Jim Devine wrote:
I make no brief for Jared Diamond (except that he writes more clearly
than most social scientists) nor do I know enough about his research
to reject him (since I haven't had the time to read Lou's posts on
this subject).
The question I have is this: suppose that Diamond is guilty as charged
(of misrepresenting what happens on Papua New Guinea, etc.) Does that
mean that the major thesis of GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL (which also
shows up in Diamond's collection of articles called THE THIRD
CHIMPANZEE) is totally wrong, flawed, incomplete, or what? After all,
bad people have developed useful understandings of the world in the
past (cf. Werner Heisenberg).
I know that his geographical/ecological determinism is one-sided (as
are all deterministic theories) but sometimes deterministic theories
have important things to say, even as we must be conscious of their
limitations.[*]
In order to simplify the discussion, assume that the GGS hypothesis
was developed by someone else besides Diamond himself.
Jim, I am somewhat loath to refer you to lengthy analyses of Diamond's
thesis since you don't seem interested enough in the problematic to
spend the necessary time to consider all aspects but if it ever strikes
your fancy, you might want to check this book. One of the authors
referred to it on my blog and I plan to look at it the first chance I get:
Author : Deborah Gewertz
E-mail : [email protected]
Concerning Diamond's sociobiology, please forgive my pointing out that
Fred Errington and I made this argument in our 2004 book, Yali's
Question: Sugar, Culture and History (U. of Chicago Press). Here is a
bit of it from the Introduction (p. 11 and p. 263):
Diamond’s view of the relentless course of human history, driven by the
operation of ultimate causes over its thirteen-thousand-year span, seems
to rest on an implicit view of human nature as aggressive, acquisitive,
and selfish. It is this nature that, in Diamond’s vision, keeps
ultimate causes consequential throughout history. In short, human being
necessarily lead their lives so as to extract maximum advantage over
others: give a guy – any guy – half a chance and he will conquer the
world; give a guy a piece of appropriate metal and he will inevitably
fashion a sword to cut you down or a chain to enslave you within a hold
of a ship bound for a New world sugar plantation. [8]
[8] Many of our comments about Diamond might also be applied to the
kinds of explanations sociobiologists offer (and E.O. Wilson, perhaps
the most distinguished of the sociobiologists, writes a most laudatory
blurb to Diamond's book): these are explanations which account for the
present and (although sociobiologists often deny this) the future in
terms of fixed and still active -- ultimate -- causes.
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