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Like the parent, my impression from discussing this very book with many people who work in the academic social sciences, is that Guns, Germs and Steel is largel

Like the parent, my impression from discussing this very book with many people who work in the academic social sciences, is that Guns, Germs and Steel is largely discredited today. This might actually be an example of a situation where the wikipedia article is simply out of date, incomplete, and/or biased. I would instead recommend reading the heavily moderated r/askhistorians sub-reddit for a description of that is more in line with mainstream academic thinking. For example https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6meq1k/a_detailed_rebuttalalternative_to_the_one_that/dk6htc0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6meq1k/a_det...

cs702 4y ago
I started reading the comment you link to in that subreddit, but I had to stop after it claimed that > The European conquest [of the Americas] was hardly decisive. Furthermore, the difference between hemispheres wasn’t all that great. I had to stop because that's the kind of statement on which lots of people -- many of them smarter and more knowledgeable than me -- strongly disagree, often with ideological or religious fervor. I have no interest in or patience for that kind of debate, so I will skip out from this thread. That said, if you and others think the Wikipedia page on this best-selling, award-winning book is out of date, you should try to update it.
- funklute 4y ago
  I'm struggling to decide whether to take this critique seriously or not. You yourself told the parent "many experts disagree with your assessment", when the parent clearly indicated that they simply were following what appears to be the academic consensus on this book, today. The link I provided has a clear link to further work you can go explore, and make up your own mind. But I sort of suspect that in the three cases of 1) the parent comment, 2) the wikipedia article, and 3) now this statement about the American conquest, you have already decided what you want to believe. I'm not personally an expert in this field. So I am not going to go and update the wikipedia article. What I am going to do, is to listen to the people who are experts in the field. I actually loved Diamond's book when it first came out, but over many years, I have not found a single academic historian who had good things to say about it. And it's not for lack of trying. As much as the book has received many awards, it is today simply a fact that it has a very fraught reputation in academic circles.
  - meany 4y ago
    I think one of the challenge with relying on academics of History or anthropology is that, unlike physics, consensus doesn’t necessarily progress towards a more accurate interpretation. I think the post above is suggesting that the linked academic has a agenda that is guiding their analysis. For instance they write that more advanced technology really is just more European. That rather than being more technologically “advanced” Europeans developed technology for a different context. Perhaps it’s inaccurate, but conclusions like these seem to some to be motivated by the need to retell events to achieve/support social justice movements today. I love reading history, but I am concerned that all historical narratives are illusions - stories we string together from a minuscule subset of the data we’ve captured in writing or other records. This is particularly problematic if people, including academics, see the outcome of their historical interpretations as influencing modern power struggles.
    - funklute 4y ago
      > I think one of the challenge with relying on academics of History or anthropology is that, unlike physics, consensus doesn’t necessarily progress towards a more accurate interpretation. I think this statement needs some very strong evidence to be even considered in passing. This statement is essentially saying "the entire field is bad at their job". For individual academics and sources, yes, I agree that one should be vigilant. But the academic consensus is a different matter altogether, and the base assumption simply has to be that the field as a whole moves forward. Otherwise it becomes very difficult - maybe even impossible - to have any sort of evidence-based discussion.
      - suoduandao2 4y ago
        >This statement is essentially saying "the entire field is bad at their job". Well, are there academic historians who dispute that fact?
      - abecedarius 4y ago
        > the base assumption simply has to be that the field as a whole moves forward. Nature doesn't care what anyone thinks our base assumptions have to be. Parapsychology had a decent run academically for a century, and still isn't quite dead.
