Guns Germs and Steel

[GoreBag]

I think Potatoes come from South America.

That...doesn't refute his statement.

[Conqueror]

Hurin_Rules was answering to Kralizec's post which talked about plants specifically in North America.

[GoreBag]

Uhh...no, it says 'New World'.

[Kralizec]

Not my post
Potatoes came from south America, but never made it to north America until the colonial age AFIK.

[Pindar]

I'd have to agree with Pindar on that one, although it is an interesting read.

BTW, Pindar, I'm not really familiar with Boorstin (beyond his stint as Librarian of Congress), or with his position on this; can you summarize or point me in the right direction here?

Hi Hurin,

Do you recall Boorstin's three part work starting with "The Discoverers"? * It's dated, but like Diamond he got the Pulitzer. Toward the beginning to the investigation he asks the same question: why the West came out on top as opposed to any other major civilizational block, particularly given the West's relative backwardness. His basic answer is tied to cultural norms. Whereas all the other civilizational blocks developed a core state apparatus that informed all things under the sun, the West remained fractured. This fractured condition allowed the West one key advantage: competition. Other civilizations due to their dominate model tended to atrophy. The dynamism Boorstin refers to could apply to the Greek City States, Italy during the Renaissance or Western Europe as a whole. That is a simple summery though other elements can be added.


*

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The other two being "The Creators" and "The Seekers"

[CBR]

*snip*His basic answer is tied to cultural norms. Whereas all the other civilizational blocks developed a core state apparatus that informed all things under the sun, the West remained fractured. This fractured condition allowed the West one key advantage: competition. *snip*

The epilogue in Guns, Germs and Steel mentions same thing but Im sure Boorstin goes into a lot more detail. In what way do you find Diamonds thesis flawed?


CBR

[English assassin]

Bleh. If you ask me both thesis are flawed. The west hasn't "won," any more than a human is the end of evolution. In a hundred years time Jared N'Diamond and Mohammed Boorstin will be writing books about the inevitability of the collapse of the west (very probably citing its fractured and competitve nature). Or possibly they will be writing about the inevitability of its continued success, who can say.

You can't really get this stuff wrong can you? Proposals for books explaining the inevitable rise to global dominance of the Australian Aborigine are rarely taken up by publishers.

[CBR]

Well I dont think its a question of who "won" but trying to understand why the world has developed into what it is today. I dont see anything wrong with that.


CBR

[English assassin]

Nothing wrong with it, but proceeding from the basis that the world has to be the way that it is can you astray.

"this society is "dominant"" "these are traits of this society" "therefore these traits lead to dominance" is an incomplete chain of reasoning.

[CBR]

Yes I certainly agree with that. I havent read Boorstin but IIRC Diamond doesnt say it has to be like this either.

I think the argument that the competition between states meant societies kept on developing is a pretty fair statement.

How would the papal ban on crossbows and archers in 1139 have worked out if Europa hadnt been so fractured?

If there hadnt been for all those wars that developed gunpowder weapons, then I doubt Europe would have become so dominant.

IMO it was the weapons technology and especially gunpowder that changed the western societies/culture and not some inherit cultural advantage. Of course that is the simplified version


CBR

[English assassin]

Yes, but. if states are like animals then competition will probably lead to development, I grant you. But who is to say that that development will be in a "useful" direction, where "useful" means "able to sail overseas and impose your will on people who were otherwise largely minding their own business". if its about competition in war, then you would have thought the mesoamericans would have been very formidable, except that their warfare developed in a largely symbolic direction which proved sadly inferior to the Spanish preference for three foot of steel sword blade.

Who was to say Eurpoean competitive culture wouldn't develop in the direction of gaining status by bulding the nicest cathedrals, or growing the biggest vegetables. It didn't have to lead to cannon and HMS Victory.

IMHO there is no "why" to this, it just did.

[CBR]

Yeah I dont think development always will be "useful" especially if doesnt have much input from other cultures.

Now I must admit I dont know much about mesoamerican warfare but AFAIK the Aztec focused on taking prisoners for religious purposes but they did not represent all mesoamericans.

