From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sun Apr 14 2002 - 18:13:50 MDT
Amara writes
> Lee Corbin:
> >However, Diamond is criticized by at least one person that
> >I know of: Victor Davis Hanson in "Carnage and Culture".
>
> Can you say in one sentence what is Victor Davis Hanson's
> criticism?
He says that culture is made from a combination of
"land, climate, weather, natural resources, fate, luck,
a few rare individuals or brilliance, natural disater,
and more", but that it is impossible "to determine
exactly which are the initial catalysts".
That's as close as I can come in one sentence. ;-)
Perhaps an analogy would be this: instead (so might
Hanson argue) of asking "what are the reasons that
George Washington was not the same person as Ben
Franklin---that is, what components of genes and
environment caused them to become different people?"
we should instead note that a huge number of
factors made them different people, and therefore
look to the effects that resulted in history as
arising from their separate personalities.
In other words, (he might say), we should often admit
culture as an original or basic cause in our explanations.
Lee
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