Jared Diamond

[sophie]

Dachs is right there. Interdisciplinary history is probably more common than a narrow focus on 'just history' - if such a thing can even be said to exist - these days. There are even attempts, and well-funded attempts, I might add, to create a so-called "universalist" approach to history, which would involve history, physics, biology, geology, etc., all being taught alongside one another as a single supra-subject in high schools, rather than as individual classes. Given who is doing the funding - it starts with an 'm,' and rhymes with bicrosoft - we're likely to see that tried out in the US or Canada within the next decade.

Also most history graduate programs these days look for students with a degree in something other than history before looking for history students.

 

[Lord Baal]

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[Dachs]

That one I didn't actually know. And I should.

That's a not-insubstantial part of the reason I haven't finished my undergraduate degree yet. One major's done; the other is almost done.

 

[Lord Baal]

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[H4run]

I think it is written in his profile that he is 23, I can't believe it myself until this post.

 

[Plotinus]

Dachs is right there. Interdisciplinary history is probably more common than a narrow focus on 'just history' - if such a thing can even be said to exist - these days. There are even attempts, and well-funded attempts, I might add, to create a so-called "universalist" approach to history, which would involve history, physics, biology, geology, etc., all being taught alongside one another as a single supra-subject in high schools, rather than as individual classes. Given who is doing the funding - it starts with an 'm,' and rhymes with bicrosoft - we're likely to see that tried out in the US or Canada within the next decade.

Templeton are also funding research (not teaching) into this, specifically the concept of "Big History", according to which there's no clear distinction between history at the cosmological, biological, and social levels. I know because I've been involved in arranging that funding. I'm rather dubious about it personally, but you never know.

 

[Lord Baal]

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[Pangur Bán]

You really think Collapse is insightful? Collapse is probably the least original of his works and rehashes sometimes historically and/or scientifically disproved theories. It doesn't explain the dynamics of genocide really at all (except for a slight attempt with Rwanda) and instead tries to shoehorn nearly everything as environmental collapse. Here is just a listing of a few chapters in Collapse that are downright wrong:

- 2 (Easter Island, No one really views the population collapse anymore as a tragedy of the commons result and Hunt and Lipo's research from the last 2 decades coupled with the historical record shows that the decline of population came from Spanish contact with the written record and obsidian, biological, and habitat records demonstrating the population remained stable before and after first contact with the Dutch.)

- 4 Anasazi "collapse". Another factually incorrect example and he tries to enforce his point via packrat middens that are not only notoriously unreliable but whose biological nature make it that those findings are pretty much guaranteed useless. Plus we know quite a few of the sites where greenery was cut for the sites and none of them are even remotely close to the Anasazi sites. Diamond completely ignores the people who continued to live using the same canals, "colonies", etc. of the main Anasazi sites that continued well after the gradual decline of more famous sites ie at Mesa Verde and Chaco.

- 5 And don't get me started on the Maya. Where to begin - the whitewashing of native history and really history in general to fit an environmental narrative often discredits people simply to score the modern day west to try and fix its environmental programs. Unfortunately it means a rewriting (and whitewashing) of history - this has become the case for the Maya too. In only examining the classical transition and completely ignoring the pre-classical transition and other transitions in the Mesoamerican world, Diamond completely ignores any historical, archaeological, or scientific context when it comes to the historical movement of populations in Mesoamerica. In claiming that deforestation damaged the Maya environment "repeatedly" he completely ignores any context about what my ancestors did in order to manage deforestation and degradation of the land. We created narrow but long aqueducts, rebuilt eroded limestone karsts, rotated fields, etc. As it is, every few years archaeologists have to revise population numbers upwards of Maya sites because they are stuck in the idea that we "slash and burnt" or mismanaged fields and other more primitive means of agriculture. If you look at forests that grew back around the fields of various sites that eventually declined, one could see a hundred years ago different ages/years from when some of these 300-500 year old trees came from via these field rotations. The practice continued for a while although it has declined today. Or if you look at the south, field rotation still happens all the time today. The cities of Kaminaljuyu and other southern cities aren't looked at by Diamond at all - but they present a good case of centuries, even millennia of extensive land management.

