由买买提看人间百态

boards

本页内容为未名空间相应帖子的节选和存档,一周内的贴子最多显示50字,超过一周显示500字 访问原贴
History版 - 新出的大歷史牛書:why the west rules, for now
相关主题
2011年世界大洗牌:茉莉花开卓别林生日阿。 有喜欢他的电影的么?(卓别林生平简介--转载)
肥东县大李大队1960年饥荒调查 (转载)最近看了两本中国现代史的书
物质极大丰富的时候,是否性的供应也极大丰富?美媒:中国历史上真正领先世界的只有北宋
我觉得水木的历史版比这有深度DNA证据:汉人,古埃及人,玛雅人同出一源 (转载)
否认60年前后大规模饿死人的一律封 (转载)党校学历不获承认 中国技术移民梦断
中国社会的credit成本比较高 (转载)bend, not break by PingFu 一问
1百50万美国人每天生活费不到2美元DNA Re-analysis Support Archaelogy that Rice
Robert Morris谭恩美(amy Tan)的书哪里弄到便宜的
相关话题的讨论汇总
话题: history话题: morris话题: book话题: chinese话题: indeed
进入History版参与讨论
1 (共1页)
h****t
发帖数: 632
1
why the west rules, for now
Ian Morris最新力作,16000年曆史,談笑間被物質技術進化歷史論灰飛煙滅
http://www.amazon.com/Why-West-Rules-Now-Patterns/dp/0374290024
As can be seem by both the summary and and various book reviews, this is big
history, encompassing the dawn of the first homonids (or ape-men as the
author put it) to present day, with a chapter conjecturing about the future.
I was going to try and compare it to some of books in the same genre that I
have read, but this book takes, disproves and/ or builds on their arguments
- books such as Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Jared Diamond's
Guns, Germs and Steel, Pommeranz's the Great Divergence, Landes' The Wealth
and Poverty of Nations - and they are all cited in his book and Morris
takes pains to show how they only focus on one small piece of the picture.
Indeed the feeling of reading this must have been similar for those who read
Marx's Das Kapital for the first time (although the language is much more
accessible and the conclusion is open ended) in that it attempts to set out
underlying laws of history.
In the words of the author - "History is not one damn thing after another,
it is a single grand and relentless process of adaptations to the world that
always generate new problems (in the form of disease, famine, climate
change, migration and state failure) that call for further adaptations. And
each breakthrough came not as a result of tinkering but as a result of
desperate times, calling for desperate measures." There may be set backs and
hard ceilings, with free will and culture being the wildcards that may
hinder social development but eventually the conditions give rise to ideas
that allow progress to be made.
Indeed the motor of progress is not some economic logic, but what he calls
the Morris Theorem - (expanding an idea from the great SF writer Robert
Heinlein) to explain the course of history - Change is caused by lazy,
greedy frightened people (who rarely know what they are doing) looking for
easier more profitable and safer ways to do things. And it is geography that
is the key determining factor where something develops first - Maps, not
Chaps.
Now all this sounds academic and boring and in the case of the Morris
theorem a little oversimplistic, but the presentation definitely is not. As
professor Jared Diamond states, it is like an exciting novel (told by a cool
eccentric uncle) and he uses a wide range of popular media to support his
case, at one point talking about the movies Back to the Future, 300, the
Scorpion King or making references to novels such as the Bonesetters
Daughter and Clan of the Cave bear to bring conditions to life. Indeed the
emotional similarities (and sheer sense of fun!) to playing early versions
of the Sid Meier's Civilization Computer Game are uncanny.
There is a wide range of material here to satisfy a range of interests - his
summaries of the fossil record, and early middle eastern and Chinese
history are succinct and clear. Especially on the Chinese side, I had to
read 2 books - the Golden Age of Chinese Archaelogy and the Cambridge
History of Ancient China to gain the same understanding of what he
summarizes in about 7-8 pages. He discourses on the role of the Axial
religions, on whether democracy was important to the rule of the west, the
role of free will in history, and on provocative ideas like the Qin and
Roman empires expemplifing what he calls the paradox of violence: when the
rivers of blood dried, their imperialism left most people, in the west and
the east better off. I could go on and on and, of course, there may be many
experts who take issue with his interpretations (and his predictions) but it
will definitely stimulate thinking.
If I had to make a criticism of the book - it is that, like Marx, it is
fundamentally materialistic in its approach, ideas are like memes that
facilitate social development and culture is something can help or hinder
development and not of value in itself. The great religious ideas are
glossed over as a product of or reaction to their times. It has precious
little to say about the spiritual life and spiritual discoveries such as
ethics, meditation or psychology. It may be these discoveries and qualities
that will be required to get us through the challenges - of climate change,
overpopulation, resourse shortages and potential nuclear war.
It is worthwhile comparing the book to two writings that he cites as
inspiration (1) Herbert Spencer - Progress its Law and Cause and (2) Isaac
Azimov's Foundation series. In each case they try to identify the forces
that drive humanity but Spencer just doesn't have the data in the 19th
century and the historian Hari Seldon is joke amongst professional
historians as the novels seem so implausibly optimistic about what history
can do. I don't know if Ian Morris has succeeded in identifying the laws of
history but this book could only have been written now, at the end of the
first decade of the 21st Century, drawing together the strains from
archaeology, genetics, linguistics as well as sociology and economics to
create something altogether new and wonderful and accessible to that elusive
thing - the educated lay reader.
1 (共1页)
进入History版参与讨论
相关主题
谭恩美(amy Tan)的书哪里弄到便宜的否认60年前后大规模饿死人的一律封 (转载)
请大家推荐和喜福会差不多类型的书中国社会的credit成本比较高 (转载)
读书随笔 --21百50万美国人每天生活费不到2美元
社会学的米国科学院院士Robert Morris
2011年世界大洗牌:茉莉花开卓别林生日阿。 有喜欢他的电影的么?(卓别林生平简介--转载)
肥东县大李大队1960年饥荒调查 (转载)最近看了两本中国现代史的书
物质极大丰富的时候,是否性的供应也极大丰富?美媒:中国历史上真正领先世界的只有北宋
我觉得水木的历史版比这有深度DNA证据:汉人,古埃及人,玛雅人同出一源 (转载)
相关话题的讨论汇总
话题: history话题: morris话题: book话题: chinese话题: indeed