![]() The question Diamond asks is: why are modern cultures so different from each other? Why is it that until very recently Papuans were using stone tools, while Americans were going to the Moon? contends that the differences between cultures arise from very early environmental differences. The best defence for this position is an illustration that a science of human history is possible. If, like evolution, history has repeatable patterns, then the sort of analyses that evolutionary biologists do to winkle out regularities should be applicable to human history as well, Diamond argues. ![]() ![]() Over a broader timescale, however, there may be patterns. Jared Diamonds 1998 book Guns, Germs, and Steel makes the argument that differences in levels of cultural development across varying regions of the world are primarily environmentally determined. History is affected by chance events and may be as unpredictable as the weather, if not more so. In Guns, Germs and Steel, Diamond suggests that historians of humans, as well as of nature, should be scientific hypothesis testers.Īt first sight this might seem an impossible pursuit. If they did not have a hypothesis, he wrote to his friend the economist Henry Fawcett, they may as well “go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours”. Darwin was unusually emphatic in his reply. Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, Jonathan Cape, £18.99, ISBN 0224038095 Reviewed by Laurence HurstĬHARLES Darwin was once asked whether he thought that natural historians should go out and collect data without the prejudice of a preformed hypothesis, or whether they should be observing nature with a particular theory in mind. ![]()
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