6 ms·

Bear in mind that anthropologists are not historians. Anthropologists are dedicated to the study of human culture, which is related to but no the same as the st

Bear in mind that anthropologists are not historians. Anthropologists are dedicated to the study of human culture, which is related to but no the same as the study of human history. Guns, Germs, and Steel chiefly argued that geography was a much stronger determining factor in the development of human societies than culture. Unsurprising that those dedicated to studying human culture weren't a fan of this framing. Contrary to the claims made in that subreddit, Diamond's high level points have been widely influential and positively received by historians. The claims made in that subreddit are not at all representative of the attitude my university history professors had towards Diamond's work. Furthermore the claims that the book promotes a racist outlook is absurd. Guns, Germs, and Steel is one of the most anti-racist explanations to the disparities in levels of development that there is. One of the chief points of the book is that these disparities are due to being in the right place at the right time rather than racial superiority.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
SomeOldThrow 7y ago
/r/AskHistorians disagrees generally: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search/?q=jared%20diamond&restrict_sr=1&sort=top https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search/?q=jared%20dia... I think it's easiest to just call him a geographer, that really fits his work the best, and his most interesting ideas are geographical at their core. Nonetheless, the idea that geographic determinism is mainstream among historians is not true. I'd imagine it's assigned in the early years of college because it has broad appeal across disciplines.
- manfredo 7y ago
  And over half a dozen historians at my university spoke highly of the book when I discussed it with them. I'm going to put the opinions of history professors above anonymous posters on the internet. Many mainstream historians are shifting away from the "great man" style of history that puts emphasis on culture and actions of individuals, and towards a more geographic lens of history. The bulk of the criticism I've encountered (besides attempts to equate it with racist environmental determinism akin to Herodotus) are that it gave insufficient attention to advancements in human knowledge and understanding that changed the landscape of advantageous and disadvantageous geography. This doesn't hold much water, from what I could see in the book. In fact, one of the central points of the book is that access to the New World (which was brought by advances in maritime navigation) drastically altered the course of Western European history. Prior to that, South and East Asia were broadly speaking more developed than European societies with greater population density and larger urban centers.
  - SomeOldThrow 7y ago
    If you actually read through the responses in the search I linked, you'll notice that the discussion is a little more nuanced than "it's perfect" or "it's trash". It's certainly not perfect in terms of analysis of historical evidence—there are far too few primary sources to support his claims directly, and the trends he points out can be picked apart in particular—but it still has compelling evidence that would be considered valid in other disciplines. I suspect your own professors had a more nuanced opinion than simply "spoke highly of". That doesn't sound like an academic to me. Additionally, you should check the subreddit out. It's very aggressively moderated and many of the posters are openly credentialed professors or are actively doing graduate research. I have found it's also a great place to keep your eyes open for preprints.
    - manfredo 7y ago
      I did read through the responses. The highest upvoted comment on the post "What do you think of Guns, Germs and Steel?" comes from someone that explicitly says that they are not a historian. The bulk of the criticism comes in the form of people alleging environmental determinism and the denial of human agency, which isn't actually a criticism of the book but rather a rejection of book's core claim that geography is a more decisive factor in human development than society and culture. That, and a healthy helping of people alleging western chauvinism, despite Diamond explicitly rejecting the narratives of Western social or racial superiority and pointing out that Western Europe made little contributions to Eurasian development until the mid-late 2nd millennium AD. Sure, my conversations with professors were more nuanced: one talked about how the geographic analysis prompted them to examine history through the lens of quantifying available resources to a society and levels of urbanization. They agreed with the core theses of the book, and said that it offered good refutations to the common layman's narrative of Western cultural superiority. I could spend the rest of my evening recounting the conversations in the comments here but for the purposes of this discussion saying that they "spoke highly of" the book conveys what is necessary.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
wahern 7y ago
> these disparities are due to being in the right place at the right time rather than racial superiority The problem is that many of the supposed adaptive phenotypes were conjecture or based on poor science. Such sloppy characterizations, when combined with the seeming authoritative weight of genetics, is fodder for racism. It's like the stereotype in the U.S. that blacks are genetically better at singing and sports. It's a "compliment" that actually serves to justify racism--the implied corollary is that to be good at those things is to be maladaptive at intellectual endeavors. There's no real scientific evidence to back it up. What "evidence" exists is far better explained by environmental factors (i.e. racism), but superficially it all seems intuitive because the entire society is constructed upon that narrative. (Actually, traits like athleticism positively correlate with intelligence, but that's irrelevant because the stereotype was flawed from inception.) The only way to suppress such racist tendencies in humanity (to characterize and group people en masse and to rationalize post hoc our behaviors) is to be highly skeptical about proposed substantive genetic differences, particularly those which seemingly justify existing cultural or social differences. When they do exist they almost never (if at all) operate in the way we originally believed. Even recent scientific history (as in past couple of decades) is littered with hypotheses and evidence of this sort that turned out to be faulty.
- xondono 7y ago
  > The problem is that many of the supposed adaptive phenotypes were conjecture or based on poor science. What phenotypes? It’s been a while since I read GGS but as far as I remember the argument of the book lies directly on the environment, not on human adaptation on that environment. Since reading the book I’ve seen a lot of comments claiming racism on Diamonds part that to this day I can’t understand. I’ve seriously considered the possibility that there’s two different editions of the book, because I find it hard to justify any racist view using the book.
  - wahern 7y ago
    > That is, natural selection promoting genes for intelligence has probably been far more ruthless in New Guinea than in more densely populated, politically complex societies, where natural selection for body chemistry was instead more potent. > .... > That is, in mental ability New Guineans are probably genetically superior to Westerners.... It's hard to pinpoint anything as boldly suspect as what he wrote early in the book, but in searching what stood out to me was his casual use of words like "evolved" and "evolution". In various parts it's ambiguous whether he perceives a genetic component to the evolution of various political societies. I thought I remembered a part where he says some seafaring peoples score higher on spatial reasoning tests, from which he infers an evolutionary genetic adaption. But I couldn't find it. FWIW, here's the full text: https://archive.org/stream/fp_Jared_Diamond-Guns_Germs_and_Steel/Jared_Diamond-Guns_Germs_and_Steel_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/fp_Jared_Diamond-Guns_Germs_and_S...
jacobolus 7y ago
> Anthropologists are dedicated to the study of human culture, which is related to but no the same as the study of human history This doesn’t seem quite right to me, as the child of a professional anthropologist and historian. My general impression is that the difference between anthropology vs. history (not to mention sociology & political science) has more to do with methodology than subject. Think of ethnography vs. archival research. The subject is often heavily overlapping.
- manfredo 7y ago
  They are different subjects. Anthropology is the study of human cultures and societies. Framing this as "ethnography vs. archival research" is a roundabout way of saying the same thing: >Ethnography: The scientific description of peoples and cultures with their customs, habits, and mutual differences. https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/ethnography https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/ethnography
  - jacobolus 7y ago
    Ethnography means you embed yourself in a group, do a bunch of interviews, etc. It is a very hands-on and 1:1 kind of method. Your definition does not really adequately describe it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnography#Features_of_ethnographic_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnography#Features_of_ethnog... (Wikipedia isn’t a perfect source here, but gives some idea.) This is a very different approach than sitting in an archive and reading old documents or running statistical analysis on government databases or .... But it is possible to investigate the same types of subjects using these different methods.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

