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Originally Posted by
Laughing Man
Explain what you are trying to say further because it is nonsensical. Yes, I have read Diamond's book. All history students do because it serves as a nice, laughable example of how not to do history.
I am saying the historians, economists and other liberal arts wankers study the human animal as it would have been conceived of by a seventeenth century preacher.
I really don't see what's so hard to understand here.
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What a wonderful grade school attitude toward history in thinking historians just write down facts and dates. Historians determine the causes of historical events. What brought them about and what the effects were on human civilizations. There are no specialized principles from "general ones" because there are no general dialectical laws to history. History has no laws, no currents, no determinations.
I specified that they do determine local causes. But real thinkers go into science. History has no laws, no currents and no determinations as historians conceive of those words.
Maximal resource extraction within technological means is a good example of a general principle. Why must a general principle be dialectical? This is just another assumption that religious philosophers make. That a sufficiently large group of people will extract every resource for which they have a use from the environment given sufficient time is just a specialization of the even more general rule that any sufficiently large group of organisms will do the same thing.
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Diamond's argument is that environmental conditions along the east-west axis were more hospital to the development of agriculture which in turn creates more food which increases the population which increases the ability for intellectualism to solve domestic issues and create inventions which allows for the development of society which according to Diamond happened faster in Europe which is why they supposedly prospered over the Mesoamericans.
"Environment molds history" pg. 352
It's not purely the orientation of the continents. That just allowed specific crops to spread faster. This allowed a much vaster range from which crops could arise and hence a greater number of crops in total. It was the basic presence of the raw stuff of agriculture that allowed it to get started. Wheat almost couldn't have been domesticated anywhere but in the mideast.
Also, as an evolutionary biologist, he wouldn't say that our society evolved any faster than any other. Each society adapted to the environment in which it found itself.
Finally, to say that "environment molds history" is perhaps too strong depending on what you mean by mold. That's like saying that environment molds species. It doesn't. It has undeniable influence though. Whereas species are molded by the environment interacting with variation on the species, history is molded by the environment creating the opportunity and necessity for ideas. So it's not that ideas don't play a part, it's just that original ideas are not the central actor. Keep in mind that one of the cool things about humans is that our environment is largely made out of ideas.
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So yes...Diamond's argument basically is that the environment popped forth ideas concerning technology because the environment enabled population increase which caused greater idea "manufacturing" or whatever you wish to label it.
To say "popped forth" makes it sound as if the environment is pregnant with ideas and gave birth to them. I'm picturing some pretty white people kneeling down in front Europe on its back, legs spread and in the agony of labor, just waiting for agriculture to occur.
In fact, he's postulating almost exactly the same kind of positive feedback loop that we see in evolution and that should be well understood.
Historians don't want to understand.
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Right, he certainly get past those cultural assumptions by believing that Europe was ahead of the curve because of its cultural values in terms of proximate factors:
"proximate factors behind Europe's rise [are] its development of a merchant class, capitalism, and patent protection for inventions, its failure to develop absolute despots and crushing taxation, and its Graeco-Judeo-Christian tradition of empirical inquiry." pg 410
Yea...certainly getting past those cultural assumptions alright. I have to ask, did you read the book?
I'm afraid that you're going to have to explain to me how that's making an assumption about another culture?
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And what "historians" are seeing agriculture as a mere technological invention? Agriculture is a big deal but most, not all, historians do not believe in monocasual history because it is ridiculous to assume that one sole casual can lead to great events.
Nobody every said that one cause is at the root of history. That would be childish. The environment in which we find our selves contains more than one cause though.
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And really, humans have extracted every resource? Tell me, when were the Incas using crude oil? The concept of resources and its uses is dependent upon the time period.
Crude oil was not part of the Inca's environment because they didn't have the technological means to bring it to the surface. It's part of our environment and we extract as much of it as we possibly can.
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Oh this is so fulfilling because you are like Jarod Diamond. You step into the world of history a neophyte thinking you are "bucking the system" and taking historians to town and yet you have no idea what is transpiring behind your gullible grade school notions of history.
I'd already specified that historians write down facts and attempt to apply specialized principles in local situations. I decided to, partly for literary purposes and partly to emphasize my feelings towards that methodology, refer to it going forth as "writing down facts". That's ok. You assert that Diamond's hypothesis is that the environments "popped" out the idea of agriculture.
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There is a part of me that does not blame you though because high school history is rather atrocious but when you sashay around these forums calling people plebeians and intellectual amateurs then it is difficult for me not to be somewhat joyous. I am not vexed that you are condensing. I am just surprised that you are so, well, amateurish about it.
I am condescending towards the liberal arts. It's the last bastion of the magic monkey myth in the academy. I am also condescending towards people that don't know how to think but assert that they do.
