Oh the hell with it. I was going to confine my kvetching on this one to Facebook, but the hell with it – it’s too annoying to leave.
Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins Feb 28
Superb lecture in Oxford last pm by @sapinker Why didn’t a historian write The Better Angels of Our Nature? Why did it take a scientist?
Michael Shermer @michaelshermer Feb 28
@RichardDawkins @sapinker Same reason it was a scientist-Jared Diamond-who finally explained why civilizations developed as they did.
Oh yeah? Well why didn’t a scientist write Hamlet? Why didn’t a physicist write the “Ode to a Nightingale”? Why didn’t a chemist paint Las Meninas? Why didn’t a biologist compose The Trout Quintet?
Just stop asking stupid smug self-admiring questions, will you? Let the disciplines enrich each other, let people do multidisciplinary work, let different fields learn from each other, let a thousand flowers bloom, and stop with the ridiculous neener-neeners. It’s not a good look.
Is it okay if I call them a pair of wankers?
Only if you admit they are the absolute master wankers.
Because they are obviously the best at anything they do. Duh.
Jesus. Dawkins is fully *gone*. That’s it. Close up shop.
Why didn’t a scientist cross the road?
Yes, rather smug, particularly the second comment, no scientist ‘finally’ explains any natural phenomenon, and historians don’t finally explain history either.
There is some truth in the reference to Diamond. Historians tend to work within their own paradigms (mostly economic and sociological) of what counts as an explanation. It took an outsider to point out the role played by geography and ecology. However he certainly didn’t “finally explain” anything. He pointed out some neglected factors which historians need to take account of.
And why didn’t a historian write the book, ‘The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason’? Oh wait, a historian did. Charles Freeman.
And why did it take a meteorologist to come up with continental drift? Yet we think of Wegener as a geoscientist, foremost. What Dawkins doesn’t seem to get here is that playing by the rules of another discipline makes you a member of that discipline, even if you come to it as an outsider and add things from your own expertise.
“Why didn’t a historian write The Better Angels of Our Nature?”
“Same reason it was a scientist-Jared Diamond-who finally explained why civilizations developed as they did.”
That’s rubbish, not funny at all. They may be brilliant academics but they’ve got a hell of a lot to learn about joke delivery.
This shit doesn’t help, when religious folks say we worship science instead of god.
aziraphale – sure, which is why I said the thing about let the disciplines enrich each other, let people do multidisciplinary work, let different fields learn from each other, let a thousand flowers bloom. I love cross-disciplinary scholarship. Meera Nanda: biology and philosophy of science; Patricia Churchland, philosophy of mind and neuroscience; Massimo Pigliucci, biology and philosophy. Yay!
The talented Welsh poet Dannie Abse studied medicine extensively, and wrote “In the Theater” (one of the most powerful poems I’ve ever read) about Lambert Rogers, an eminent brain surgeon, operating on a conscious patient, more and more desperately, to remove a tumor. It’s based on a true incident, haunting and sarcastic and powerful (and surprisingly brief) and treats the topic of ….disregard for human life quite accusingly. It’s brilliant, and without Abse’s medical background could not have been written. And if he hadn’t studied writing, also could not have been written.
Cross pollinate like mad, ye science lovers and skeptics and artists (and do ask me for the link if Ophelia permits.) Our world is better for it. (don’t mind me. I’ve half a glass of wine and am in love with poetry again)
oh, so the social sciences got kicked out of the science club entirely now? Because last I checked, Sociology, Anthropology, History, and Archaeology were all social SCIENCES.
As for Jared Diamond… I’ll just leave this here: http://www.livinganthropologically.com/anthropology/guns-germs-and-steel/
This is just so much fucking bullshit. Historians look at geography and ecology, as well as whole host of other factors and subjects: epidemiology, philosophy, agriculture, technology, art, anthropology, and so on.
I suppose this must be the new, enlightened version of “The Two Cultures”: there’s us bigots and the other lot.
Why didn’t an atheist come up with the Big Bang and the expanding universe? Why did it take a Catholic priest?
😉
I think the answer is that The Better Angels of Our Nature is a book that has a lot of science in it. The final section is pretty much all science. The rest relied heavily on statistics (I learned a lot on statistics reading it). It is a book one would expect to be written by a scientist. Yes, there’s lots of history. Some scientists can handle history. The world is not divided into arts people and science people.
I’m a science fiction fan so I’ve never thought the science-art split was particularly useful. Three out of the last four novels I read were by authors with science backgrounds; on the other hand Edgar Allan Poe beat cosmologists to black holes.
Because a real historian wouldn’t have been so glib and superficial.
I think you’ll find that Jared Diamond actually threw out a whole bunch of complexity in order to shoehorn a cherry-picked selection of facts into an absurdly simplistic “just so” story that sold very well because it appealed to wankers like you.
(OK, OK, I have to admit I haven’t actually read either, but the idea that you can reduce entire disciplines down to easy-reading coffee-table books written by non-specialists for non-specialists is obviously absurd, and both have come in for a great deal of cogent criticism from actual specialists.)
Shorter: “Why don’t real domain experts give me simple, easy-to-understand stories that flatter my preconceptions?”
“Why don’t real domain experts give me simple, easy-to-understand stories that flatter my preconceptions?”
Ow, that hurt. But I have read and enjoyed both books, and I don’t think I had any great preconceptions in the matter. I think both are useful contributions to an ongoing discussion, but Dawkins et al are wrong to tout either as the last word on the matter.
>>but Dawkins et al are wrong to tout either as the last word on the matter.
Exactly, and that’s what’s so annoying about it. And you’d think Dawkins at least would be informed enough to know better! Both are books for the wider educated but non-specialist public. Books like that can’t possibly be the last word on the matter. Neither can any other book, but Dawkins surely knows that crossover books especially can’t be.
It’s the preconceptions which you don’t even realise you have that cause the most problems.
Shatterface @18: actually John Michell, a geologist, beat Poe to the idea of black holes by over a century. Reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Michell
I’m afraid I find myself siding with Shermer & Dawkins. It requires a scientific/mathematical/logical discipline *as well as creative/artistic talent* to do what Pinker did. That is how I read the exchange.
Well it requires whatever combination of training and talents Steven Pinker has to write the book he wrote. Of course it does. But so what? Different people write different books; we already know that; that’s not a good reason to slam a whole discipline.
If that’s what they meant then why ask “why didn’t a historian write this”? By your interpretation of the conversation, a historian couldn’t have written it. What did Dawkins intend by asking the question when the answer this “they couldn’t have”?
Also, for the record, Diamond didn’t write anything that historians didn’t already write before him. Shermer has confused the concept of “things I’ve read” and “everything written in a field of study”. It’s an easy mistake to make; if you’re a scientist.
Oh, zing! That’s exactly right.
sambarge @27:
If you’re writing “for the record it” would be nice to actually, you know, provide a record. As in some links, or names of sources.
Curses, quotes in the wrong place. Sorry, haven’t had morning coffee yet.