SomeOldThrow 7y ago

/r/AskHistorians disagrees generally: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search/?q=jared%20diamond&restrict_sr=1&sort=top https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search/?q=jared%20dia... I think it's easiest to just call him a geographer, that really fits his work the best, and his most interesting ideas are geographical at their core. Nonetheless, the idea that geographic determinism is mainstream among historians is not true. I'd imagine it's assigned in the early years of college because it has broad appeal across disciplines.

manfredo 7y ago
And over half a dozen historians at my university spoke highly of the book when I discussed it with them. I'm going to put the opinions of history professors above anonymous posters on the internet. Many mainstream historians are shifting away from the "great man" style of history that puts emphasis on culture and actions of individuals, and towards a more geographic lens of history. The bulk of the criticism I've encountered (besides attempts to equate it with racist environmental determinism akin to Herodotus) are that it gave insufficient attention to advancements in human knowledge and understanding that changed the landscape of advantageous and disadvantageous geography. This doesn't hold much water, from what I could see in the book. In fact, one of the central points of the book is that access to the New World (which was brought by advances in maritime navigation) drastically altered the course of Western European history. Prior to that, South and East Asia were broadly speaking more developed than European societies with greater population density and larger urban centers.
- SomeOldThrow 7y ago
  If you actually read through the responses in the search I linked, you'll notice that the discussion is a little more nuanced than "it's perfect" or "it's trash". It's certainly not perfect in terms of analysis of historical evidence—there are far too few primary sources to support his claims directly, and the trends he points out can be picked apart in particular—but it still has compelling evidence that would be considered valid in other disciplines. I suspect your own professors had a more nuanced opinion than simply "spoke highly of". That doesn't sound like an academic to me. Additionally, you should check the subreddit out. It's very aggressively moderated and many of the posters are openly credentialed professors or are actively doing graduate research. I have found it's also a great place to keep your eyes open for preprints.
  - manfredo 7y ago
    I did read through the responses. The highest upvoted comment on the post "What do you think of Guns, Germs and Steel?" comes from someone that explicitly says that they are not a historian. The bulk of the criticism comes in the form of people alleging environmental determinism and the denial of human agency, which isn't actually a criticism of the book but rather a rejection of book's core claim that geography is a more decisive factor in human development than society and culture. That, and a healthy helping of people alleging western chauvinism, despite Diamond explicitly rejecting the narratives of Western social or racial superiority and pointing out that Western Europe made little contributions to Eurasian development until the mid-late 2nd millennium AD. Sure, my conversations with professors were more nuanced: one talked about how the geographic analysis prompted them to examine history through the lens of quantifying available resources to a society and levels of urbanization. They agreed with the core theses of the book, and said that it offered good refutations to the common layman's narrative of Western cultural superiority. I could spend the rest of my evening recounting the conversations in the comments here but for the purposes of this discussion saying that they "spoke highly of" the book conveys what is necessary.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]

