More on the same: GERMS, GUNS and CONTRIBUTORY CAUSATION
Jordan 179 raises a worthy point in re my comment on Jared Diamond:
“I agree with you that Diamond neglects the important factor of ethical development, but then he was asking a question on a grander scope even than human civilization.”
I raised and answered the object of scale, or thought I did. Mr. Diamond is making an unsupported assumption about the cause and effect of history. He asserts, in effect, that large-scale historical events must have large-scale causes. He merely takes it for granted that individual actions are not statistically significant on the time-scales and global events of this size.
At first blush, it seems a reasonable assumption. While we know the name of the first White Man to discover the New World, we do not know the name of the first Red Man to cross the Bering Strait. Columbus’ voyage, had it failed, would have been no doubt followed by a myriad of attempts by Spain and Portugal, for the economic and social pressures to find a sea-route to India were too great, and the Muslim empire too formidable a barrier. So the determination of one man and one woman (I mean Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand) are of no real effect on the large scale, right?
But then, on second thought, even in that example, the barrier of the Muslim Empire was due to the thoughts (or inspiration) and writings of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him! Had the Prophet never been born, the land route to the Indies would have been open in the time of Columbus, and the ferocious wars that formed the character and life of Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain would not have taken place (or they would have been fought against the semi-Arian Christians of the African Roman Empire).
Now, suppose an evil time traveler goes back in time and kills Aeneas, Solon, Socrates, Leonidas, Moses and Saint Paul. Would there have been any Iberians seek trade routs to India, if Cyrus the King of Kings had crushed the city-states of Greece, way back when? If Carthage had controlled the Middle Sea, and Jerusalem remained in the hands of Og the Giant, what land-trade would there have been with India to prompt the Isabella of that parallel world to find a sea-route?
Well, why do we assume the movement of the Red Man over the Bering Straight into the Americas was caused by some general pressure of the climate rather than by some Christopher Columbus of the Unknown Northern Siberian Tribe, who found their passage to the south of Siberia blocked by some Muhammad of the Unknown Southern Siberian Tribe.
Merely because we have no written records of these people, does not mean that they did not live, and did not have bold or abstract or religious reasons for their actions and movements.
“In the terms you’re using, why did the key ethical, economic, and technological developments happen in Africa/Europe/Asia, but not in the Americas, Australia or Oceania? As far as I know, Guns, Germs and Steel represents the first coherent, plausible answer to that question.”
But it is not. I do not find it a coherent answer nor a plausible answer. Allow me to say why:
Until and unless we invent the Syllogismobile that allows us to investigate parallel time lines, we will not know if it was the single genius of some unsung Prometheus of the neolithic that domesticated the horse, and in the time line where that same Prometheus was born in tropical Africa, he domesticated the zebra (despite the innate stubbornness of that beast) and the Empire of Shaka Zulu spread as far as the Empire of Queen Victoria. The Jarred Diamond of that world blames the backwardness of the Caledonians of the British Isles on the isolation of their island and the bad climate, were neither olive trees, grape vines or zebras grow.
The Kim Stanley Robinson book YEARS OF RICE AND SALT offers what I assume is a plausible parallel time line where the Black Plague weakened Europe to the point where cultures of China and Dar-al-Islam overrun it. I spoke with Charles Martel, Roland, El Cid and Ferdinand of Spain, not to mention the Emperor of Constantinople, and they agree with me that this is a likely close parallel time line. The Jared Diamond of that world, explaining to the Picts and Caledonians why the Greco-Roman civilization is as dead as the civilization of Mohenjo-Daro or Egypt or Babylon merely called his book GERMS. (While Mr. Robinson proposes that technical and scientific progress would have somehow taken the gigantic and revolutionary steps forward in the East it somehow never took in our world, that is not a proposition I am willing to accept sight unseen. In the year 700, by almost any measure China, India and the Near East were ahead of Western Christendom. And yet, before another 700 years pass, they are still basically in the same place, except for the tech the Turk stole from the conquered Greek (the Eastern Roman Empire): it was the European who found the sea-route to India, not the Indian who found the sea-route to Europe. It was Pope Gregory X who sent Marco Polo to China, not Kublai Khan who sent him to Italy.
Was this because the ancestors of Queen Isabella and Pope Gregory had domesticated the horse? Had not the ancestors of Ashoka or Kublai Khan also domesticated the horse? Had the philosophy and world-view of Confucius actually had so little effect on the isolation of China, or the philosophy of Aristotle on the restlessness of Europe?
It is not a coherent answer because it is not complete. Diamond never answered Yali’s question: “Why do the White People have so much Cargo and we so little?”
His answer: the horse and the climate of Eurasia. Let me now pose Yali’s Follow Up Question:
“Since the Yellow Man of China and the Brown Man of India had the horse and the climate of Eurasia also, why is the White Man here in my land with all the Cargo, and not the Yellow Man or the Brown Man?”
Let me ask Yali’s SECOND follow up question:
“Why did the Red Man in precolumbian South America, the Aztec and Toltec and Inca, have so much more Cargo than my people or the people of Tasmania, since their Cargo included had walled cities, writing, calendar, smithing, extensive organized plantation crops and other evidences of a powerful and literate civilization? They did not have the horse nor the Eurasian climate.”
Mr. Diamond’s answer does not even pretend to answer the question that was actually asked of him. It does not explain why the White Man has all the Cargo. If you say X causes Y, and I give you two counter examples of where Y appears without X and X occurs without Y, the relation between X and Y is merely contributory.
Let me ask Yali’s Final Question:
“At about the same time you White Men were inventing bronzeworking, my people were inventing headhunting and ritual cannibalism instead. Do ideas really count for nothing?”
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
