Wikipedia has something to say about classical mythology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clio
In Greek mythology, Clio (/ˈkli.oʊ/ or, more rarely, /ˈklaɪ.oʊ/; Greek: Κλειώ, Kleiṓ; “made famous” or “to make famous”), also spelled Kleio,[1] is the muse of history,[2] or in a few mythological accounts, the muse of lyre playing.[3] Like all the muses, she is a daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Mnemosyne. Along with her sisters, she was considered to dwell at either Mount Helicon or Mount Parnassos.[2] Other common locations for the Muses were Pieria in Thessaly, near to Mount Olympus.[3] She had one son, Hyacinth, with one of several kings, in various myths—with Pierus or with king Oebalus of Sparta, or with king Amyclas,[4] progenitor of the people of Amyclae, dwellers about Sparta. Some sources say she was also the mother of Hymenaios.[citation needed] Other accounts credit her as the mother of Linus, a poet who was buried at Argos, although Linus has a number of differing parents depending upon the account, including several accounts in which he is the son of Clio’s sisters Urania or Calliope.[5]
All of the Muses were considered to be the best practitioners of their fields, and any mortal challenging them in their sphere was destined to be defeated. They were often associated with Apollo. The most common number of the Muses is 9, but the number is not always consistent in earlier mythologies.[3] Hesiod is usually considered to have set their number, names, and spheres of interest in his poem Theogony.[6]
Clio, sometimes referred to as “the Proclaimer”, is often represented with an open scroll of parchment scroll or a set of tablets. The name is etymologically derived from the Greek root κλέω/κλείω (meaning “to recount,” “to make famous,”[7] or “to celebrate”).[8]
In her capacity as “the proclaimer, glorifier and celebrator of history, great deeds and accomplishments,”[9] Clio is the namesake of various modern brands, including the Clio Awards for excellence in advertising. The Cleo of Alpha Chi society at Trinity College is named after the muse. ‘Clio’ also represents history in some coined words in academic usage: cliometrics, cliodynamics.
Flynne’s science fiction novel ‘In the Country of the Blind’ depicts a secret cabal of victorian engineers, calling themselves cliologists, that use Babbage Engines to cultivate ideons (memes) intended to influence culture. In the novel, the continued existance of clandestine organisations engaged in cliology is brought upto the modern day.
I openly admit, I did and still do, take the underlying ideas seriously, and have adopted “Cliology” as a tag for cultural engineering employing memetic theory. Notwithstanding the stalling of academics and their derailing of the memetic research programme, cliology is about engineering, taking real world action. It is not about whether a theory is true, but whether a principle works. This website is about all that.
The term ‘sensu lato’ (meaning in the broad sense), used in fields such of biology, can come into frequent play in cliology. Many of the commonplace meanings hereby take on their broader meaning.
Clio is an appropriate muse for such thinking (and a great prefix). As wikipedia says, she is the proclaimer, the muse of history and fame – ie. to recount, to make famous, to celebrate. To just say that Clio is the muse of history, given its common association, is often backwards facing. A muse, though, as some idealised metaphysical anthropomorism of the human condition, like any immortal “god” or “angel” concept, trancends time. To be “the proclaimer” also becomes apt in considering that history is not restricted to the past, but, sensu lato, is also of the present and future. The scrolls she posesses, are of all time.
Cliology is then the mortal attempt to read the scrolls, hermeneutically and scientifically. The scrolls document the timeless dynamics of history or Cliodynamics as Turchin puts it. The underlying processes of history are eternal, even if the details differ. Demystifying the mechanisms that gave us what has gone by, gives us an eye to a (however inaccruate or incomple) glipse of what may be, and hence Flynne’s title which reflects, from Rabbinical texts, “in the street of the blind, the one-eyed man is called the guiding light”. Cliology is extrapolation; not fortune telling. Moreover and above forcasting, an understanding of the fundamental dynamics of history, provides some apprehension of the consequences of our actions thereby enabling decisions to be made that support more favourable consequences. In accordance with the strapline of this site, as taken from Peter Drucker, ‘ the best way to predict the futrue is to create it!’ Cliology then, extends the mortal quest to the writing of Clio’s scrolls.
But Clio is a muse, she plays music! This is not the music that we conventionally mean when thinking of music, and, while Clio is depicted as playing a lyre, Euterpe presides over our commonplace sense of what Euterpean music means. But as music is a sequence of tones that affect our perceptions, sensu lato, the music of Clio is a sequence of events with a rhythm, harmony, and tempo all of its own: it has a regular pattern. Pehaps then, she is playing history on her lyre. Perhaps also, the tunes she plays, where catchy, accounts for history embedded in our corpus of cultural memories and artifacts (as found in museums). Fame then, again sensu lato, is not simply our usual empshasis on stardom, but rather the process of recytle of Clio’s repetoir that permeates throughout human culture.
The patterns of music, any music, have structure; they have form. So too, do patterns of Clio’s music as played on different strings of her lyre, which can be thought of as akin to notes on a musical manuscript. It is true that other musics have notations: the dances of Terpsichore by such as Stepanov’s notation, or even Urania’s astrological charts. These notations principally document an analogue static structure to the dynamic structure of performance: notes are a form per form. Part of Cliology’s aspiration is in formal notation, in providing formula such that future music of history may be composed and performed.