When pressed with explaining the progression of human society to its current state and, more broadly, the historical process in general, one has several possible options. Three of the most compelling views, however, can be attributed to Jared Diamond, William McNeill, and Hans Zinsser. Although each offers a distinct model of how to understand chance and how history explains evolution, they all take radically different approaches. Diamond proposes that everything is explicable by a few simple laws and principles, and even goes so far as to suggest that there are no alternatives in history. McNeill argues that although there are loose, regulated principles at work, they do not dictate or explain everything; instead, he suggests that they create broad general patterns but adds that while there is pattern, there is also a fair amount of chance. Zinsser suggests simply that historians have largely disregarded disease as an agent of change. While all seem to be sound, when examining these three views on a more fundamental level, while focusing specifically on the role disease has played throughout history, it is evident that Zinsser’s stands as the most well-reasoned.
To understand why, let us first examine Diamond’s theory. Diamond, a professor of geography and physiology, offers the most deterministic point of view. He is of the opinion that history and its outcome can be easily explained by applying a few laws and principles, and accordingly that history has no alternatives. And as per Diamond’s postulation, it is indeed easy to retrospectively explain historical outcomes with these laws and principles, as evidenced by Diamond in his 1997 expository book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. In it, Diamond...
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...t eliminates the need for an explanation of the cause.
In their attempts to explain the historical process, Diamond and McNeill both take similar approaches by proposing that everything is explicable when one applies some simple laws and principles. McNeill supplements this notion with the idea that sometimes, however, things happen by chance and may not be explained by the overarching patterns that seem to govern everything else. Zinsser, on the other hand, simply submits that there are tremendous alternatives at any given point throughout history without trying to explain each one. Both Diamond and McNeill’s models fall prey to their own over-ambition since neither can completely explain every event they claim they can. Of the three, Zinsser’s model, due largely to its nondeterministic nature, clearly serves as the most reasonable view of the historical process.
The prologue of the book clearly lays out Diamond thesis. He explains that past societies have collapsed based on five factors: human induced environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, friendly trade partners, and society’s response to environmental problems. He also explains how is wrote this book in a scientific manner using the “comparative method”, comparing natural situations differing with respect to the variable of interest. There is a slight flaw in this though. Showing these correlations between different societies,...
Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History by historian David Christian explores a “modern creation myth” (2). Christian takes his readers from the big bang to modern day in a technical and historical narrative. He believes that big history is a new, yet important, area of history ignored by historians. Christian tells us big history is “a coherent story about the past on many different scales, beginning, literally, with the origins of the universe and ending in the present day” (2). The strength in Christian’s argument is in that he carefully takes his readers through each stage in history, much like a textbook, using charts, graphs, pictures, and the language for each area, like astronomy or biology. However, Christian’s goal is not complete. Christian, at multiple points, tells his readers there are many more details and theories that surround any one of his given subjects. Although his book is a great overall coverage for a topic as large as big history, his readers may wonder if such the idea of big history is a good one.
There are many reasons why certain events occur. Whether it is our ancestors, culture, or underlying factor’s that bring about the event. Therefore, in order to break the cycle that has come about from these factors we must recognize what they are and then seek to control them. This is the only way we will be able to break the cycle or history repeating itself. Otherwise we may be like the Grecian and Roman Empire’s that fell because they were unable to change their ways.
.... Recent developments in quantum physics, biology and information science have put us in a position where we question the uniqueness of the causal-mechanical model of science. But these developments, even though sciences based on non-causal concepts might dominate in the culture, would not eradicate the causal way people have viewed the world and themselves, but only relegate the concept of cause to the realm of metaphor, a rhetorical way of putting things. The concept of cause then would no longer be a scientific concept, but would still be alive in the culture. What brings a change in the general worldview then? This would be the question I still have to ask.
In “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells, the author portrays, for the most part, that the choices humans make now cannot drastically change the outcomes in the far future. The obvious representation of social and political classes, even as the time traveler goes 800,000 years into the future, describes this more. The fact that, even 800,000 years later, there are still apparent classes that can determine an individual’s worth guides the reader towards the conclusion that even if an individual were to change the present, it would be impossible to avoid the very same mistake from being repeated in the future.
Society, however, is a state towards which humans have naturally evolved, and our continued existence without society is inconceivable. Thus, although determinism is argued successfully from a causal point of view, it is clearly flawed in a practical context as it fails these fundamental aspects of human life.
