General Necessities and Particular Contingencies

The Joy of Cooking is now over 75 years old. It was originally written by a widow in her 50's who was reacting to the lack of a pragmatic cookbook on the market. It grew into a large enterprise with historical eccentricities that helped make it unique. This history inspires loyalty.

But if it had never been, there would have been something else that filled its place with different idiosyncrasies. As long as this other possible cookbook was useful, the uniqueness of it would have inspired loyalty.

There are general necessities that could have been filled by any cookbook. The Joy of Cooking happened to be the one to fill that general meme niche with its particular contingencies; but it easily could have been another cookbook to satisfy this general necessity with different particular contingencies.

Holy Books are the same way. There is a general necessity, a meme niche, that is filled by magic books. The particular contingencies, the unique idiosyncrasies, of these books could have been otherwise.

Another example: there is a general need for measuring time, but the particularly weird method we use didn't have to be this way -- we could easily be using a base 10 numbering system for time rather than base 60. We need to measure time (general necessity or meme niche) but we don't have to measure time in this way (particular contingencies).

It is wrong to think that our method of measuring time must be this way. It is wrong to think that a cookbook must have been written this way. It is wrong to think that the Bible must have been written this way. Something else with different particular contingencies could have filled that general necessity just as easily.