Upon rave reviews by both friends and on television, in newspapers, online and other forms of review, I decided to pick up the book Germs, Guns and Steel.
The book seemed all right until I got to this phrase, and I’m quoting:
Who goes on to say, approximately two paragraphs later…
And two pages later…
Bold mine.
I’ve managed to push past this and go into the beginning of Jared’s history of Mankind. However, these have given me the gnawing through that perhaps Mr. Diamond isn’t being entirely too straight with us here. Even in the first two chapters, he uses a whole lot of emotionally charged words and even seems to have come to a conclusion before even beginning the book, too much so to merit it being called a real scientific work. To me, it seems more of a manifesto or an essay.
But I digress.
To those of you that have finished the book: Have you detected any sort of blatant bias or some predetermined conclusion to the book, or am I just paranoid?
It’s pretty standard to state your thesis at the beginning of the book (or for that matter, a scientific paper). Not sure why you find that strange.
You should keep reading, it’s a good book.
Some people find Diamond’s bit about New Guineans being possibly more intelligent then westernersquestionable or in contradiction of his thesis. Wheather or not that’s a valid criticisim, it’s mentioned as more or less an aside in the prologue, and isn’t really important to the rest of the book.
Again, what do you mean pre-determined conclusion. He starts with a thesis that he states at the beginning of the book, then goes on to provide evidence/examples. This is pretty standard for this kind of book. I think it would be strange if he feigned ignorance to his conclusions at the beginning of the book.
I don’t think I stated my feeling about it correctly.
More appropriately, did it seem that he had already formed a conclusion, and set out to prove it rather than looking through the data and coming up with a conclusion? That’s kinda what I’m getting in the second chapter, but it might clear up.
It’s pretty standard for an author to write their introductory and closing bits after the main body of the work. All the research is done, all the arguments are made, so yes, the introduction should reflect that.
Well, all scientists do this to some extent. They start studying something with at least some idea how it will come out, and then see if the data matches thier idea. Newton already had the idea of an inverse square law for gravitation before he started looking at actual measurements of the lunar orbit, for example. I doubt that Darwin had seen every piece of data that he would later present in Origin of Species before he reached his own conclusions about natural selection.
I would imagine that Diamond came up with his ideas about the effects of geography, etc. on history before he’d discovered all of the evidence he presents in his book. But again, thats not unusual, and I don’t think it makes his arguments any weaker. If there’s signifigant data he’s overlooking, then no doubt others will point it out.
I had sort of the same reaction. My thing with the book is that he has a nice idea and backs it up with some good arguments, but he never really mentions that it’s still just a possibility. He acts more like it’s a proven fact. Obviously, we only have one data point - our earth - so any conclusions drawn from our history will be shaky. That’s not a criticism of his work, it’s just the way it is. I just wish the book had had less “this is why things happened” and more “this is one possible reason why things happened.”
I think it’s pretty clear that he has a thesis which he’s defending. When you’re writing a book that asserts a position and defends it, it is perfectly valid to be “biased” in favor of your position. I don’t see why you have a problem with this. Also, in that context you don’t have to say “this is just a possibility,” it’s a given.
An essay is where you start out on a given topic and attempt to collect your thoughts enough to make something worth reading later. This is because the mere act of collecting your thoughts is enough to spark entirely new thoughts and perhaps aid you in reaching a decision on a matter. An essay doesn’t have a predetermined course or conclusion, because you have no idea what thoughts are going to be sparked in the process of writing it.
A thesis is where you have a predetermined conclusion and a good method of assault for defending it, with arguments and evidence all lined up in an orderly fashion. It typically runs by stating the thesis first, then laying out the arguments and evidence, and finally concluding with the thesis, as in the closing remarks to a jury. The purpose of a thesis is to communicate and convince. Obviously, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a thesis.
You can ask any doctoral or postdoctoral student whether there is anything shady or underhanded in writing a thesis and count the number of ways people find to ask ‘What?’ in a completely incredulous tone.
The Age of the Essay by Paul Graham is probably a good read if the last time you heard ‘essay’ it was spoken by a bored high school teacher to a class of groaning adolescents.
Well, he is saying merely how it seemed to him that they were more “intelligent”, whatever that is. And explaining that is clearly secondary in the book: he is primarily seeking to explain why Europe is so technologically developed while they’re not (which he does very well, I would say).
I suspect he and his editors threw this in as a controversial hook to draw you into the main body, since it’s not actually touched upon much for the rest IIRC.
To answer the OP, it’s not a main point in the book. My WAG is he’s a bit on a pedestal as most people reading his book have not had the opportunity to meet someone from a primative culture and probably have a bias that such uneducated people are stoopid. I too have spent time with Tibetan nomads and would second the thought that such people are uneducated in the modern world but pretty dang smart.
