So what reason do we have to think otherwise?
Yea, I’m still waiting for that rebuttal I asked for.
Won’t comment on Diamond’s latest, as I haven’t read it. However…
This is factually inaccurate. While there is still dueling scholarship going on as to the reason for the success of the west ( Diamond certainly isn’t the last word ), the idea that non-Western societies were less profit-driven has been pretty well-debunked. See for example:
Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History fron the Rise of Islam to 1750 by K. N. Chaudhuri ( 1985, Cambridge University Press ).
Before European Hegemony:* The World Sytem A.D. 1250-1350* by Janet L. Abu-Lughod ( 1989, Oxford University Press ).
ReOrient:* Global Economy in the Asian Age* by Andre Gunder Frank ( 1998, University of California Press ).
- Tamerlane
Re your request for a rebuttal to the thesis of “Gun’s Germs and Steel”, that’s a pretty large and somewhat separate issue. You might want to start a separate thread if that’s an argument you want to pursue.
With respect to Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, I don’t think it was a matter of asking why Europe was different from other civilizations. I think it was more a matter of asking - “What were the important or crucial factors involved that allowed a group of people living in a particular region of the world to surge ahead of other groups (with respect to cultural, political, economic, and military concerns - or however you define dominance)?”
It’s not just a matter of cultural dominance, nor just a matter of environmental factors. After all, Europe was at one time a cultural backwater compared to other regions. Similarly, Europe was also once a technological, political, and military backwater compared to other regions. Many would argue that China was the dominant region up until the 17th (if you look at it from a cultural/technological perspective, and in some cases even from an economic, political, and military perspective).
While Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel doesn’t offer anything radically new that hasn’t been written about before, what he does do is shift some of the orientation more towards emphasizing environmental factors. Or rather, if one wants to get a broader understanding of why a group of people living in Europe were able to eventually emerge as the dominant group (relative to other people living in other regions), then one needs to first understand the characteristcs of physical environment within which these people lived (those living in Europe).
But even here, the characteristics of the physical environment are not sufficient to understand the later dominance of this group of people. One also needs to examine how these people adapted to that environment - both in terms of how they adapted to the physical environment, but also in the context of how other groups living in the same region adapted, as well as how those groups adapted to one another as well.
I think you are missing an important point here. An important question relevent to Diamond’s thesis in Guns, Germs, and Steel is “Why did people living in Europe eventually become pragmatic and profit-driven than other groups of people living in other regions?” To say that Europeans were pragmatic and profit-driven doesn’t explain how or why people in Europe become so.
Again, at one time in history, Europe was a cultural, military, political, and technological backwater. One could argue that at one time China was more pragmatic and profit-oriented relative to other regions. If true, then what happened? What helped Europe to become even more pragmatic and profit-oriented than China?
As Tamerlane pointed out, this statement flies in the face of history. One could argue that scope and extent of European trade was much greater than other civilizations, but this then raises another interesting question - why was the scope and extent of European trade so much greater than other groups living in other regions? What elements/factors were crucial in bringing this about?
I can’t comment directly on his latest, Collapse as I haven’t read it yet (I should be getting it in the mail in a few days). However, I am interested in reading it to see how his arguments compare to those in The Collapse of Complex Societies by Tainter, et al. (1990).
Wow, another book predicting the downfall of western civilization. It sounds like a new version of “The Population Bomb”. Link: http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/people/paul_ehrlich.html
For a totally different opion you might want to read some of Julian Simsons work.
Another Link:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffsimon_pr.html
Or you can check out www.juliansimon.org
Slee
To me, Diamond’s point in GGS was really quite simple; it was all about the geography. Eurasia is by far the biggest land mass in the world, with the largest population, so that the exchange of goods and ideas will be greatest on this land mass than on any other. Just as important, it’s oriented horizontally instead of vertically, so that if you find a plant that can be grown in Europe it can also be grown in the Near East and in China, and vice versa. By contrast, a plant discovered in Mexico is not going to be able to be grown in New York state, nor is a plant that can be grown in Nigeria going to be grown in South Africa, at least not without a lot of selective breeding. Yes, corn eventually made it from Mexico to the Iroquois, but it took a long time. And the time advantage is what it’s all about.
Even without the animals - horses, pigs, cows, goats - Eurasia would have a huge advantage. With them, the advantage becomes insurmountable. The Americas, Africa, Australia, and of course places like New Guinea simply could not reproduce all of these advantages.
