Guns, Germs, and Steel - Namu Wiki (namu.wiki)
namu wiki : A book written by Jared Diamond. 'Why did civilizations develop first in the Old World, but not beyond a certain level in other areas, including the New World?' This is a book that analyzes whether we are far behind other civilizations. It is regarded as a book that well solved the question of the difference between civilizations with a geographical approach.
He began writing to answer the question of Yali, a New Guinean friend of Jared Diamond, who asked, "You white people developed so many cargoes and brought them all the way to New Guinea, so why didn't we black people build them?" is known to have done
Eam : My criticism of the book, 'Guns, Germs and Steel' is based on the knowledge I learned while exploring the 'History of Changes in Body Posture' below.
Mutagenic extinction of tail due to 'long arms of monkey replace function of tail (about 25 million years ago, Apes) --> Knuckle walking in gorillas (about 8 million years ago) --> Beginning of bipedal walking (about 6 million years ago) -- > Mainly bipedal walking (about 4 million years ago) --> Use of tools (about 2.5 million years ago) --> Fully bipedal walking (about 2 million years ago) & Rapid increase in brain capacity --> Use of fire (about 140 million years ago) --> Use of spears for hunting (about 500,000 years ago) --> Bipedal walking with zero head moment (about 400,000 years ago to about 400,000 years ago) --> Appearance of Homo sapiens (about 200,000 years ago) --> Beginning of clothing (about 120,000 years ago) --> Use of language (about 100,000 to about 50,000 years ago) --> Migrating out of Africa (about 45,000 years ago) --> D4 mutation occurrence (about 40,000 years ago) --> Beginning of agriculture (about 10,000 years ago) --> Use of letters (about 7,000 years ago) - -> Emergence of civilization (about 6,000 years ago) --> Emergence of law (about 5,000 years ago) --> Generalization of agriculture (about 3,000 years ago) & Bipedal walking with protruded head moment & Beginning of brain capacity decrease --> Invention of the automobile (about 250 years ago) --> Invention of the Internet (about 70 years ago) & Rapid sedentary activity-oriented socialization & intensification of slouching
namu wiki : Summarizing the overall contents of the book, it explains that the reason for the difference in the level of development of civilization even for the same human being is due to the geographical and environmental characteristics of each region. Specifically, it adds an explanation that the overall level of civilization development in each region, such as survival and breeding, has increased as a result of differences in food production due to geographical and climatic differences. Therefore, the conclusion of this book is to argue that differences in economic power and level of civilization development are due to environmental factors such as geography and climate, not differences in innate ability by race.
Eam : I generally agree with Jared Diamond's argument above. However, more fundamentally, it can be interpreted that Europe was able to gain the upper hand in the development of civilization because it was in the position of a neighboring country (not a dominant country) and was exposed to a constant state of instability after accepting the culture of other regions.
namu wiki : To prove this, the example of the indigenous people of Papua New Guinea, who had maintained a civilization at the level of the Stone Age for thousands of years, suddenly encountered Western civilization. Although his native father wore only a stone axe, his son received a modern education and grew up to become an airplane pilot. This shows that even humans in primitive tribal societies are not genetically inferior in intelligence, and if given enough opportunities and environments, they can demonstrate as much or higher abilities as humans in developed civilized societies.
In addition, on the contrary, assuming that humans in civilized societies who are accustomed to life in cities or developed civilized societies adapt to life in tribal societies living in harsh natural environments, they cannot distinguish what wild plants are edible, and primitive It is argued that it cannot be concluded that a human being of modern civilization is intellectually superior to a human living a primitive life because he can show a sufficiently low level, such as not being able to even hunt wild animals with human tools.[1][2]
Therefore, in response to the question of the author's friend Yali, the reason Europeans were able to dominate New Guineans was not because of racial or genetic differences, but because of differences in the level of civilization caused by environmental factors.
