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Here's why I'm not impressed with either:
1. Steven Pinker is a cognitive psychologist: He may be brilliant in that field, but the writings for which he is popularly known are closer to my own discipline ( #anthropology)-- which he gets so very, very wrong...
1/8 https://twitter.com/gcaw/status/1194557763113930758
1. Steven Pinker is a cognitive psychologist: He may be brilliant in that field, but the writings for which he is popularly known are closer to my own discipline ( #anthropology)-- which he gets so very, very wrong...
1/8 https://twitter.com/gcaw/status/1194557763113930758
2/8
Pinker's thesis-- Life is getting better and better!-- is only correct in the most elementary-school way: Technological advances like antibiotics and improved sanitation have saved millions of humans from disease. True-- but hardly a novel observation (let alone brilliant).
Pinker's thesis-- Life is getting better and better!-- is only correct in the most elementary-school way: Technological advances like antibiotics and improved sanitation have saved millions of humans from disease. True-- but hardly a novel observation (let alone brilliant).
3/8
And Pinker conveniently leaves the industrial carnage of the
20th century out of the equation (WWI, Holocaust, Great Leap Forward, Stalin's Purges, Khmer Rouge, etc). Any celebration of modernity must be tempered by its death-toll.
And Pinker conveniently leaves the industrial carnage of the
20th century out of the equation (WWI, Holocaust, Great Leap Forward, Stalin's Purges, Khmer Rouge, etc). Any celebration of modernity must be tempered by its death-toll.
4/8
But where Pinker gets both #history & #anthropology wrong is in seeing human societies as either static, or steadily progressing towards an end. They do neither. His take on premodern warfare, for example, would not pass muster with any serious scholar in either discipline.
But where Pinker gets both #history & #anthropology wrong is in seeing human societies as either static, or steadily progressing towards an end. They do neither. His take on premodern warfare, for example, would not pass muster with any serious scholar in either discipline.
5/8
As for Fukuyama: I'm old enough to remember when "End of History" first came out--and to have known *at the time* that it was flat-out wrong. Fukuyama himself has since renounced the entire theory on which his career was based...
As for Fukuyama: I'm old enough to remember when "End of History" first came out--and to have known *at the time* that it was flat-out wrong. Fukuyama himself has since renounced the entire theory on which his career was based...
6/8
In 1992, with the fall of the USSR, there were a lot of hot takes about how all nations would now march along towards a future of liberal capitalist democracy. #History would "end," because the big questions would all have reached consensus. Fukuyama made his name from this.
In 1992, with the fall of the USSR, there were a lot of hot takes about how all nations would now march along towards a future of liberal capitalist democracy. #History would "end," because the big questions would all have reached consensus. Fukuyama made his name from this.
7/8
As we soon found out, it didn't actually happen this way. It should be clear now (it was clear to many of us then) that it *couldn't* happen this way: #Technology may be linear, but history is never is. This view of #history (and #anthropology) went out in the 19th century.
As we soon found out, it didn't actually happen this way. It should be clear now (it was clear to many of us then) that it *couldn't* happen this way: #Technology may be linear, but history is never is. This view of #history (and #anthropology) went out in the 19th century.
8/8
So: My issue with both Pinker and Fukuyama isn't that they're wrong (they are-- but so are we all, often). My issue is that their verifiably wrong ideas are lauded as brilliant-- even AFTER their authors have disowned them. <end>
So: My issue with both Pinker and Fukuyama isn't that they're wrong (they are-- but so are we all, often). My issue is that their verifiably wrong ideas are lauded as brilliant-- even AFTER their authors have disowned them. <end>
