When I first came across Guns, Germs, and Steel in an airport bookstore 24 years ago I read it with a kind of intellectual excitement that I don't feel often. But I knew it was just one analysis by someone working out of their own field, so I hoped to read responses that really engaged with its arguments. What do experts on horse domesti…
When I first came across Guns, Germs, and Steel in an airport bookstore 24 years ago I read it with a kind of intellectual excitement that I don't feel often. But I knew it was just one analysis by someone working out of their own field, so I hoped to read responses that really engaged with its arguments. What do experts on horse domestication think about the notion that it could never work for zebras? Are there ways to be more quantitative about how easily wheat cultivation could spread?
Instead what I found were objections that started from a stance of ideology, and only brought in historical arguments as backup. I would still like to see a serious review of his main arguments on their merits.
In the context of biological evolution, Darwin argued over a century earlier that evolution would be fastest, and effectively most "innovative", in the largest connected areas. Applying that same idea to cultural evolution, you would expect the likelihood of the industrial revolution to happen in Eurasia to out of proportion to its relative area because of the multiplier effect of greater interactions. You could argue most of Diamond's book boils down to multiple examples of how that size advantage plays out, but I would still like to see specific expertise brought to bear on those examples. And that does not seem to be happening.
When I first came across Guns, Germs, and Steel in an airport bookstore 24 years ago I read it with a kind of intellectual excitement that I don't feel often. But I knew it was just one analysis by someone working out of their own field, so I hoped to read responses that really engaged with its arguments. What do experts on horse domestication think about the notion that it could never work for zebras? Are there ways to be more quantitative about how easily wheat cultivation could spread?
Instead what I found were objections that started from a stance of ideology, and only brought in historical arguments as backup. I would still like to see a serious review of his main arguments on their merits.
In the context of biological evolution, Darwin argued over a century earlier that evolution would be fastest, and effectively most "innovative", in the largest connected areas. Applying that same idea to cultural evolution, you would expect the likelihood of the industrial revolution to happen in Eurasia to out of proportion to its relative area because of the multiplier effect of greater interactions. You could argue most of Diamond's book boils down to multiple examples of how that size advantage plays out, but I would still like to see specific expertise brought to bear on those examples. And that does not seem to be happening.