Eam : Instability causes change. In a state of equilibrium, change rarely occurs. According to Nobel laureate in Chemistry, Ilya Prigogine, all states of the world can be thermodynamically divided into three states: equilibrium, near-equilibrium, and far from equilibrium (convection by boiling water, BZ reaction). Although the principle of order is generally correct, in a system where matter and energy can enter and exit is 'far from equilibrium', a weak fluctuation factor sucks energy from the disordered state, reducing entropy and creating a new order. He says that irreversibility causes instability, instability produces self-organization, and self-organization conceives life. It is life that is constantly in a state of being out of equilibrium, and death is the most stable state.
I believe that maturation or aging in living organisms is the result of the second law of thermodynamics, and humans conceive religion/art/science through the absorption of external energy and are moving toward civilization, the opposite direction of disorder. Ilya Progozhin's words above seem to be a scientific extension of the interpretation of 'the life and death of life', and I feel that I have no reluctance to answer the question of why this extension is not applicable not only to life but also to human society, a social organism. .
Migration is an adventure. It also means intentionally entering a state of instability. A weak fluctuation factor absorbs energy from a disordered state, and entropy decreases, entering a state where a new order can be created (see Figure 1). However, the Mayan and Inca civilizations of the Americas, and the South Pacific civilizations, which were settled through migration, continued for a long time in a relatively equilibrium state than Europe.
namu wiki : If you look at the contents of each item in the book, it is as follows.
Part 1 shows how diverse human societies can be through the history of Polynesian society. Humans in Polynesian society had little interaction with each other and had different natural environments, showing various forms of social differentiation, from empires to simple villages. The author said that he chose Polynesia as a model for analysis because it was a relatively isolated society with little interaction with the outside world, so it was easy to find the cause of the difference in development level between societies without being affected by many other variables. And the author points out that the cause of the difference in the level of development among each human society in Polynesia is the difference in food production capacity due to the difference in geographical environment.
Eam : Instability is the driving force behind the evolution of life and social organisms (organizations, nations, etc.). The degree of change is bound to be greater in societies that are frequently and strongly exposed to 'states far from equilibrium'.
namu wiki : Afterwards, based on the same logic, the second and third parts examine the reason why the Spanish Expedition to Pizarro unilaterally occupied the Inca Empire. Here, it further explains how the specific correlation between food production and civilization development is. For example, as the productivity of food increases, the population also increases, and for this purpose, it is necessary to systematically manage the growing population and food production, resulting in the birth of a political system. As it developed more and more, states and empires appeared.
Eam : Organisms or living things have some general characteristics that distinguish them from inanimate objects. It has independent self-reproduction ability, independent energy conversion ability, and independent homeostasis maintenance ability. In order for us to call it a social organism, a particular society must have the ability to multiply independent members, produce and consume goods independently, and have independent social organisms and the ability to protect members of the organism.
From this point of view, the current human society can be seen as a state that is transitioning from a tribal organism and a national organism to a Global organism. As for the factors that affect the evolution of social organisms, the development of means of transportation and communication seems to act as the most important variable.
namu wiki : Part 4 presents a direction by examining various research topics in human history based on the logic from Part 1 to Part 3. Since when did China become full of Chinese? How did the Austronesian language family, which originated in South China[3], spread into Polynesia while driving out the Negritos? How did the Bantu people, who make up most of sub-Saharan Africa, spread? Why did North and South America fall behind Eurasia in terms of civilization? They talk about topics such as environmental, geographic, and climatic stories.
In the final epilogue, the previous contents are summarized and geographical speculation is made about "Then, why did Europe necessarily win within Eurasian society?" In West Asia, due to the nature of latitude, once the environment was damaged, it could not be reversed, and in China, it was easy to reproduce environmentally, but innovation was limited because it was geographically integrated. On the other hand, Europe is divided into complex geography, so it is explained that there was no integrated political body that could put the brakes on innovation across the continent, and it was able to develop through internal competition.
Eam : After evolving into a National organism, European states since the Middle Ages have been in a state of instability in which countries struggle for survival for a long time. A huge number of people have a history of being sacrificed by war (guns and steel) and viruses (germs).
