"Introspection and preserved writings give us far more insight into the ways of past humans than we have into the ways of past dinosaurs. For that reason, I'm optimistic that we can eventually arrive at convincing explanations for these broadest patterns of human history"
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Diamond is selling optimism with a scientist’s shrug: history looks explainable not because humans are simpler than dinosaurs, but because we left receipts. “Introspection and preserved writings” isn’t just a methodological point; it’s a quiet argument for audacity. If we can read what people thought they were doing, and cross-check it against what they actually did, then the biggest, messiest questions about why societies diverge start to look less like metaphysical riddles and more like solvable puzzles.
The subtext is a defense of the kind of grand, systems-level storytelling Diamond is famous for. He’s pre-empting the standard critique that “human history is too contingent, too political, too morally charged for big explanations.” By contrasting humans with dinosaurs, he reframes the ambition as almost modest: we’re not reconstructing deep time from bones; we’re interpreting actors who wrote diaries, laws, and myths. That comparison also smuggles in a hierarchy of knowability. Dinosaurs become a symbol of epistemic humility, while humans become a symbol of analytic possibility.
Context matters because Diamond’s work often straddles a fault line: readers crave coherent patterns; historians worry about flattening difference and agency. This line tries to disarm that tension. He grants complexity (we need “convincing explanations,” not certainties) while insisting that evidence density makes synthesis legitimate. It’s a wager that the archive, plus human self-reporting, can turn history into something closer to a natural science without pretending it’s morally neutral.
The subtext is a defense of the kind of grand, systems-level storytelling Diamond is famous for. He’s pre-empting the standard critique that “human history is too contingent, too political, too morally charged for big explanations.” By contrasting humans with dinosaurs, he reframes the ambition as almost modest: we’re not reconstructing deep time from bones; we’re interpreting actors who wrote diaries, laws, and myths. That comparison also smuggles in a hierarchy of knowability. Dinosaurs become a symbol of epistemic humility, while humans become a symbol of analytic possibility.
Context matters because Diamond’s work often straddles a fault line: readers crave coherent patterns; historians worry about flattening difference and agency. This line tries to disarm that tension. He grants complexity (we need “convincing explanations,” not certainties) while insisting that evidence density makes synthesis legitimate. It’s a wager that the archive, plus human self-reporting, can turn history into something closer to a natural science without pretending it’s morally neutral.
Quote Details
| Topic | Knowledge |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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