Jon,
Your comments brought to mind some readings in a book by Francis Jennings
"The Invasion of America Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest".
Jennings points out the difficulties of using humanities and science
(anthropology) to arrive at accurate estimates of the effect of "discovery"
on the Native Populations of America or even of determining the population
strength of pre-Columbian Native Americans. History stands in the way,
because we want to believe that the colonies were established on "virgin
land ... inhabited by non-people ....". Anthropology gets hung up on the
lowest level of civilization and applies it to the whole continent, again
underestimating population by ignoring the agricultural societies that
supported large populations (and newcomers who arrived). (Ch 2: Pg 15-17
Jennings asks for more scientific logic, analysis, and criticism to help
overcome the non-factual with romantic imagery we have from the humanities.
But he isn't too happy with the logic used in the "hard science" of
Anthropology.
It's a good book that one day I will read all the way through. <grin>
Anne
At 12:23 PM 3/3/03 -0500, kukla wrote:
>I'm afraid I must quibble with the incidental aside in a recent posting to
>the affect that "history generally lacks the methodology [of] the social
>sciences...."
> My quibble provides an opportunity to recommend John Lewis Gaddis's
> recent The Landscape of History (Oxford University Press), which makes a
> very cogent argument that History's methodology is actually more
> sophisticated and deep than the so-called social sciences - and indeed
> that in its similarities to astronomy, physics, paleantology, etc. Gassis
> is especially good at showing how History, with its recognition of the
> interdependence of dependent variables in the real world, is actually
> _more_ scientific than the so-called social sciences (political science,
> economics, sociology, etc.) which are crippled by their quixotic pursuit
> of so-called independent variables..... Those familiar with Marc Bloch,
> E. H. Carr, and R. G. Collingwood will enjoy Gaddis's updating of their
> insights.
> For grade-school and high- school pedagogy, it does seem to me that
> well taught History, with its attention to the specificity of personality
> and of events without regard to how they fit into some abstracted system,
> is far less likely to put young people to sleep and far more likely to
> provide them with a useful perspective on the workings of humankind.
> Of course, at my undergraduate college the History Department fell
> within the Social Science Division. My undergrad mentor said it gave some
> intellectual rigor to that Division.
>
>Jon Kukla
>
>
>--
>Jon Kukla ....................... Executive Vice-President
>1250 Red Hill Road ........ Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation
>Brookneal, VA 24528 .... www.redhill.org .... 434 376-2044
>Home 434 376-4172 ...... Office email: [log in to unmask]
>--
>
>To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
>at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
Anne Pemberton
[log in to unmask]
http://www.erols.com/stevepem
http://www.educationalsynthesis.org
To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
|
