History4

Just as scientists have searched for ways to make sense of the natural world, so have historians searched for patterns that give meaning to history and found what they were looking for in dazzling variety.

The Greek story of Prometheus is a mythological explanation of how man gained the knowledge to challenge the gods. Some historians compare the scientific knowledge and wealth of the present with such characteristics of the past as slavery, superstition, and unchecked disease and see a pattern of continuous human improvement and grounds for optimism. As noted above, the key components are three millennia of cultural evolution based on Hebrew morality, Greek rationalism leading to the scientific method, Roman law evolving slowly to include individual liberty, natural rights, free markets, private property, enforcement of contracts, and separation of church and state while preserving freedom of religion.

Some historians conclude that the pattern is one of decline from the splendid artistic, intellectual, and other achievements of the past. Historians have argued that climate played a role in the collapse of the Bronze Age empires of the eastern Mediterranean and of Mayan city-states. Amy Hessl and Neil Pederson are exploring the possibility that warm, wet periods in Central Asia had the opposite effect, the rise of empires.

A variation on the theme is that we have advanced materially but have declined morally. It requires selecting some apogee from which human history (or the history of a particular society) has been in decline. Frequent candidates in the West are the Garden of Eden, Classical Greece, Republican Rome, thirteenth century Europe, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment. The inability to agree on just one weakens the idea, while their number suggests the possibility of a cyclical pattern.

Ecclesiastes, Thucydides, Ibn Khaldun, and Toynbee saw history moving in cycles. Aztec, Babylonian, Buddhist, and Hindu myths speak of cycles. But, none of them defined the cycles in the same way, which is to say there are many cyclical theories. How can they all be right? Are there phases within each cycle? Do the phases always appear in the same order in every society? Do they last the same amount of time? Do other phases exist or sometimes intervene? The questions applied to specific societies expose the weaknesses of cyclical theories.

Karl Marx found in Darwinism a basis for his idea of the class struggle in history. In the age of Western imperialism that describes one aspect of the nineteenth century, many saw nations as organisms engaged in continual struggle, and warfare as inevitable. Unlike philosophies that see war as negative and destructive, Marxists see conflict as progressing toward an inevitable utopian future under communism. The problem for Marxists in all their varieties⁶ is that the twentieth century refutes almost every aspect of Marxist economic, historical and political theory, leaving it on the ash heap of intellectual history despite convoluted efforts to save it (see below).

Determinism holds that inexorable forces drive history regardless of the puny effort of any individual. Less extreme proponents hold that apparently influential individuals succeeded only because they lived at the right place at the right time. Calculus, the theory of evolution, the electric light, the telephone, and the theory of relativity, may be credited to Newton, Darwin, Edison, Bell, and Einstein but others were working along the same lines at the same time. T. E. Lawrence observed:

The Arabs said there had been forty thousand prophets: we had record of at least some hundreds. None of them had been of the wilderness; but their lives were after a pattern. Their birth set them in crowded places. An unintelligible passionate yearning drove them out into the desert. There they lived a greater or lesser time in meditation and physical abandonment; and thence they returned with their imagined message articulate, to preach it to their old, and now doubting, associates. The founders of the three great creeds fulfilled this cycle: their possible coincidence was proved a law by the parallel life histories of the myriad others.

Another idea is that great individuals shape events through their own intellect, personality, or skill. “Great” refers to historical impact and may not mean “good:” Hitler, Stalin, and Mao qualify for the evil each did. Hart (1978) subjectively ranks the 100 most influential people in history. Muhammad tops his list, “responsible for both the theology of Islam and its main ethical and moral principles…he played the key role in proselytizing the new faith, and in establishing the religious practices of Islam.” Muhammad [unlike Jesus, who comes third on Hart’s list] was a secular, military, and religious leader.”

Charles Murray (2003) brought social science methods to his effort to identify history’s greatest individuals in each of 21 selected areas of human achievement from 800 BC to 1950 AD. He scored individuals from 0-100 based on the amount of space each gets in comprehensive histories by knowledgeable experts in each field, using multiple sources to correct for bias.

Astronomy (124): Galileo, Kepler, Herschel, Laplace, Copernicus Biology (193): Darwin, Aristotle, Lamarck, Cuvier, Morgan Chemistry (204): Lavoisier, Berzelius, Scheele, Priestly, Davy Earth Sciences (85): Lyell, Hutton, Smith, Agricola, Werner Physics (218): Newton, Einstein, Rutherford, Faraday, Galileo Mathematics (191): Euler, Newton, Euclid, Gauss, Fermat Medicine (160): Pasteur, Hippocrates, Koch, Galen, Paracelsus Technology (239): Watt, Edison, Leonardo, Huygens, Archimedes Combined Sciences (28): Newton, Galileo, Aristotle, Kepler, Lavoisier Chinese Philosophy (39): Confucius, Laozi, Zhuxi, Mencius, Zhuangzi Indian Philosophy (45): Sankara, Nagarjuna, Ramanjua, Buddha, Madhva Western Philosophy (155): Aristotle, Plato, Kant, Descartes, Hegel Western Music (522): Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Wagner, Haydn Chinese Painting (111): Zhao Mengfu, Gu Kaizhu, Wu Daozi, Dong Qichang Japanese Art (81): Seshu, Soatsu, Korin, Eitoku, Tohaku Western Art (479): Michelangelo, Picasso, Raphael, Leonardo, Titian Arabic Literature (82): al-Mutanabbi, Abu Nuwas, al-Maarri, Imru al Qays Chinese Literature (83): Du Fu, Li Bo, Bo Juyi, Su Dongpo, Han Yu Indian Literature (85): Kalidasa, Vyasa, Valmiki, Asvaghosa Japanese Literature (85): Basho, Chikamatsu, Murasaki, Saikaku, Ogai Western Literature (522): Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Virgil, Homer

Much of the space that boosts Lamarck’s score is devoted to his errors rather than his positive achievements. Murray omits T’sai Lun, the inventor of paper, the founders of the great religions, and all political and military leaders. He omits anyone who lived before 800 BC and thus the unknown inventors of all the basic tools of civilization including the plow, the potter’s wheel, the vehicular wheel, draft animals, irrigation, the sail, kiln-fired bricks, copper casting, and iron forging. Equally absent are crucial social inventions such as credit and debt, double entry bookkeeping, kingship, courts and written law, professional armies, schools, and libraries. Many of these undoubtedly evolved rather than being the invention of a single individual, weakening the Great Man theory.