"[Peter Turchin's theories] have won him comparisons to other authors of “megahistories,” such as Jared Diamond and Yuval Noah Harari." - From The Atlantic 'Megahistories' - Definition: Pop historical works that sound great unless you actually know enough history to assess them.
-
-
...that idea, presented as somehow Turchin's genius goes back to - and I am not kidding - Heraclitus of Ephesus (d. 475 BC) and was put into modern scholarly form no later than L. Keeley's War Before Civilization (1997). But sure, tell me more about how you can math the history.
Näytä tämä ketju -
The idea that he can accurately and mathematically track "a bloated elite class, with too few elite jobs to go around; declining living standards among the general population; and a government that can’t cover its financial positions" with any precision over 10,000 years...
Näytä tämä ketju -
...is just plain laughable. The direction and extent of those changes is a point of real argument among actual experts (of which Turchin is not) for the Roman Empire, which is both 1) only 2,000 years ago and 2) without question the best attested society that old.
Näytä tämä ketju -
And the idea that Turchin is " filling a historiographical niche left empty by academic historians" is just evidence that Graeme Wood doesn't know much about what historians are doing. There are lots of wide-angle histories of all sorts of things...
Näytä tämä ketju -
...I've recommended a number on the blog! The 'niche' Turchin is filling is 'baseless speculation that sounds sophisticated to people who know little about the matter.' Sure, historians are not filling that niche. Nor should we.
Näytä tämä ketju
Keskustelun loppu
Uusi keskustelu -
Lataaminen näyttää kestävän hetken.
Twitter saattaa olla ruuhkautunut tai ongelma on muuten hetkellinen. Yritä uudelleen tai käy Twitterin tilasivulla saadaksesi lisätietoja.