And it gets even more aggravating the more you look at his "details" that are just plain factually inaccurate. From English pastoral systems, to Mycenae Greece, to Greenland, to Australia he continues to get detail after detail wrong. Collapse is easily his most useless book and contributes pretty much nothing to anyone.

I thought he explained the dynamics of genocide very well indeed.

I don't find many of these criticisms convincing. In any case, difference of approach, ideology, methodology, sources and terminology often conceal general trends from specialists more obvious to guys with a bigger picture approach. I'd like to hear the localists unhappy with JD's treatment engage with it a bit more rather than each one mistakingly conclude that just because he isn't parroting the latest micro-consensus he must be entirely wrong.

 

[Pangur Bán]

Dachs is right there. Interdisciplinary history is probably more common than a narrow focus on 'just history' - if such a thing can even be said to exist - these days. There are even attempts, and well-funded attempts, I might add, to create a so-called "universalist" approach to history, which would involve history, physics, biology, geology, etc., all being taught alongside one another as a single supra-subject in high schools, rather than as individual classes. Given who is doing the funding - it starts with an 'm,' and rhymes with bicrosoft - we're likely to see that tried out in the US or Canada within the next decade.

That's really where it all started of course. 'History' like other modern disciplines is defined by the people who do it, their skills and how they classify themselves rather than by any subject area. It is to some extent an arbitrary historical product.

 

[Gucumatz]

I thought he explained the dynamics of genocide very well indeed.

I don't find many of these criticisms convincing. In any case, difference of approach, ideology, methodology, sources and terminology often conceal general trends from specialists more obvious to guys with a bigger picture approach. I'd like to hear the localists unhappy with JD's treatment engage with it a bit more rather than each one mistakingly conclude that just because he isn't parroting the latest micro-consensus he must be entirely wrong.

Excuse me - now its my turn to ask if you read? How is a blatant disregard and manipulation of historical data, biological and scientific data, and archaeological data by Diamond in Collapse "not convincing" that his argument in Collapse is fatally flawed? Unlike Guns Germs and Steel - this isn't a question of localized disagreement on specific issues, pretty much every case he presents heck even the Rwanda case - has major issues with it - ie: inaccurate data, false claims, using scientific analysis that is not only irrelevant but hasn't been used for decades because of consensus disproval, etc.

No one said he is entirely wrong - merely that if in fact every example he provides in Collapse is wrong (either to a huge degree like the 3 I cited, as in pretty much not a thing Diamond cites is correct) to the smaller cases he cites. And did you read Collapse? Its focus is certainly not on explaining genocide rather examining the "pattern of environmental collapse". Look don't get me wrong, I love general ideas - I love patterns - but when pretty much all of the evidence says that a narrative is wrong, then you can't simply accept it. This idea of environmental determinism, which is the point of Diamond's "Collapse" - certainly not Genocide, simply on any substantial facts unlike some of his claims in GGS. If you want further detailed criticism - read "Questioning Collapse" a book written by actual experts in their fields unlike Diamond that pretty much makes a mockery of Collapse by pointing out these patterns.

Collapse is so bad, that it makes Guns Germs and Steel seem like the 6th Sense and that its the The Last Airbender equivalent for Jared Diamond - yes its that bad.

 

[Wrymouth3]

That one I didn't actually know. And I should.

Just to add to the point. It doesn't mean having a history degree makes you less desirable or less qualified for admittance.

 

[Pangur Bán]

Excuse me - now its my turn to ask if you read? How is a blatant disregard and manipulation of historical data, biological and scientific data, and archaeological data by Diamond in Collapse "not convincing" that his argument in Collapse is fatally flawed? Unlike Guns Germs and Steel - this isn't a question of localized disagreement on specific issues, pretty much every case he presents heck even the Rwanda case - has major issues with it - ie: inaccurate data, false claims, using scientific analysis that is not only irrelevant but hasn't been used for decades because of consensus disproval, etc.