wahern 7y ago

> these disparities are due to being in the right place at the right time rather than racial superiority The problem is that many of the supposed adaptive phenotypes were conjecture or based on poor science. Such sloppy characterizations, when combined with the seeming authoritative weight of genetics, is fodder for racism. It's like the stereotype in the U.S. that blacks are genetically better at singing and sports. It's a "compliment" that actually serves to justify racism--the implied corollary is that to be good at those things is to be maladaptive at intellectual endeavors. There's no real scientific evidence to back it up. What "evidence" exists is far better explained by environmental factors (i.e. racism), but superficially it all seems intuitive because the entire society is constructed upon that narrative. (Actually, traits like athleticism positively correlate with intelligence, but that's irrelevant because the stereotype was flawed from inception.) The only way to suppress such racist tendencies in humanity (to characterize and group people en masse and to rationalize post hoc our behaviors) is to be highly skeptical about proposed substantive genetic differences, particularly those which seemingly justify existing cultural or social differences. When they do exist they almost never (if at all) operate in the way we originally believed. Even recent scientific history (as in past couple of decades) is littered with hypotheses and evidence of this sort that turned out to be faulty.

xondono 7y ago
> The problem is that many of the supposed adaptive phenotypes were conjecture or based on poor science. What phenotypes? It’s been a while since I read GGS but as far as I remember the argument of the book lies directly on the environment, not on human adaptation on that environment. Since reading the book I’ve seen a lot of comments claiming racism on Diamonds part that to this day I can’t understand. I’ve seriously considered the possibility that there’s two different editions of the book, because I find it hard to justify any racist view using the book.
- wahern 7y ago
  > That is, natural selection promoting genes for intelligence has probably been far more ruthless in New Guinea than in more densely populated, politically complex societies, where natural selection for body chemistry was instead more potent. > .... > That is, in mental ability New Guineans are probably genetically superior to Westerners.... It's hard to pinpoint anything as boldly suspect as what he wrote early in the book, but in searching what stood out to me was his casual use of words like "evolved" and "evolution". In various parts it's ambiguous whether he perceives a genetic component to the evolution of various political societies. I thought I remembered a part where he says some seafaring peoples score higher on spatial reasoning tests, from which he infers an evolutionary genetic adaption. But I couldn't find it. FWIW, here's the full text: https://archive.org/stream/fp_Jared_Diamond-Guns_Germs_and_Steel/Jared_Diamond-Guns_Germs_and_Steel_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/fp_Jared_Diamond-Guns_Germs_and_S...

jacobolus 7y ago

> Anthropologists are dedicated to the study of human culture, which is related to but no the same as the study of human history This doesn’t seem quite right to me, as the child of a professional anthropologist and historian. My general impression is that the difference between anthropology vs. history (not to mention sociology & political science) has more to do with methodology than subject. Think of ethnography vs. archival research. The subject is often heavily overlapping.

manfredo 7y ago
They are different subjects. Anthropology is the study of human cultures and societies. Framing this as "ethnography vs. archival research" is a roundabout way of saying the same thing: >Ethnography: The scientific description of peoples and cultures with their customs, habits, and mutual differences. https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/ethnography https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/ethnography
- jacobolus 7y ago
  Ethnography means you embed yourself in a group, do a bunch of interviews, etc. It is a very hands-on and 1:1 kind of method. Your definition does not really adequately describe it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnography#Features_of_ethnographic_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnography#Features_of_ethnog... (Wikipedia isn’t a perfect source here, but gives some idea.) This is a very different approach than sitting in an archive and reading old documents or running statistical analysis on government databases or .... But it is possible to investigate the same types of subjects using these different methods.