Making decisions is a routine in our daily lives, these actions contribute to how we operate in our society. “Why did history take such different evolutionary courses for people of different continents?” was the question that fascinated Diamond to reveal the patterns of human history. According to the professor of Geography at the University of California Los Angeles, Jared Diamond, in his article “Why do some societies make disastrous decisions?” he describes the factors in failures we commit that have led to societal collapses by breaking it down as a road map. The author makes a strong suggest that “First a group may fail to anticipate a problem before the problem actually arrives. Secondly, when the problem arrives, the group may fail to perceive the problem. Then, after they perceive the problem, they may fail even to try to solve the problem.
Comparing Paley’s and Lamarck’s paradigms show how Kuhn’s paradigm can be used to compare and explain different paradigms. With the examples of observation, assumptions, and anomalies, two paradigms clearly demonstrate their ability to solve puzzles as well as their potential influence on understanding of society. The Kuhn’s paradigm model helps understand the changes in scientific perspectives and the course of European society. The use of this paradigm model can provide an opportunity to explain current scientific paradigms and assist in developing new paradigms.
John Lewis Gaddis, in his book, The Landscape of History, generates a strong argument for the historical method by bringing together the multiple standpoints in viewing history and the sciences. The issue of objective truth in history is addressed throughout Gaddis’s work. In general, historians learn to select the various events that they believe to be valid. Historians must face the fact that there is an “accurate” interpretation of the past ceases to exist because interpretation itself is based on the experience of the historian, in which people cannot observe directly (Gaddis 10). Historians can only view the past in a limited perspective, which generates subjectivity and bias, and claiming a piece of history to be “objective” is simplistic. Seeing the world in a multidimensiona...
It is important for people to understand and know what went on in all time periods and how one simple animal cause be the one thing that gets you by each day or how evolving to something greater can either be successful or a disaster depending on where anyone is located. Jared Diamond allowed us to understand how guns, germs and steel helped countries not be so isolated and be open to new technology that helped them prosper to something bigger than what they had. To conclude many nations use the three theories that jared diamond shares so that countries could prosper to something bigger than what they had hence, they also used it to conquer other civilizations so they could gain as much power as they could. To sum up Jared Diamond saw geography more than a way to expand from either east to west but a way to use what they had or what others brought so that they can gain more power while using the theories guns, germs, and steel
My dictionary defines an institution as ‘established law, custom or practice’. The reason why institutions matter is that laws, customs and established practices in institutional and organisational settings can play a powerful role in shaping the behaviour of individuals. There is broad agreement that in defining institutions in these terms we need to focus not only on formal institutions and practices but also on informal routines or relationships. Levi (1990: 409) argues that ‘the most effective institutional arrangements incorporate a normative system of informal and internalised rules’.
Many scholars have attempted to arrange the record of human variation into evolutionary sequence, but have failed in doing so, and did not produce accepted results for a general evolutionary model. There was an assumption that cultural evolution functioned the same way as biological evolution – which is false, because biological evolution works through boundaries create perpetually different forms of languages, just as species boundaries create perpetually different forms of organisms. Evolutionary trends are greatly considered when it comes to cultural evolution, which is similar to gradual transformations of, for example, food preference, burial or ritual practices, or theatrical lighting. Often, people may even create accidental – but brilliant – innovations, or “mutations”, which encourage us to continue seeking the gradual changes in cultural evolution, since it does not contain genes to clarify things. Studies help people understand how societies are integrated, no matter the scale, how empires rise and fall, how trade networks come into existence, etc. Cultural evolution is the central role which meets the challenges of the modern world, which includes the social, biological, and geophysical environments. It is an adaptation to the constantly changing world and environment, and is a frequent reminder of how culture affects the biological success of the human
its time has some basis from the past. It is a known fact that history has a
At the end of the eighteenth century there were three weaknesses in history. The first was that historians did not always use primary sources in the study of history. There was a tendency to rely on secondary sources of evidence even among some of the great historians. The second problem was where eighteenth century historians failed to see that "times change" and civilisations from different eras have different aims and expectations. The third problem was that the teaching of history was not organised in a very systematic way. The main emphasis was on Greek or Roman history, or legal history. This basically says that history used to be random and unsystematic and that now it has changed. Modern historians, however, do try and use primary sources whenever they can and they are more thorough in their work, however, the study of science can not be controlled. What this means is that whereas in science one can set up an investigation, perform a controlled experiment (where there are certain aspects that are varied or maintained), and take precise readings, in history, the results are obtained as they are found. These historical results could be documents hidden away in the basement of an old house for hundreds of years, which are then found and give a slightly different view of history to what the historians thought. These findings then have to be fitted into the timeline by the historians and could end up changing the historians' ideas of reasons for why the events occurred.
...reat to the credibility of historical analysis, and if are not overcome, lead to ineffectual and unreliable representations of history (Jupp 2006: 135-137). This would be detrimental when attempting to understand development and social change.