. By observing the “flow” of human civilization over long periods, patterns and correlations can be identified that might not be visible when examining isolated events or individual accounts.

An Inspiration from Statistical Physics: The idea discussed above parallels the concepts of statistical physics, where the behavior of a system is understood not by tracking each particles but by analysing the overall distribution of states and properties. In statistical physics, we recognise that while the behavior of any single particle is stochastic and therefore unpredictable, the aggregate behavior of a large group follows established physical laws. Similarly, in history, the actions of individuals may be unpredictable, but the collective behavior of large groups of people often reveals underlying trends and patterns. Isaac Asimov’s concept of “psychohistory” adopts this idea from statistical physics, combining history, sociology, and mathematics to predict the future of large populations. The goal is not to predict individual actions but rather to understand the collective trends of masses, much like how statistical physics predicts the behavior of gases or fluids in bulk.

And it is all about time. Time plays a crucial role both in flow of fluids and flow of society. Understanding the evolution of fluid flow requires observing it over a long period. Each event or process has its own characteristic time scale — one must first find this scale to decide how much time can be called “long enough”. For one thing, this can be merely a millionth of a second, while for another, this can be hundreds of years. “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough” — a profound reflection by Rabindranath Tagore on the essence of time. A biblical saying goes: in the eyes of God, even the mountains flow (this acted as an inspiration for the definition of the Deborah number in Rheology after the prophetess Deborah. This non-dimensional number compares the relaxation time of a material to the observation time).  When viewed on God’s infinite timescale, mountains can be seen as fluid, gradually shifting and changing form. However, this movement is so slow that it remains imperceptible to humans within the limits of their finite lifespans. In history, a more neutral and comprehensive account emerges only after enough time has passed to allow for a broader perspective. Immediate participants in historical events are often too close to the events, and their narratives are colored by personal biases and emotions. As time progresses and those directly affected by the events pass away, a more detached, objective view can be constructed. Historians then get a chance to synthesise and analyse various accounts, and integrate them with other evidences to build a more comprehensive understanding of the events.

If anything, one must wait. By looking at the broader patterns and forces at play, we can gain a deeper understanding of the complex, interconnected nature of history, much like observing the collective flow of a water-body. To uncover the full truth, one must be patient enough to let time reveal it, one must wait, one must wait enough.