No. Not a devil’s advocate argument. He clearly sincerely meant exactly what he wrote; that New Guineans were intellectual and genetic superiority to Europeans. It is also repeated in the main of the book. And that attempted proved by a ridiculous mix of subjective observations (the New Guineans sure look bright), absurd pop psychology (westerners watch too much television) and amateurish Darwinists theories (plush civilized life has regressed our genetic material, while the unspoiled hard life of the New Guineans has refined theirs). It’s actually striking how those explanations he use to “prove” New Guineans genetic superiority so resemble Nazi theories on Aryans superiority, and the old theory on how the harsher climate of the north propelled European races to genetic superiority. It is interesting to speculate how much respect such a book had received had the tables been reserved and it were the white Teutonic races he had attempted to prove as intellectual and genetic superior rather than New Guinean aboriginals. And speculate how much respect he really deserves for this hack. Why should we give any credence to an author which piously declare racist theories are “loathsome and wrong” when explaining European superiority yet shamelessly make use of them when explaining New Guinean genetic superiority? Why is it loathsome to say Europeans are genetic superior and not to say New Guineans are genetic superior?
No of course not. My contention is not that he his book is not about Europe (given that he states most Europeans are racist and loathsome, I actually prefer it that way) but why can’t he just go ahead and write such a book instead of feeling a need to continuously express how he finds European marginal, uninteresting and unimportant?
On the whole I see his book more as a political treatise comparable to Bernal’s Black Athena (…and written by Desmond Morris) that a work of science.
I wholeheartedly recommend Guns, Germs and Steel and disagree vehemently that it was poorly written - I found it to be a paragon of clear, concise writing for the general reader.
But to get back to the OP’s main point (and I have not read his latest book), think of the time lag involved in moving the temperature dial on your shower and take a look at the scariest graph I have ever seen.
The CO[sub]2[/sub] concentration is currently 378 parts per million (ppm). This is an increase of 100 ppm in just 150 years. Now what that scary time lag graph shows is that even if our emissions peaked right now and technology somehow allowed us to emit no more greenhouse gases within a few decades, the detrimental effects will last for millennia. Our grandchildren are already in for a world of shit.
Now, scarier still: the increase last year was 3 ppm, the largest annual increase in history. Every year we dig our grandchildren deeper into a hole. The scientific consensus is that 550ppm is the absolute maximum we can allow, since the time lagged effects of any more might release methane from the ocean floor and literally cause a mass extinction. And this is a conservative estimate - abrupt climate change might well occur at concentrations around 400ppm, just 8 years away. This is all without factoring in any increase from China, India or anywhere else in the developing world. Given possible forest saturation and industrialisation of the Third World, we could reach 550ppm in just a few decades.
We are that Easter Island logger, staring oblivion full in the face. Let us, at least, take our frigging hand off the shower dial.
As far as I remember, it was all of one paragraph in a very large book and was prefaced copiously with perhapses and maybes and it could bes. It at least sounded to me on first read that he was clearly taking a devils advocate position with this stance. I would have to re-read it to see if my impressions are wrong.
I reread the beginning part, where he has a page or so devoted to this genetic question, and Chapter 15, where he promises to get into some stuff related to Australia and New Guinea in more detail.
The page in question, page 21, is indeed a stunningly stupid exposition of a completely unthought-out genetic theory. Chapter 15, OTOH, doesn’t mention it at all.
So he goes on for a page and then drops it, far as I can tell. Still, it is stupid. I must admit it went right past me first time I read it. I can see how someone would find it idiotic, because it is.
What’s going on right now in Iraq should easily demonstrate that while it’s easy to drop bombs on an area, occupying the territory is much harder. And if your ultimate goal is to actually use the resources and infrastructure in a region, dropping bombs will do nothing but increase the costs associated with an invasion.
Let’s say the U.S. runs out of fresh water. Do you really think it’ll be that easy to invade Canada, set up a few pipelines, and ship H2O to Nevada without running into massive uprisings, terrorist actions, and turning the U.S. into a dictatorship/
Strangely, Diamond wrote an article for a British paper during the week (I’ll see if I can hunt it down), in which he expresses Gates’s opinion, nearly verbatim, as his own.
I like Diamond’s work, and The Rise and Fall… really changed my view of humanity, but even in that book he seemed naïvely optimistic in his summations, when compared to his actual conclusions.
Do you then consider yourself genetically and intellectual inferior to the average New Guineans - or do you recommend the book despite those absurd racist theories?
Well the question of how bad it is with the environment, and whether it is actually getting better, is still very much up for debate. As is the cause of the different extinctions.
It is apparent that the comparable low-tech communistic east block countries were vastly more polluting than anything in the west. This is a theme often repeated, and now seen again in the economies of the east. And it is funny he should mention the case of refrigerators, since we have already managed with new technology to create a type of refrigerators that do not use those destructive greenhouse gasses. Perhaps it is with technology as with education, a little is a dangerous thing. The solution to the excesses of modern civilisation is not less technology but more technology. However many environmentalists are puritans in sheep’s clothes. But a puritan ideologue just isn’t ever going to get much of a following. And I predict that environmentalism will never get any traction until it stress alternative consumption in lie of less consumption. Don’t remove the hand from the shower dial. Just don’t heat the frigging water with coal or oil or some such thing.
