Friday Notes

by Cliopatria

The syllabus for Jacob Levy's"Political Science 433-001. History of Political and Social Thought 3: The 17th and 18th centuries" features nourishing primary sources and sensible guidelines for writing a paper, i.e.,"Logic counts." or"A metaphor is not an argument. A list is not an argument. Even an analogy, by itself, is not an argument."

Brad deLong,"Slouching Towards Utopia? The Economic World of the Twentieth Century: Chapter 7.1: The World in 1900: The View from 1900," Grasping Reality with both Hands, 29 August. A professor in 7000 CE tells his students the seven things to remember about the world economy of 1900 CE. Hat tip.

David Raziq and Mark Greenblatt,"Inside the FBI's Secret Files on Coretta Scott King," KHOU-TV, 30 August, opens the FBI files on CSK for the first time. Paul Meyer,"Documents: FBI Kept Tabs on Coretta Scott King," Dallas Morning News, 31 August, includes the insights of well-informed observers. There are no stunning surprises here. It's primarily a reminder of J. Edgar Hoover's relentless pursuit of Martin Luther King and his family. Thanks to David Garrow for the tip.

Southern Illinois University offers amnesty to plagiarists. Why not? Its president is one of them. SIU's Daily Egyptian is on the case. See also: Thomas Bartlett,"Southern Illinois President Faces Allegations He Plagiarized His Dissertation," CHE, 31 August. Thanks to Margaret Soltan and Doug Lederman.

Finally, outside Islamabad, the proprietor of a fruit stand decorates it with the Confederate Battle Flag. That invites all sorts of commentary. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.

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Andrew D. Todd - 9/1/2007

DeLong's piece reads rather like a pastiche of a traditional form of anthropological writing, that of Cultural Evolution. Approximately speaking, this tradition can be located somewhere between Charles Darwin and Karl Marx. Significant writers are: Turgot and Adam Ferguson in the eighteenth century (early classic period); Lewis Henry Morgan and Edward Tylor in the nineteenth century (establishing differences from biology [Darwin] and economics [Marx]); A.L. Kroeber and the "Michigan Group" (Leslie White, Marshall Sahlins, and Elman Service) in the early twentieth century. To the last group, one might probably add Karl Wittfogel (_Oriental Despotism_). Finally, there is Marvin Harris, the last anthropologist of any note to write in this tradition. His _Cannibals and Kings_ is an accessible introduction to Cultural Evolution. Of course anthropologists don't write like this anymore. The people who do are generally amateurs from other disciplines, or even journalists, the archetype of the intellectual amateur. What DeLong has done is to make the market economy, instead of socialism, the culmination of human progress. Otherwise, he is being fairly traditional.

Cultural Evolution has substantial attachments, for want of a better word, to Human Paleontology, and to Paleolithic and Neolithic Archeology (ie. before 3500 BC). Meso-American Archeology, I should add, is something entirely different, and need not concern us here (something like History in the aftermath of a mass book-burning). Compared to History, Cultural Evolution has much less sense of chronology, and much more sense of evolutionary process and of developmental trends, eg. going from a regime in which infant mortality is the norm to one in which it is rare. Evolutionists are comfortable with loose correlations of trends, based on the manifest endpoints.

Ralph E. Luker - 8/31/2007

Perhaps. My own characterization of what he's attempting might have been more accurate if I had written "1870" rather than "1900". But if you're looking back from 7000 CE, the difference between 1870 and 1900 isn't a big one.

Jonathan Dresner - 8/31/2007

I don't get DeLong, obviously. I don't see that he -- or rather, his future counterpart -- can say that his description is particular to the 20th century: it applies almost entirely and precisely as well to the 19th century. Which suggests to me that he's making a quantitative argument disguised as a qualitative one.