Re:Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics
by FrustratedMonky on Friday June 09, 2023 @06:54PM
(#36265410)
Exactly. Have you seen how many WWII or Civil War books there are. Do I need to read them all before I am allowed a valid opinion? All history gets condensed and interpreted. This thread isn't really do a very good job arguing that Jared is wrong, it seems much more like they disagree with some particular point politically, thus he must be wrong.
Re:Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics
by George83728 on Friday June 09, 2023 @07:30PM
(#36265760)
It's easy to level a charge of reductionist when the book is presenting a model for why things happened a certain way, instead of just describing what sort of things happened. GG&S is all about the why, and is therefore inherently reductionist.
The charge of reductivism can be made against anyone who attempts to explain big patterns in comprehensible ways.
In fact, isn't it reductionist to claim that a historian's entire view on a topic can be reduced to theories they developed in a single book?