Since warfare has been a pretty consistant part of human history, I just dont think it very likely that Europeans suddenly would have changed into something like you describe. That took some horrible wars and democracy before we went over to the football ritual instead


CBR

[Pindar]

The epilogue in Guns, Germs and Steel mentions same thing but Im sure Boorstin goes into a lot more detail. In what way do you find Diamonds thesis flawed?

CBR

Hello,

I sorry for the late reply, I'm far away from where I normally am. Let me shfit things a tad just so we're clear: what do you recall was Diamond's thesis?

[Pindar]

Bleh. If you ask me both thesis are flawed. The west hasn't "won," any more than a human is the end of evolution.

Won? The West is the dominant civilizational model. This is obvious. This was not always the case. That is also obvious. Why the West should have risen to the dominant model is a legitimate question. Any analysis goes from the present backwards. No thesis requires any argument regarding the future.

You can't really get this stuff wrong can you? Proposals for books explaining the inevitable rise to global dominance of the Australian Aborigine are rarely taken up by publishers.

Actually, you can: Diamond would be an example. Writing about Australian Aboriginal world dominance would also be getting it wrong as its a counter factual.

[Big_John]

Hello,

I sorry for the late reply, I'm far away from where I normally am. Let me shfit things a tad just so we're clear: what do you recall was Diamond's thesis?

this is from memory (and explaining it to other people), so i may get some things wrong..


----

diamond's basic thesis is that modern culture/civilization patterns have nothing to do with genetic differences between populations, but with environmental differences between the locations where those populations developed. basically, he views the situation like a building, with every level dependent on the foundation from below.

the most basic foundation is the environment itself, and this has 2 equally important components: domesticable plants, and domesticable animals.

when one has both domesticable plants and animals, agriculture can arise that is sufficient for turning hunter-gatherer populations into agrarian city-dwellers.

diamond uses that setup mainly to distinguish between development in eurasia compared to the rest of the world. every other landmass, he argues, is deficient in some way. mostly, iirc, they lack domesticable animals, which means they lack the animal power for plowing, which is necessary for large-scale agriculture.

----

this basis (domesticable animals/plants --> large-scale agriculture --> necessary population densities to turn hunter-gatherers into city-dwellers) leads to a "cultural environment" where ideas like boorstin's come into effect. in addition to large populations leading to conflict/technological innovation, the large populations also create the perfect environment for "germs" to thrive and develop, evolving along with human immune defenses. so, as a side effect of societal development in agrarian societies, dangerous viruses and bacteria develop.

this turned out to be important when people from high-density, agrarian societies imported these germs to the "new world", for example, where the low-population densities never allowed germs to thrive and develop similarly to in eurasia. since the amerindians had never been exposed to these kinds of germs, they were decimated when these germs infected them. there were no reciprocal germs to decimate the eurasians because there was never a high enough population density in the new world to give rise to such virulent pathogens. in addition, the eurasian immune system had been developing along with smallpox, syphilis, etc, and so was able to deal with relatively benign new-world germs.

----

diamond also talks about the importance of the physical geography. this is a distinct concern from domestication, but they end up being related. he mentions the old idea that east-west oriented landmasses, like eurasia allow for transmission of animals, plants and agricultural technology more easily than north-south oriented continents.

in addressing the "competition" angle, diamond points out that within eurasia, europe is well suited for competing states because of it's highly "indented" coastline. this geographical setup makes europe much more difficult to unify politically than china, for example, which has a much smoother coastline. china suffered a chronic and frequent unity because there were little in the way of geographic barriers to keep one power center from dominating any other that might arise.

europe, by contrast, suffered a chronic disunity, where isolated populations could develop their own political structures, languages, and ethnic groups. this caused europe to resist attempts at unification more successfully (e.g. ancient rome, napoleonic france, nazi germany).

the significance here is that under a relatively unified culture, a large area like china or europe will not only experience less conflict/competition (leading to innovation, presumably), but also a unified political entity can stunt development with policy.

----

so, diamond argues that the environment, both in terms of the geography and in terms of the layout of domesticable plants and animals were the basic controls in the development of human societies. that's how i remember it at least, if i missed anything, please correct me (anybody).

