{
  "id": "lessons-of-history.past-model",
  "term": "lessons of history",
  "sense": "past-model",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 19,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "The past read as a model of what current acts will do, so walls are set now where past acts were read as crossing one.",
  "folk_gloss": "what past events are said to teach about how to act now",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "past.temporal",
      "read.information",
      "model.representation",
      "current.present",
      "act.deed",
      "wall.range-end",
      "set.fix",
      "time.dimension",
      "cross.pass",
      "history.record",
      "narrative.self-story"
    ],
    "interaction": "History is compressed into a model and then run forward on the current case; which past is chosen as the model sets the walls, so dispute over the lesson is dispute over which story the self keeps.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "the past used to predict, not to honour",
      "walls set by analogy",
      "the choice of precedent as the real decision"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "George Santayana wrote in The Life of Reason (1905) that 'those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it'.",
      "domain": "philosophy"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "never-again.past-wall",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "never again fixes one wall from one event; lessons read a general model from many"
    },
    {
      "id": "track-record.model-and",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "a track record models one thing's own past; lessons model any past as a guide"
    },
    {
      "id": "history.record",
      "type": "abstracts",
      "note": "the record read as a model rather than kept as a record"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "history teaches",
    "lesson of history",
    "lessons of history",
    "the lesson of history",
    "the lessons of history"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-09-29",
    "confidence": 0.85,
    "sources": [
      "schema/power-agency-phase.md"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-lessons-of-history.past-model"
}