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Folks, if your history
- predicts the future rather than interpreting the past
- prefers mining data to analyzing sources
- dismisses historiography in favour of mathematization
- is uninterested in "the particular"
it's not history, it's prognostication
- predicts the future rather than interpreting the past
- prefers mining data to analyzing sources
- dismisses historiography in favour of mathematization
- is uninterested in "the particular"
it's not history, it's prognostication
This "incredibly" is -- incredibly -- the best word in the whole article
It's true: before this bold challenge from STEM, hardly any historians wrote histories of the United States
*
Is *that* what you call attributing a bunch of things to the Enlightenment without showing any causal links, and also without showing any knowledge of the history of the Enlightenment? Gonna have to check with my doctor
*Having looked at Enlightenment Now, I have to agree that knowing stuff is, indeed, hard.
This is why some of us work at it.
This is why some of us work at it.
ftr, if people want to make predictions, fine. Good luck!
But the claim that historians wouldn't dare do things they in fact do all the time, without a STEM sheriff riding into town, is silly. It's also false.
In a piece about what *history* should be, that doesn't bode well.
But the claim that historians wouldn't dare do things they in fact do all the time, without a STEM sheriff riding into town, is silly. It's also false.
In a piece about what *history* should be, that doesn't bode well.
Also, assuming that some people (including not just "lay" readers but also academic leaders) learn about academic fields other than their own by reading pieces like this, this kind of misrepresentation may have consequences beyond just fostering false impressions.
Finally: perhaps a piece focused on the practice of history, which characterizes the work of many/most "traditional" historians in broad strokes, could have interviewed at least as many such historians as it did, say, mathematical ecologists.
That's not Turchin's fault, obviously; that's just lazy journalism.