In any case it is undeniable that we’re on the tigers back with technology and consumption. There’s just no way we’re going to feed 6 billion and counting humans without intensive agriculture and high tech.
I haven’t read the book (and don’t intent to) but it seems strange that he writes the Easter Islanders fate off as one entirely destined by their environmental abuse. John Keegan in the “History of Warfare” describe their demise as while influenced by environmental degradation then ultimately caused more by a culture of incessant warfare, and their ultimate destruction by European slave traders, and foreign diseases.
I don’t know how you interpreted the book, but I read those chapters as advocating that New Guinean jungle life required equal intelligence to life in Western civilisation. I certainly don’t see where the charge of racism comes from.
Even cranks like Bjorn Lombourg do not question the increase in CO[sub]2[/sub] concentrations over just the last 150 years and the time lagged temperature and sea-level increases afterwards throughout history. They merely propose different solutions (and notice that I did not propose any in my post - I merely presented the sheer scale of the upheavals future generations will face.)
Perhaps it is with technology as with education, a little is a dangerous thing. The solution to the excesses of modern civilisation is not less technology but more technology. However many environmentalists are puritans in sheep’s clothes. But a puritan ideologue just isn’t ever going to get much of a following. And I predict that environmentalism will never get any traction until it stress alternative consumption in lie of less consumption. Don’t remove the hand from the shower dial. Just don’t heat the frigging water with coal or oil or some such thing.
[/quote]
Your hopelessly mixed metaphors mischaracterise earnest, realistic, non-puritan environmentalists such as (hopefully) myself. Yes, let us build more nuclear power stations, turbines and any such thing. But let us also become efficient.
When I read the book, that is what I got out of it - and it was okay as far vas it went; but this simply “narrows it down” to Eurasia.
His thesis as to why Europe and not (say) China “came out ahead”, I thought lame in the extreme.
I have my own opinions on that (such as the prevelance, over the last few centuries, of single imperial structures in the competing centres of civilization such as China, the ME, India, and the relative absence of a central authority in Europe - which is not, in my opinion, a pure matter of geography) - but I suspect there is probably no one reason for it. If I had to choose a single determinative factor, how about the fact that the Mongols invaded everywhere except Europe, inposing their imperial system - copied in part by those they invaded? I could defend that thesis better than the “geography done it” thesis.
Geographical determinism only goes so far.
That is the problem with Diamond - he takes a perfectly good thesis (such as “geographical factors explain why Eurasia out-competed everywhere else”), and pushes it too far - makes it into an all-explanatory solution; plus he often throws in silly ideas half-digested into the mix (New Gineans genetically superior? WTF?).
I read “Collapse”. I liked the parts about the past and the present. I got a bit pissed off about the parts concerning the future. He seems to be preaching rather than analysing - always a dangerous thing to do; I don’t know enough about environmental science to comment one way or the other, but when an author includes a list of FAQs in order to refute any questioning of his thesis, I get a bit nervous (for example, at one point he says not to worry about the fact that similar “environmental collapse and disaster” books had proven wrong in their predictions before - just like you don’t disregard a false fire alarm, because eventually one will be real - WTF? This is like saying “even if I’m wrong, I just know that I’ll be right eventually”. That isn’t science, it is faith!).
In short, he has some good ideas, can be really readable, but is really motivated by what appears to be a secular version of faith. He is of course embraced by others who share his outlook; for those of us who require convincing with argument and analysis, he can be disappointing.
Malthus makes a good point, and one I’m sure Diamond has gotten criticism for by academic geographers. While I laud his attempt to reintroduce an emphasis on environmental factors into the debate, geographers themselves are keenly aware of the pitfalls inherent in relying too much on the environment for causal explanations. One of the issues that got (academic) geography into trouble was an overemphasis on the environment in explaining things (referred to as environmental determinism). Environmental determinism ended up as an intellectual cul-de-sac and, some would argue, helped bring about the marginalization of the discipline in the US.
Geography (or environment) is important, but by itself it is not destiny; it’s just one element in our overall understanding on how things turned out the way they do.
That’s not faith, that’s just logic. It would be illogical to try and disprove his argument using the faults of others who make similar arguments.
Him claiming that we should not ignore environmental doom-sayers just because they have always been wrong so far is exactly the same argument as a Christian millenialist arguing that we should not disbelive in the Apocalypse, just because so many have predicted its arrival and it hasn’t arrived yet.
Both are equally true, but trite. “Prophets speaking in tounges are like fire alarms for God …”. Would that convince you? It is just as “logical”.
The difference of course is that there is evidence based on scientific research concerning the former, and none for the latter. Not in this particular book, though.
From Guns, Germs and Steel, p. 22:
He presents it as an OPINION, and does not pretend to have proof he’s right, but he is clearly not stating an opinion of equal intelligence. He believes they’re smarter than Europeans, game set and match.