[discovery1]

Note that the Guns Germs and Steel author argues that the reason that the euroasians had lots of diseases was because they lived in close proximity to their draft animals, which never happened in the new world even among the inca with their llama's. Not that the euroasians had a high pop density.

[Big_John]

Note that the Guns Germs and Steel author argues that the reason that the euroasians had lots of diseases was because they lived in close proximity to their draft animals, which never happened in the new world even among the inca with their llama's. Not that the euroasians had a high pop density.

good catch, i forgot the bit about the animals. but i'm 99% sure population densities are cited as a reason too. i'm pretty sure he argues that living in close proximity to animals and the high population densities supported by the agriculture that required those animals both created a great breeding gound for the eurasian diseases that ravaged the new world.

[Pindar]

Big John that is a bloody long thesis. Theses are typically much shorter. CBR look over the dissertation Big John put forward and tell if you agree or want to shorten the thesis some.

[discovery1]

Big John that is a bloody long thesis. Theses are typically much shorter. CBR look over the dissertation Big John put forward and tell if you agree or want to shorten the thesis some.

Seems like Big_John just fleshes out some of the details while the actual thesis is only a sentence

diamond's basic thesis is that modern culture/civilization patterns have nothing to do with genetic differences between populations, but with environmental differences between the locations where those populations developed.

@Big_John: Really? You could be right. I only saw the PBS doc about his work, plus I read a bit of his book.

[Big_John]

@Big_John: Really? You could be right. I only saw the PBS doc about his work, plus I read a bit of his book.

i'll reread that part and let you know. i never saw ther series, btw.. does the pbs website have it online to watch for free like that elegant universe series?

[discovery1]

i'll reread that part and let you know. i never saw ther series, btw.. does the pbs website have it online to watch for free like that elegant universe series?

http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/index.html

Only seems like they have summarys of the episodes plus their transcripts unfortunately.

[CBR]

Big John that is a bloody long thesis. Theses are typically much shorter. CBR look over the dissertation Big John put forward and tell if you agree or want to shorten the thesis some.

I think that is pretty much it.


From wikipedia:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The theory outlined
Before human beings developed agriculture, they lived as hunter-gatherers, as some still do. Diamond argues that Eurasian civilization is not so much a product of ingenuity, but of opportunity and necessity. That is, civilization is not created out of sheer will or intelligence, but is more like a house of cards, each level dependent upon the levels below it. Specifically, the key to civilization is agriculture. The keys to agriculture are domesticable plant and animal species for food and work. The demands for domesticability of an animal species are particularly stringent. Diamond identifies six criteria including the animal being sufficiently docile, gregarious, willing to breed in captivity and having a social dominance hierarchy. Though not stated explicitly, his theories are similar to that of cultural ecology.

[Pindar]

I think that is pretty much it.

Is it your stance then that Diamond's thesis is not concerned with the dominance of the West but a more general notion for of all of Eurasia and I assume North Africa? I recall, the work begins with a recounted conversation between Diamond and a New Guinean, the crux of which was why the West? This is the question Diamond then proceeds to give answer to.

[CBR]

His books mostly describes the differences between the continents. He explains why New Guinea didnt end up being the one with all the "cargo" and why Eurasian cultures became dominant.

He does mention some reasons why the west became dominant in the last 500years but is IMO not the strongest part of his book.


CBR

[English assassin]

Won? The West is the dominant civilizational model. This is obvious.

Even if we allow that there is one "Western" civilizational model, (and I suppose we could pull out enough common themes to make that tenable) I would deny that it was "obviously" dominant. No one seems to have told the Chinese, or the Islamic word, or India. Possibly some time around 1840-1850, with the opium wars, the British all over India, and the forcible the opening of Japan to foreign traders, the "west" did acheive dominance for a period. But given the technologies and economies of the time even at that high water mark i would question what the dominance actually consisted of.

Throughout most of C20 what we would call the west was clearly not dominant, being under serious challenge from fascism and communism.

So what we seem to have are two short periods, one of which we happen to be in now, where "the west" is the most powerful bloc on the planet. Does this amount to a dominance worth of study, on a par, say, with Rome's status as the dominant power in the Mediterranean world for more than 500 years, or just short term historical noise?