IMHO, his book benefits hugely by his experience in the New Guinea highlands. He’s not an ivory tower guy but one that gets out in the bush. There were threads/news in the past week about discovering a “lost world” in the highlands with new animal species and known animals unafraid of humans.
For what it’s worth, Bill Gates recommended this book at a conference in response to an audience question “read any good books lately?”
In proper scientist thinking, near everything is a possibility. That our brains are what do all the thinking is only a possibility and may be disproven at any given moment–though of course we have very little evidence to point to it not being nor to there being anything else which is the true source.
Stating that your idea is only a possibility to people with a worldview that near everything is, is essentially just redundant.
I’m not sure what’s wrong with the thesis that “stone age” people are on the avrage smarter than “civilised” people. It’s not racist, because it might have something to do with their environment than with their genes. For example, you might need to be pretty smart to live in a harsh environment without modern technology, whereas our modern civilisation allows “stupider” people to survive – they are less likely to starve because they can’t find food, they are less likely to be killed by wild animals, hostile enemies, or diseases that modern medicine has found a cure for.
No, didn’t turn on my Spidey-sense. Especially since the bulk of the book is about how the ‘Stone agers’ are NOT smarter than the Europeans (and vice verse) and that all humans have the same potential for intelligence. The book tries to explain how it is possible for humans with the same smarts ended up at such different levels of technology.
You have to understand that Diamond was trying to pre-empt what he knew would be a standard, opposite reaction to his book–that by discussing and analyzing reasons for Eurasian technological superiority, he was implicitly saying that Eurasians were more intelligent.
We’ve had people on this Board, in GD, dismiss the book (without reading it) as “just another argument for the White Man’s Burden”. By stating the opposite in his preface, Diamond attempted to pre-empt this argument. Of course, by doing so, he runs the risk of arousing the opposite reaction in readers such as yourself–“this is just another anti-Western diatribe!”
The other posters on this thread seem to be headed in this direction, too, but Biggirl’s “screwed up” sentence summarizes my POV nicely (should I be worried? ). To me, Diamond is saying “well, since these guys are obviously intelligent - arguably on par with Western Europeans or even more - why didn’t they end up as the Global superpower? There must be other factors in play…” and then goes on for the rest of the book to explore those other factors - in my opinion, brilliantly.
Paul Goodman argued that we are ‘barbarians’ in that in the past people out of necessity had to understand the technology and processes their lives depended on. We just flick a switch.
God knows we’ve all met people so devoid of intelligence and common-sense they’d die in a couple of days if they had to fend for themselves.
There’s bias, and there’s bias. If you have studied a great deal of information and that information has led you to a particular conclusion, it’s valid to present a case for your conclusion that emphasizes the relevant supporting information. It’s not shady, to my mind, to leave out information that does not support your conclusion,* as long as that information does not also weaken or disprove your conclusion.* Think of yourself as a prosecutor. You don’t have to include evidence of everything the accused ever did, but if you leave out something that might be exculpatory, and get caught later, you’re in trouble.
By the same token, and I think this possibility is what tickled the OP’s spidey sense, it’s not cool to fill in the gaps of your information with too many intuitive leaps. Some intuitive leaps are necessary to get you from one piece of evidence to the next, but the vastness of the chasm your leap takes you over has to be proportional to the evidentiary value of your information. I think Jared’s leap about stone age intelligence is a big enough leap that he should have some pretty substantial evidence to support his conclusion. I don’t remember the book that well, but if you feel he fails to support that conclusion, then I’d say your spidey sense was working well.
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is a good example of this. One of the most fascinating books I have ever read, it ultimately falls apart, in my view, because the leaps he takes are so out of proportion to the available evidence, and subsequent leaps are built upon the presumed validity of earlier leaps, that finally it’s a house of cards being held aloft by faith alone. It was not my impression that Jared’s book was nearly as flimsy as Jaynes’s, but I have heard skeptical grumblings about it from time to time.
Since the OP is a guest and can’t search, let me point out that we did the same thread starting with the same sentences just a few months ago.
That thread got much more contentious than this one, so I won’t try to summarize it. I’ll just say that I agree with the others on the main two points:
Don’t make too much of a bit of rhetoric in the introduction.
A popular science/history book isn’t a scientific experiment. Clearly Diamond had thought about this issue for years prior to writing the book and then used additional research to formalize his thoughts with examples.
I found the book interesting but problematic. Diamond may be a working scientist, but that just means he has no special deep knowledge of fields outside his own discipline. He had to use the same secondary sources as any other writer and if you know enough about those sources you can think he’s backing the wrong horse in some of his evidence and conclusions.
That doesn’t mean the book isn’t valuable. But it’s certainly an essay. All popular works are.
). To me, Diamond is saying “well, since these guys are obviously intelligent - arguably on par with Western Europeans or even more - why didn’t they end up as the Global superpower? There must be other factors in play…” and then goes on for the rest of the book to explore those other factors - in my opinion, brilliantly.