'Excessive energy accumulation' and 'deepening speed of energy distribution imbalance' are the speed of aging of individual lives or individual social organisms. As Harvard University biologist Bernd Heinrich puts it, "Eating extra calories means growing faster, maturing faster, and thus living a shorter lifespan." The difference between European settler societies and Native American societies can be seen as the fact that the social maturation (aging) of European settler societies was much faster than that of Native American societies. Meanwhile, the structure of human society has evolved in the direction of more sophisticated imitation of the human body and mind (brain). Rapid aging increased the sophistication of social structures as a result of imitative activity. It doesn't seem too difficult for a seasoned, aggressive society to take over a younger, less aggressive one.
namu wiki : After developing the contents of the text in this way, the author explains through the epilogue what he wants to say through the book. I am arguing that it does. For example, experiments that can be simply repeated in a laboratory can arbitrarily exclude external factors and variables and explore whether independent variables and dependent variables are related or not, and explore the causal relationship. However, when observing the natural environment itself, the observer is arbitrarily inseparable except for various variables.
So in astronomy, for example, you cannot arbitrarily create and destroy galaxies, and in climatology, you cannot manipulate natural disasters to test ice ages. However, since these sciences such as astronomy and climatology have a scientific system and qualifications for science, and history has essentially the same characteristics as the science field, which focuses on observation and analysis, scientific research is possible as well. The book concludes with an optimism that, by scientifically studying history and closely analyzing the past and present, it can suggest a way forward for mankind.[4]
Eam : I think science can be divided into science in a narrow sense and science in a broad sense.
- Narrow Science: Falsifiable & Refutable & Testable & Allable
- Broad Science: Efforts to more objectively interpret the reality of curiosity and fear
On the other hand, science in a narrow sense is generally an interpretation of things with not too many variables related to cause and effect, and science in a broad sense can be seen as an interpretation of things with very many variables. Something that is difficult to interpret with the human brain because there are so many variables, like the butterfly effect, seems to be considered unscientific. I'm a fluid dynamics engineer, so I do a lot of simulations. My simulation deals with more than hundreds of variables, and I get the feeling that if the characteristics of each variable are clarified, even a simulation involving a large number of variables can produce relatively reasonable analysis results.
The intensity of the struggle for survival is mainly influenced by two variables, 'security of energy' and 'fear'. The stability of securing energy is greatly influenced by the development of 'science and technology'. Fear comes from ignorance and disbelief. Since the Middle Ages, the fears of European nations have been so intense that they cannot be compared to those of other regions.
namu wiki : In the book, the following are mentioned as essential elements that influence the development of civilization.
The title, 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' are representative items that symbolize these essential elements.
In order for civilization to develop, many humans must first be able to eat and live. Therefore, sufficient food production is a necessary condition, and accordingly, 'agriculture' is necessary, and plant species suitable for agriculture are limited. Because the Old Continent was very wide in the east-west transverse axis, the spread of species was free, and the variety of plants was abundant. In addition, the plant species of the Old World had a very high calorific efficiency compared to those of the New World.
It was relatively late in the discovery of corn in the New World, and the development of civilization was delayed as well. In addition, the land mass was vertically long, so it was difficult to spread even if a good variety came out. This is because the climatic difference is greater when spread from north to south than when spread from east to west. [5] See 'Interaction' below.
Eam : Through evolution in the direction optimized for hunting through perfect upright posture and relentless running, humans have achieved optimal efficiency by minimizing the moment (force to rotate around a point) generated in the body during energy acquisition activities. This has led to a surge in the efficiency of obtaining food for survival, which has led to population growth (see research papers from Colorado State University and Washington University in St. Louis). However, as time passed, they faced the limits of food supply by hunting and gathering. Hunting is possible in flatlands such as the Serengeti in Africa, but in valleys, explosive agility is more important than persistence. In the end, it seems that the population growth and the expansion of the living area to the valley area due to this naturally flowed into the choice of accepting agriculture as an alternative to hunting and gathering.
