I am in fact curious about the subject and the meta, so let me try this again as neutrally as I can muster.
Due to the wider policy implications of the wider field I work in, constant effort is put into communicating its findings to non-specialists. A UN office and a number of well-publicized websites, often run by people in academia, are devoted to this goal. Popular treatments are getting published at accelerating rate. In opposition there is an army of curiously dedicated provocateurs spiritually fed by a professional PR campaign. Yet if somebody asks a forum, "I didn't find what I was looking for at Wikipedia, could you give me more pointers?", the rare accusation of trollery is typically shouted down. They are not accused of incuriosity as if they were an unmotivated grad student.
So the reaction to Joseph's inquiry struck me as disproportionate. Does that seem unreasonable?
On to what I'm guessing you mean as the substantive elements of your comments:
On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 1:28 PM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 1:13 PM, Joseph Catron <jncatron at gmail.com> wrote:
[snipped]
>> And their contents? From glancing at Wikipedia entries, it seems like the
>> first two of these merely flesh out the "how" knowledge I already have
>> concerning the historical impact of infectious diseases, without addressing
>> the "why" questions Diamond aspires to answer. What do they offer beyond
>> that? And I can't find as much on that particular volume by McNeill. What's
>> his big thesis?
>>
>
> So your argument, now, is that ecomaterial conditions determined diseases as
> well as culture and technology, the determinates of historical innovation
> and
> dominance? Human collective agency be damned! It is all nature! Forces
> determine relations! Bases determine superstructures! All we need to
> understand
> history and the future is natural science... but make sure to exclude all
> natural
> science that has anything whatsoever to do with contingency,
> or contingency <--> spandrels, if you know what I mean.
I confess I discern no argument of Joseph's here, unless it's the presumption that disease killing a large portion of the indigenous population might have some impact on their relations with Europeans. Is this controversial? And how would that imply the sort of exclusive material determinism that you claim here?
> What's the material/ecological foundation of your politics? or is it just
> more of
> that lame-ass, girly, humanitarian and soft science weeniedom? (That's your
> guy talkin', not me. I don't believe that most people actually accept this
> stuff
> once they start thinking about it all that much.) I guess you could argue
> that
> a politics/ethics of responsibility for the power you and other residents of
> the
> temperate West gained directly from their blessed environments is important
> but that's not rooted in rocks and trees and birds and machines and things
> so
> its just weak.
By "your guy", are you referring to Diamond? Where does he talk about "that lame-ass, girly, humanitarian and soft science weeniedom"? Does this have something to do with your reference to "Manny"?
> WRT Charles's comment about germs: All the blankets in the world
>> wouldn't explain the asymmetry of the spread of virulent infectious
>> diseases. So there's a biological question in there, like it or not,
>> one that Diamond might actually have the background (in zoology) to
>> address.
>>
>
> Have you read the book? If so, does it limit itself to biological
> questions?
Yes, and no. So what? He attempts to consider how biological questions might effect human history. Perhaps he does it poorly. I'd like to know how.
> For that matter, let's imagine you've read Levins and Lewontin's Dialectical
> Biologist AND GG&S, is there anything like the conceptual sophistication
> of the former in the latter? Do you have any idea what you are writing
> about or are you just spewing?
To address the substantive element, I haven't read it. Are you recommending it?
> Perhaps, its not the outsider blundering that's really the problem... maybe
> its
> that the book's a selective, partial and deductivist peice of work. In
> terms of
> the fury, just maybe, you'd like to search the archives for the number of
> times I have contributed arguments that insist on the importance of
> material,
> even environmental, phenomena... it might leave you looking less foolish.
I was under the impression that all work under the sun is to some degree selective and partial. It's like what they say about models: All are wrong, some are useful. You use "deductivist" like an insult, perhaps it works better as a caveat?
In the absence of Diamond actually referring to social sciences in the Schwarzeneggerian way you suggest and insisting on the material determinism you deride -- and I doubt that -- I have to say you and Wren seemed plenty furious in your responses to Joseph. That it would be contradicted by your own work makes it all the more puzzling. You and Wren could have been accident followed by coincidence, but I've seen this arc before -- a suggestion of material influence derided as material determinism -- and I lack the uninquisitiveness to ignore it.
-- Andy