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Abstract

The distinctions between, on the one hand, predictability and unpredictability and,  on the other, conservation and change are not homologous. Rather, they represent two modes of transformation often associated with two forms of historical narration — one event-based, the other based on “longue durée” — which can be distinguished according to dichotomies such as slow / accelerated, gradual / explosive, symmetrical / asymmetrical, anonymous / recognizable. The “predicted” or “unpredicted” character of an event is, in fact, a function of the perspective and the scale of analysis one adopts. Thus, in many historical processes, it is
from the slow formation of barely visible correlations that “explosive” events suddenly emerge ; Franciscu Sedda 41 conversely, the concatenation of events that are in themselves scarcely notable can conceal a
decisive transformation of seemingly stable structures.