Guns Germs and Steel
After a couple of months, and a couple of disparaging posts, I've almost finished the Dan Brown I mean Jared Diamond book Guns Germs and Steel. To his credit, Diamond is pretty knowledgable. A couple of thoughts, though:
1. Guns, Germs and Steel is a shitty name for this book given its emphasis on the ecological forces shaping human societies. A better troika lies in the concluding chapter, where Diamond recaps themes of Environment, [intra- and inter- community] Interchange, and Scale. Diamond's emphasis on the ecological/processural rather than technological/object-oriented is useful and fitting, so it's disappointing that he apparently felt the need to juice up the title.
2. Others could correct me if I am wrong, but this approach isn't exactly groundbreaking, is it? I would think that Braudel's A History of Civilizations is likely an earlier, more significant contribution to historiography. (Of course this wasn't necessarily Diamond's intent).
3. Back to the title, well, I think it matters. In calling his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, Daimond calls attention to determining factors in the superiority of one community over another in matters of war. (Even here the title does not reflect Diamond's thesis, as it ignores literacy and both guns and steel cover the same territory.) Never mind that Diamond likely picked the title merely to pander to a popular audience. What should we make of this book? What should we take from it? From one reading of Guns, Germs, and Steel, we might gain an awareness of ecology, and seek to interact with our environment in a more sustainable fashion. From another reading, one might view human history the development of separate competing communities in which common ecological concepts of dominance, invasion, colonization, etc. are accepted as a matter of course.
4. Science - particularly written to a popular audience - is a servant of human activity. If one insists that science has a kind of objectivity to it, surely one would acknowledge that how we persue scientific activity, how we write science, and how we choose to make use of it are all matters with an ethical dimension.
Many times I found Diamond's line of questioning incomplete and misguided. When we study human societies we should, first, not seek merely knowlege but also understanding and second, participate in an ethical discussion that considers whether actions are good or right. We shouldn't let science overtake the responsibility inherent in human volition. Too often throughout this book, Diamond asks why X conquered Y, giving intelligent, detailed, well-articulated answers that sum up to "because X could".
1. Guns, Germs and Steel is a shitty name for this book given its emphasis on the ecological forces shaping human societies. A better troika lies in the concluding chapter, where Diamond recaps themes of Environment, [intra- and inter- community] Interchange, and Scale. Diamond's emphasis on the ecological/processural rather than technological/object-oriented is useful and fitting, so it's disappointing that he apparently felt the need to juice up the title.
2. Others could correct me if I am wrong, but this approach isn't exactly groundbreaking, is it? I would think that Braudel's A History of Civilizations is likely an earlier, more significant contribution to historiography. (Of course this wasn't necessarily Diamond's intent).
3. Back to the title, well, I think it matters. In calling his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, Daimond calls attention to determining factors in the superiority of one community over another in matters of war. (Even here the title does not reflect Diamond's thesis, as it ignores literacy and both guns and steel cover the same territory.) Never mind that Diamond likely picked the title merely to pander to a popular audience. What should we make of this book? What should we take from it? From one reading of Guns, Germs, and Steel, we might gain an awareness of ecology, and seek to interact with our environment in a more sustainable fashion. From another reading, one might view human history the development of separate competing communities in which common ecological concepts of dominance, invasion, colonization, etc. are accepted as a matter of course.
4. Science - particularly written to a popular audience - is a servant of human activity. If one insists that science has a kind of objectivity to it, surely one would acknowledge that how we persue scientific activity, how we write science, and how we choose to make use of it are all matters with an ethical dimension.
Many times I found Diamond's line of questioning incomplete and misguided. When we study human societies we should, first, not seek merely knowlege but also understanding and second, participate in an ethical discussion that considers whether actions are good or right. We shouldn't let science overtake the responsibility inherent in human volition. Too often throughout this book, Diamond asks why X conquered Y, giving intelligent, detailed, well-articulated answers that sum up to "because X could".
posted by Jason at 3:05 PM
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