Changes in brain capacity and population growth need to be considered as important factors in interpreting human civilization. Brain volume appears to be very closely related to human uprightness. The direction of evolution toward a higher life was to minimize the moment (force to rotate around a point) generated in the body during energy acquisition activities. Population change has a direct relationship with the stability of food that guarantees survival.
namu wiki : It is also essential to supply enough protein sources in food production. However, like plant species, there are also limited animal species that can be domesticated. According to the author, animal species that can be domesticated well must have special conditions, such as being docile in nature, growing quickly and having a short generation, living in vertical groups, and being herbivores.[6] ]
The Old World was also advantageous in this regard, and various animals such as horses, cows, dogs, sheep, camels, pigs, and chickens were domesticated and used as mobility, protein sources, and resources. As a supplement to this, like the New World, which will be described later, among the Old World, in sub-Saharan Africa, there was not a single kind of livestock that humans could tame.[7] The cattle and sheep currently raised by African nomads were handed down to them by Muslim traders hundreds of years ago. The New World was far worse than Africa in this respect, and the only large ruminants domesticated were llamas, domesticated by the Incas. However, the synergistic effect of cockroaches + large animals was impossible because the area where the cockroach was developed was separated by the tropics. The story that they were separated by the tropics means that the long land mass from north to south was a problem this time too.
In addition, frequent contact with intensively raised livestock crossed the barrier between species and created zoonotic diseases, transferring germs from other species to humans, which made humans in the Old World sick but at the same time immune to them. However, without these large-scale large livestock, humans in the New World were relatively immune to as many infectious diseases as humans in the Old World. As soon as humans arrived in the New Continent, they literally became walking germs.[8]
Eam : In the past, germs were an unrecognized, invisible threat. The fear that ignorance derives increases aggression. Modern sedentary socialization tends to increase people's continuous low-intensity stress, which is the main cause of increased aggression and depression. It seems that the most powerful threat to mankind in modern society is 'virus' and 'exposure to a sedentary activity-oriented society'.
namu wiki : A climate is basically made up of temperature and precipitation, and in the case of temperature, it is almost always determined by latitude unless there is a difference in altitude. Therefore, the difference in climate is bound to be much greater between the north and the south than the east and west. However, since a creature or culture has evolved to suit the climate and natural environment of a region, movement within climates is easy, but movement between climates is much more difficult. Because Eurasia has a wide continental axis from east to west, it was possible to achieve mutual mutual development through exchanges between east and west. For example, paper and gunpowder developed in Chinese civilization spread to Europe through the Middle East, stimulating mutual development and spreading ideas, plants, animals, and people.[9]
However, because the New Continent is a wide terrain from north to south, exchanges between civilizations in different climatic zones were rare. The Inca civilization in South America, the Mayan civilization or Aztec civilization in Central America, and the indigenous peoples of North America had little interaction with each other, so they could not acquire inventions, domesticated animals, and domesticated plants from other civilizations, so the rate of development was slow. The corn problems mentioned in the plants section above are typical. Another good example is that the llama and the wheel are not combined. There were llamas in the Andes, but transportation efficiency was very poor because they did not develop wheels.[10] However, in Mesoamerica, even though wheels were developed for toys, they could not be used for transportation because there were no large livestock such as llamas. In Central America, for the same reason, crops that were very useful for food production, such as potatoes, were not introduced. North America and Central America had good circumstances, so they had exchanges, and the Aztecs were also migrants from the north, but even this was on a very limited scale compared to the exchanges within Eurasia. In addition, Central America and the Andes, which are blocked by a rugged tropical isthmus from Guatemala to Colombia, were virtually impossible to exchange. Even now, there is no proper road connection between North/Central America and South America! Because the huge swamp/alpine region between Panama and Colombia is a natural barrier, the movement of people and goods into and out of the South American continent is entirely dependent on air/ship. See Darien Gap.[11] It means that it wasn't that Americans didn't interact because they lacked the spirit of exploration.
Eam : Athens : 38 degrees north latitude, Rome : 42 degrees north latitude, Lisbon (Portugal) : 38 degrees north latitude, Madrid (Spain) : 40 degrees north latitude, Paris : 47 degrees north latitude, London : 52 degrees north latitude, Berlin : 52 degrees north latitude, Beijing: 40 degrees north latitude, Tokyo: 35 degrees north latitude, Moscow: 55 degrees north latitude, Washington D.C.: 39 degrees north latitude.