- juve1996 4y ago
  It's hard to argue that something that took until the 1920s to complete is decisive. The American Indian wars didn't end until 1924. That's hardly decisive.
  - meany 4y ago
    I think you would need to start be defining “decisive” for this context. Not sure the debate makes sense otherwise. Why does it matter if it was decisive or not?
    - juve1996 4y ago
      Because the post I was replying to disagreed with the decisive nature of the conflict. > Why does it matter if it was decisive or not? It goes against the entire theory of the book - if it's argument was true, why did it take centuries to ultimately conquer the americas?
      - meany 4y ago
        But Until decisiveness is defined it’s not really a debate. “Decisive” is not a concrete term, it’s subjective.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - cwalv 4y ago
    Just because a conflict/war hasn't been officially resolved or declared over by both sides doesn't mean the final outcome isn't clear.
treis 4y ago
It seems like GG&S was the way people sounded "smart" for a while and now the way is to say "well actually....". Mostly it seems because people don't like the conclusions. Like the post as an example. It says the European conquest was "hardly decisive". Which is just so ridiculous that it should disqualify them as a source. But moving on they try to say that native alliances were the most potent weapon. Which is again just so ridiculous. Small pox wiped out double digit percentages of the indigenous population and devastated their society.
- karpierz 4y ago
  > Small pox wiped out double digit percentages of the indigenous population and devastated their society. This is the kind of cherry picking I was talking about. It'd be like saying "disease killed a large portion of Jews during WWII". Technically, it's true. A lot of Jews died from disease (in concentration camps). But it avoids asking the question of "were there any aggravating factors (like sudden displacement from homes, famine, violence, etc.) that caused them to become more susceptible"?
  - nyolfen 4y ago
    it is estimated that 90% of new world natives died of smallpox and viral herpes immediately following contact with europeans -- that is, after initial contact with a small number of europeans on the western fringes, disease swept across the entire hemisphere and destroyed civilizations. it is literally the single most important factor in the history of western colonization. the europeans that colonized the americas arrived in a postapocalyptic wasteland.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - karpierz 4y ago
      > it is estimated that 90% of new world natives died of smallpox and viral herpes immediately following contact with europeans Can you give an academic citation for this? I can't find anything that would support these numbers, they're high even for older work that's since been debunked (and especially not "immediately"). I suspect that there's a methodological error, but I can't say for certain until I actually see how you've come to these numbers.
allturtles 4y ago
GG&S rubs academics the wrong way for a couple of reasons: 1) It accepts as a fact that the Europeans had superior technology to the peoples they encountered elsewhere, which is now perceived by many academics to be a form of racism/eurocentrism. (see the discussion in the linked threads about how the Europeans weren't really that advanced) 2) Materialist explanations are out of favor. Everything is supposed to be about culture and ideology and social construction, and everything is supposed to be "contingent" (i.e. not pre-determined by material factors like geography or superior technology - see the discussion in the linked thread about "determinism," which is a bad word).
- funklute 4y ago
  "supposed to be" is perhaps not quite the wording I would use. My understanding is that these kinds of materialist explanations are out of favour because they have some genuine shortcomings: 1) they are largely untestable/unfalsifiable, so they veer into pseudo-science, 2) they have a tendency to cherry pick data, and 3) related to the second point, they tend to ignore the importance of the precise historical context (e.g. whether a certain king is particularly ambitious or not, could in certain cases shape the history of a region for decades or centuries to come - this is difficult to accommodate in more systemic theories).
  - allturtles 4y ago
    (1) applies to pretty much any kind of historical argument, and historians who emphasize contingency are by no means immune to (2) (I'd say this is a weakness of humanity generally!). (3) is a reasonable argument, but the converse can also apply. I think we should be open to the idea that some historical developments hinge on individual human action, but others don't.

cs702 4y ago

I started reading the comment you link to in that subreddit, but I had to stop after it claimed that > The European conquest [of the Americas] was hardly decisive. Furthermore, the difference between hemispheres wasn’t all that great. I had to stop because that's the kind of statement on which lots of people -- many of them smarter and more knowledgeable than me -- strongly disagree, often with ideological or religious fervor. I have no interest in or patience for that kind of debate, so I will skip out from this thread. That said, if you and others think the Wikipedia page on this best-selling, award-winning book is out of date, you should try to update it.

funklute 4y ago
I'm struggling to decide whether to take this critique seriously or not. You yourself told the parent "many experts disagree with your assessment", when the parent clearly indicated that they simply were following what appears to be the academic consensus on this book, today. The link I provided has a clear link to further work you can go explore, and make up your own mind. But I sort of suspect that in the three cases of 1) the parent comment, 2) the wikipedia article, and 3) now this statement about the American conquest, you have already decided what you want to believe. I'm not personally an expert in this field. So I am not going to go and update the wikipedia article. What I am going to do, is to listen to the people who are experts in the field. I actually loved Diamond's book when it first came out, but over many years, I have not found a single academic historian who had good things to say about it. And it's not for lack of trying. As much as the book has received many awards, it is today simply a fact that it has a very fraught reputation in academic circles.
- meany 4y ago
  I think one of the challenge with relying on academics of History or anthropology is that, unlike physics, consensus doesn’t necessarily progress towards a more accurate interpretation. I think the post above is suggesting that the linked academic has a agenda that is guiding their analysis. For instance they write that more advanced technology really is just more European. That rather than being more technologically “advanced” Europeans developed technology for a different context. Perhaps it’s inaccurate, but conclusions like these seem to some to be motivated by the need to retell events to achieve/support social justice movements today. I love reading history, but I am concerned that all historical narratives are illusions - stories we string together from a minuscule subset of the data we’ve captured in writing or other records. This is particularly problematic if people, including academics, see the outcome of their historical interpretations as influencing modern power struggles.
  - funklute 4y ago
    > I think one of the challenge with relying on academics of History or anthropology is that, unlike physics, consensus doesn’t necessarily progress towards a more accurate interpretation. I think this statement needs some very strong evidence to be even considered in passing. This statement is essentially saying "the entire field is bad at their job". For individual academics and sources, yes, I agree that one should be vigilant. But the academic consensus is a different matter altogether, and the base assumption simply has to be that the field as a whole moves forward. Otherwise it becomes very difficult - maybe even impossible - to have any sort of evidence-based discussion.
    - suoduandao2 4y ago
      >This statement is essentially saying "the entire field is bad at their job". Well, are there academic historians who dispute that fact?
    - abecedarius 4y ago
      > the base assumption simply has to be that the field as a whole moves forward. Nature doesn't care what anyone thinks our base assumptions have to be. Parapsychology had a decent run academically for a century, and still isn't quite dead.
juve1996 4y ago
It's hard to argue that something that took until the 1920s to complete is decisive. The American Indian wars didn't end until 1924. That's hardly decisive.
- meany 4y ago
  I think you would need to start be defining “decisive” for this context. Not sure the debate makes sense otherwise. Why does it matter if it was decisive or not?
  - juve1996 4y ago
    Because the post I was replying to disagreed with the decisive nature of the conflict. > Why does it matter if it was decisive or not? It goes against the entire theory of the book - if it's argument was true, why did it take centuries to ultimately conquer the americas?
    - meany 4y ago
      But Until decisiveness is defined it’s not really a debate. “Decisive” is not a concrete term, it’s subjective.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- cwalv 4y ago
  Just because a conflict/war hasn't been officially resolved or declared over by both sides doesn't mean the final outcome isn't clear.

treis 4y ago

It seems like GG&S was the way people sounded "smart" for a while and now the way is to say "well actually....". Mostly it seems because people don't like the conclusions. Like the post as an example. It says the European conquest was "hardly decisive". Which is just so ridiculous that it should disqualify them as a source. But moving on they try to say that native alliances were the most potent weapon. Which is again just so ridiculous. Small pox wiped out double digit percentages of the indigenous population and devastated their society.

karpierz 4y ago
> Small pox wiped out double digit percentages of the indigenous population and devastated their society. This is the kind of cherry picking I was talking about. It'd be like saying "disease killed a large portion of Jews during WWII". Technically, it's true. A lot of Jews died from disease (in concentration camps). But it avoids asking the question of "were there any aggravating factors (like sudden displacement from homes, famine, violence, etc.) that caused them to become more susceptible"?
- nyolfen 4y ago
  it is estimated that 90% of new world natives died of smallpox and viral herpes immediately following contact with europeans -- that is, after initial contact with a small number of europeans on the western fringes, disease swept across the entire hemisphere and destroyed civilizations. it is literally the single most important factor in the history of western colonization. the europeans that colonized the americas arrived in a postapocalyptic wasteland.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - karpierz 4y ago
    > it is estimated that 90% of new world natives died of smallpox and viral herpes immediately following contact with europeans Can you give an academic citation for this? I can't find anything that would support these numbers, they're high even for older work that's since been debunked (and especially not "immediately"). I suspect that there's a methodological error, but I can't say for certain until I actually see how you've come to these numbers.

allturtles 4y ago

GG&S rubs academics the wrong way for a couple of reasons: 1) It accepts as a fact that the Europeans had superior technology to the peoples they encountered elsewhere, which is now perceived by many academics to be a form of racism/eurocentrism. (see the discussion in the linked threads about how the Europeans weren't really that advanced) 2) Materialist explanations are out of favor. Everything is supposed to be about culture and ideology and social construction, and everything is supposed to be "contingent" (i.e. not pre-determined by material factors like geography or superior technology - see the discussion in the linked thread about "determinism," which is a bad word).

funklute 4y ago
"supposed to be" is perhaps not quite the wording I would use. My understanding is that these kinds of materialist explanations are out of favour because they have some genuine shortcomings: 1) they are largely untestable/unfalsifiable, so they veer into pseudo-science, 2) they have a tendency to cherry pick data, and 3) related to the second point, they tend to ignore the importance of the precise historical context (e.g. whether a certain king is particularly ambitious or not, could in certain cases shape the history of a region for decades or centuries to come - this is difficult to accommodate in more systemic theories).
- allturtles 4y ago
  (1) applies to pretty much any kind of historical argument, and historians who emphasize contingency are by no means immune to (2) (I'd say this is a weakness of humanity generally!). (3) is a reasonable argument, but the converse can also apply. I think we should be open to the idea that some historical developments hinge on individual human action, but others don't.