No one said he is entirely wrong - merely that if in fact every example he provides in Collapse is wrong (either to a huge degree like the 3 I cited, as in pretty much not a thing Diamond cites is correct) to the smaller cases he cites. And did you read Collapse? Its focus is certainly not on explaining genocide rather examining the "pattern of environmental collapse". Look don't get me wrong, I love general ideas - I love patterns - but when pretty much all of the evidence says that a narrative is wrong, then you can't simply accept it. This idea of environmental determinism, which is the point of Diamond's "Collapse" - certainly not Genocide, simply on any substantial facts unlike some of his claims in GGS. If you want further detailed criticism - read a book written by actual experts in their fields unlike Diamond that pretty much makes a mockery of Collapse by pointing out these patterns.

Collapse is so bad, that it makes Guns Germs and Steel seem like the 6th Sense and that its the The Last Airbender equivalent for Jared Diamond - yes its that bad.

Collapse is a good if imperfect book, whereas Questioning Collapse is pretty awful assemblage of ad hominem and straw man not entirely unlike this thread here.

Making some mistakes along the way, or failing to 'respect' the temporary random micro-consensus of each different area is something inevitable, and indeed something to be desired as such people often need their feathers ruffled to keep themselves on the game and tend not to be very well-rounded anyway. Diamond collects together a range of plausible theories relating to the fate of different societies, analyzing them as cultural systems in relation to their environment, and then pulls together plenty of relevant conclusions about human beings and their interactions with the environments. If you call that 'environmental determinism' you're dumping what he actually says and replacing it with a straw man theory that basically suggests 'everything a response to environment'. The latter might help the student quickly 'understand' a theory, but it is something no actual thinker would ever advocate.

 

[Crezth]

Making some mistakes along the way, or failing to 'respect' the temporary random micro-consensus of each different area is something inevitable, and indeed something to be desired as such people often need their feathers ruffled to keep themselves on the game and tend not to be very well-rounded anyway.

I'm sorry, are you saying that it's OK if Jared Diamond is wrong on every point, just because it wakes comatose close-minded historians out of some catatonic state where they can't admit new ideas?

That's a pretty awful defense.

 

[Pangur Bán]

JD isn't 'wrong' on every point, or even on most points. Before repeating such claims, ask yourself how plausible it is that a tenured American professor would go into print being 'wrong on every point'. Surely if some guys on a gamer forum, most of whom haven't read his work, can 'see' the 'wrongness', he would ... no?

 

[Gucumatz]

Collapse is a good if imperfect book, whereas Questioning Collapse is pretty awful assemblage of ad hominem and straw man not entirely unlike this thread here.

Making some mistakes along the way, or failing to 'respect' the temporary random micro-consensus of each different area is something inevitable, and indeed something to be desired as such people often need their feathers ruffled to keep themselves on the game and tend not to be very well-rounded anyway. Diamond collects together a range of plausible theories relating to the fate of different societies, analyzing them as cultural systems in relation to their environment, and then pulls together plenty of relevant conclusions about human beings and their interactions with the environments. If you call that 'environmental determinism' you're dumping what he actually says and replacing it with a straw man theory that basically suggests 'everything a response to environment'. The latter might help the student quickly 'understand' a theory, but it is something no actual thinker would ever advocate.

Except it isn't even just a "micro-consensus" its pretty much a universal consensus by nearly any and every expert in each field for every case study he examines in Collapse. The same can't be said about Guns Germs and Steel where some people may not like the idea about the big picture theories he presents and some evidence may be wrong, it doesn't detract from his argument. But the same can't be said with Collapse - Collapse is just that, a terrible book

His starting evidence in the book for each case study is most often wrong. His conclusion for nearly every case study is also wrong in most every case.

