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. even though there's no evidence for it.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. We can see that, and therefore it's natural to assume. Because if you don't provide what the actual explanation is, people are going to fall back on the transparent racist explanations - mainly, they'll say some people have different colored skin and. History is full of lots of horrible stuff, and many people - including historians - not surprisingly feel uncomfortable even acknowledging or discussing the subject. "To talk about why some societies conquered others, it's not nice. On how the book pushes students to look for complex explanations to difficult questions Therefore, I have to go learn more about it, and write books that will then be scrutinized by college students and high school students - and even middle school students." "My basic living comes from teaching undergrads at the University of California, and they're also the people who ask me questions that show me that I don't really understand something that I'm lecturing to them about. it is interdisciplinary - it pools many fields together."Įducation College Common Reads: Learning From 'Wes Moore' So instead of forcing all freshmen to read a book in one field. And on the other hand, it attempts to answer these questions of history by drawing on linguistics and genetics and animal behavior. On the one hand, it's about questions of history, drawing upon anthropology and archaeology. "College faculty like to assign the book to freshmen because it is interdisciplinary. On why the book has had such broad appeal For example, why have walnut trees been domesticated, while oak trees have never been domesticated, despite acorns being edible? And why have European sheep been domesticated, but bighorn sheep never domesticated? Those are some of the cocktail party facts that turn out to be basic to understanding why history went the way it did." And they're full of surprising facts that will make you the life of cocktail parties. "Students have no difficultly understanding it, because the answers are understandable and surprising. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Guns, Germs, and Steel Subtitle The Fates of Human Societies Author Jared Diamond
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