Discussion Questions On 'Guns, Germs And Steel'
Guns, Germs, and Steel Study Guide Questions
Yali’s Question to Jared Diamond was as follows: Why did the Europeans have superior technology, and thus conquer the New World, rather than the other way around? Many answers have been put to the query, but a couple stand out. A common answer to this question is that because the Europeans got the guns, germs, and steel, they were superior. Diamond refutes this by asking about the ultimate cause: why did the Europeans get the guns, germs, and steel, rather than the Africans or Aborigines? Another answer was the European’s assumed biological superiority over foreigners, based off of Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection. Diamond refutes this by saying that it was an underlying feeling of all European …show more content…
Proximate only labels why said group was able to dominate another in a particular battle, like Europe’s guns, germs and steel beating out other civilizations. Ultimate deals with how, for example, Europe managed to obtain guns, germs, and steel as opposed to another group like Aboriginal Australia. Ultimate is far more important than proximate and therefore historians look at ultimate causes to determine the reason for how history unfolds itself.(Diamond 24)
Diamond references Africa, Eurasia, Australia, and North and South America. Africa was where the first humans began, and so began human history there. Proto-humans stayed in Africa for about 5-6 million years, until Homo Erectus ventured out to areas such as Eurasia, and promptly colonizing it over the next million years. The Americas and Australia remained untouched at this time, because it would have required boats to travel to those continents, technology that hadn’t been developed yet. They were only colonized in 40,000 BC for Australia, and 12,000 BC for the Americas, 2,000 BC for Greenland.(Diamond …show more content…
One problem history faces as a science is method of inference. Experiments in historical science are far more difficult if at all to conduct (compared to something like physics), and historians must use tools like observation, comparison, and “natural experiments”. Historical science is also centered on terms like “ultimate causes”, “function”, and “purpose”, words that would mean nothing to physicists and chemists. Prediction is yet another thing that separates historical science from other sciences. Prediction in chemistry involves predicting a future behavior, while historical predictions are a game of haves and have-nots, or why did one species go extinct now and not later. (Diamond
Yali’s Question to Jared Diamond was as follows: Why did the Europeans have superior technology, and thus conquer the New World, rather than the other way around? Many answers have been put to the query, but a couple stand out. A common answer to this question is that because the Europeans got the guns, germs, and steel, they were superior. Diamond refutes this by asking about the ultimate cause: why did the Europeans get the guns, germs, and steel, rather than the Africans or Aborigines? Another answer was the European’s assumed biological superiority over foreigners, based off of Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection. Diamond refutes this by saying that it was an underlying feeling of all European …show more content…
Proximate only labels why said group was able to dominate another in a particular battle, like Europe’s guns, germs and steel beating out other civilizations. Ultimate deals with how, for example, Europe managed to obtain guns, germs, and steel as opposed to another group like Aboriginal Australia. Ultimate is far more important than proximate and therefore historians look at ultimate causes to determine the reason for how history unfolds itself.(Diamond 24)
Diamond references Africa, Eurasia, Australia, and North and South America. Africa was where the first humans began, and so began human history there. Proto-humans stayed in Africa for about 5-6 million years, until Homo Erectus ventured out to areas such as Eurasia, and promptly colonizing it over the next million years. The Americas and Australia remained untouched at this time, because it would have required boats to travel to those continents, technology that hadn’t been developed yet. They were only colonized in 40,000 BC for Australia, and 12,000 BC for the Americas, 2,000 BC for Greenland.(Diamond …show more content…
One problem history faces as a science is method of inference. Experiments in historical science are far more difficult if at all to conduct (compared to something like physics), and historians must use tools like observation, comparison, and “natural experiments”. Historical science is also centered on terms like “ultimate causes”, “function”, and “purpose”, words that would mean nothing to physicists and chemists. Prediction is yet another thing that separates historical science from other sciences. Prediction in chemistry involves predicting a future behavior, while historical predictions are a game of haves and have-nots, or why did one species go extinct now and not later. (Diamond