It would be like trying to make a mathematical proof explaining why the sky appears green to us by saying some people have green eyes. Its just bad logic, bad science, bad history all around in Collapse. I ask you to find any expert in any of the relevant fields discussed in Collapse and see if they agree with either the premise or conclusion presented by Diamond in Collapse, you won't. Same can't be said for Guns Germs and Steel which may have a few flawed points it doesn't detract from his points as much and still leaves them as plausible ideas.

But the same can't be said for Collapse - particularly when the book's purpose is to examine: "X Society Collapsed - I believe its because of G, L, Z, and Y Factors - I will use proof [that most has been called out on] to make these conclusions [that are often/completely wrong]"

And it is part of a wider Environmental Determinism in history. People love to ignore evidence and claim that nearly every society "collapsed" because of them being unable to manage their environment, something which the historical, scientific, and archaeological record argues as untrue. In fact, people were more resilient and societies were better able to survive environmental pressures in the past then maybe we are today and we should be arguing historical resilience and not faulty logic "collapses" that didn't occur.

It would be like if say humans disappeared completely off the face of the earth tomorrow and some magical alien whatever peoples came to earth 300 years later and claimed that the USSR collapsed because of a drought/environmental reasons while ignoring every other piece of evidence there is to make such a stupid assertion and distorting/fabricating the data to try and make that claim, just so they could scare their society into action. That's what "Collapse" is an illogical and fabricated flow and rehash of old ideas based on whitewashing the past [although European case studies are equally distorted] in order to scare the west into action (and while really Guns Germs and Steel did rehash some, it also presented several new fresh and interesting ideas unlike Collapse)

The West needs to act and innovate much quicker than it is when it comes to the environment - but revising history on false information and adding to the further whitewashing of the past is not the answer.

 

[Gucumatz]

JD isn't 'wrong' on every point, or even on most points. Before repeating such claims, ask yourself how plausible it is that a tenured American professor would go into print being 'wrong on every point'. Surely if some guys on a gamer forum, most of whom haven't read his work, can 'see' the 'wrongness', he would ... no?

Did you read what I wrote? Did you read "Questioning Collapse"? Did you even read Collapse - because you are making some claims that Collapse really didn't. This isn't Guns Germs and Steel. He actually is wrong to an extent on nearly everything he wrote in Collapse.

 

[Pangur Bán]

Except it isn't even just a "micro-consensus" its pretty much a universal consensus by nearly any and every expert in each field for every case study he examines in Collapse. .

Think about that again.

His starting evidence in the book for each case study is most often wrong. His conclusion for nearly every case study is also wrong in most every case.

So you've said.

Did you read what I wrote? Did you read "Questioning Collapse"? Did you even read Collapse - because you are making some claims that Collapse really didn't. This isn't Guns Germs and Steel. He actually is wrong to an extent on nearly everything he wrote in Collapse.

Of course. Believe me, that is not why I am not agreeing with you.

 

[Gucumatz]

So has any expert said. Remember Diamond is not an expert in any of the fields he discusses. Again - I urge you to read Questioning Collapse [written by actual experts unlike Diamond]

You need to look at the data used by Diamond. Simply accepting fabricated or distorted data is unfitting of anyone who is interested in his ideas. You almost sound like you haven't read Collapse to begin with

 

[Pangur Bán]

Starting to sound like a broken record. Simply repeating the same unfair criticisms and comments over and over again won't make them more or lesss valid.

 

[Gucumatz]

Have you responded to any of my points though (because you really haven't, you haven't so much as responded to a single piece of evidence or examined his fabricated or distorted scientific data)? [But you really should read Questioning Collapse - if you even want to remotely consider Diamond a good Author, its pretty much required]

Fine I'll ask you a different way -

- How does Diamond say societies in the Americas "collapsed"? Societies like Rwanda in Africa "collapsed"? Societies in China and Australia?