What do these cities have in common? It is the capital of countries that were once the most powerful on the planet, or are rated as the most powerful today. All are located between 35 degrees and 55 degrees north latitude. All of them have spring, summer, fall, and winter, and because of this, they have DNA that inevitably has good adaptability to environmental changes, so it is highly likely that they have a culture that is relatively well accommodating to other changes. So, they actively accepted advanced technologies and cultures, and created new technologies and cultures using the accepted technologies and cultures and the existing technologies and cultures, and the new technologies and cultures were once superior to neighboring countries in national power. seems to have made In addition, most of these countries have been culturally in the position of neighboring countries for a considerable period of time, so they have felt cultural thirst for a long time, so they seem to be countries with a very high acceptability of external culture. In particular, Europe and Japan seem to have many similarities in terms of neighboring countries, thirst, and high receptivity.
Eam : There are already some things I have already said, but the main order of evolution of organisms that I have organized in my own way through research in anthropology and biology are as follows.
1. The Principle of Optimal Efficiency
The direction of evolution toward a higher life was to minimize the moment (force to rotate around a point) generated in the body during energy acquisition activities. This can be expressed as the direction of pursuing optimal efficiency for energy acquisition/consumption. Animals that walk have been optimized in the direction of upright, and animals that fly or swim in the streamlined direction. Here, 'pursuit' does not mean pursuit as a direct will. Looking back at the results of interactions between natural selection and rare leaps (mutations), a tendency that can be interpreted as 'pursuit' is observed.
2. The Instability Principle
Instability is the driving force behind the evolution of life and social organisms (organizations, states, etc.). Ilya Prigogine, Nobel laureate in chemistry, said, “Irreversibility leads to instability, instability begets self-organization, and self-organization gives rise to life.” In the same principle, desire (irreversibility) causes confusion (instability), confusion (instability) gives birth to the will to change (self-organization), and the will to change (self-organization) has conceived a new society (life).
3. Principles of Aging
'Excessive energy accumulation' and 'speed of deepening energy distribution imbalance' are the speed of aging of individual lives or individual social organisms. As Harvard University biologist Bernd Heinrich puts it, "Eating extra calories means growing faster, maturing faster, and thus living a shorter lifespan."
4. The principle of imitation
The structure of human society has evolved in the direction of more sophisticated imitation of the human body and mind (brain) and will continue to do so! Socio-structural evolution is human's particle avatarization, and metaverse can be seen as wave avatarization.
5. Principles of metacognition
All living beings walk the path of optimal efficiency in their own way. However, the path can be classified into two paths. The first way is to conform to the will (survival and reproduction) of the selfish genes (blueprints). The second way is to go beyond the will of this gene through metacognition. This is a violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Socrates' words "Know thyself!" can be seen as the official starting point of metacognition and social evolution.
Let's summarize. In all history, the above five principles always work, but 'Guns, Germs and Steel' seems to be another expression of the era in which the 'principle of instability' exerted the greatest influence.
It seems that European countries, which had the situational characteristics of neighboring countries, thirst, and high acceptability, were able to overwhelm other regions with their skills that went through rapid maturation (aging) catalyzed by strong instability and fear.
It can be seen that Europe, where fear was an overwhelming emotion, was a history of torturing areas where the feeling of stability prevailed. It seems that the global society in the future will gradually escape from the fear of the unknown and gradually move toward an era of stability (?) through the activation of metacognition based on art, science, and technology.
The metacognitive level of the current human society can be seen as a beginner level.
- Beginner: A level to know how others evaluate you
- Intermediate: A level where you know how to respond to various external conditions
- Advanced: A level at which you can know and control internal basic factors [posture (body), stress (fear), food (desire)] that affect your response pattern
How will the expansion of metacognition affect mankind? Where will we end up with a society in which fear is reduced, instability is reduced, and connectivity is enhanced through improved transportation and communication? I predict that the expansion of metacognition will lead to a long-term flow into a trust-based society. A simple explanation of a trust-based society can be seen as 'a society in which trust is substantially as important as money (energy)'.
- Trust = Authenticity (continuity, transparency) + Logic (discern for the essence, creativity, analytical ability) + Empathy (university, openness, honesty)
- Trustization = Reinforcement of Authenticity + Reinforcement of logic + Reinforcement of empathy
- