tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7872819010848426693.post2382316420200841067..comments2024-03-28T02:46:03.227-04:00Comments on The Historical Society: Science as History and Big HistoryRandallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16755286304057000048noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7872819010848426693.post-4071754304147136752011-01-05T21:16:13.130-05:002011-01-05T21:16:13.130-05:00To put it another way, I don't think science w...To put it another way, I don't think science writers have any sense of inevitability -- probably just the opposite. I think a lot of them (Bryson included) are trying to help the general public understand what's been going on in science the last 50 years or so. <br /><br />The way I was thinking evolution might be used, was more in the sense of understanding what evolutionary psychologists have been saying recently about the survival values of different types of behavior. A lot of this is not too far from some of the classic sociological sources historians use, but with a slightly different theoretical basis. I was just reading Alf Hornborg's _Power of the Machine_, which tries to apply a thermodynamic metaphor to world system theory. It's not quite history, but I think it has huge implications for historians, once we decide how far we're willing to ride the analogy. <br /><br />On a lighter note, scientists have recently confirmed, as I've always suspected, that Neanderthals mixed with "moderns." Up to 4% of the European genome is Neanderthal. Really.dan allossohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10733670017382794923noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7872819010848426693.post-30079410309252604822011-01-05T06:59:20.465-05:002011-01-05T06:59:20.465-05:00I really appreciate taking a breath and sitting ba...I really appreciate taking a breath and sitting back to see the perspective Big History gives. But I agree with Heather that most historians today, by temperament as well as training perhaps, are wary of anything that implies inevitability. We are usually comfortable being located in the humanities, which means that we are focused on human action, and Big History takes a dim view of humans. I need that bigger perspective, sometimes, but it is always going to be hard for me to dwell too long at the 100 million year viewpoint.Lisa Clark Dillerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00155783885263417225noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7872819010848426693.post-87245374546438936192011-01-04T15:46:11.825-05:002011-01-04T15:46:11.825-05:00Funny you should say that, Heather. I was conside...Funny you should say that, Heather. I was considering a post on teleology. I think it's interesting that it was pushed aside by historians as they professionalized, and even postmodernism couldn't bring it back. But among non-historians, did it ever really go away? Even if you set aside people who have a religious belief that history really is "going somewhere," I think many people misinterpret scientific ideas like evolution and even thermodynamics, and believe they say we're "progressing" to some future state of increasing perfection. <br /><br />I was reading something recently (can't recall what, just now), where a historian made a reference to the tension between the evolutionary concepts of gradualism and punctuated equilibrium -- I was wondering if ideas like this have any value either as paradigms or metaphors, for historians? (I'm also fascinated by the difference between paradigms and metaphors, but that's another tangent --- can you tell I really don't want to get back to today's comps reading on labor and the Cold War?)dan allossohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10733670017382794923noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7872819010848426693.post-54721861510197731612011-01-04T15:17:13.401-05:002011-01-04T15:17:13.401-05:00Dan:
This sounds like a project for Malcolm Gladw...Dan:<br /><br />This sounds like a project for Malcolm Gladwell.<br /><br />I think that American historians, at any rate, have steered away from this venture because it smacks of the idea that we're all moving forward toward a glorious future.<br /><br />I can see how such a history wouldn't have to do that, but I can also see why someone would hesitate to jump in to that sort of a project, considering how thoroughly historians have chewed over Whig history.hcrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07334093881332383848noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7872819010848426693.post-1642416831540445262011-01-04T11:52:33.861-05:002011-01-04T11:52:33.861-05:00Dan: Thanks for this post. Very interesting. I e...Dan: Thanks for this post. Very interesting. I enjoy reading essays from Arts and Letters that explore these topics. I also like to think about how our discipline compares and differs from others, something that John Lewis Gaddis looked into in his Landscape of History. <br /><br />On your last question, perhaps Daniel Lord Smail's On Deep History and the Brain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008) fits?Randallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16755286304057000048noreply@blogger.com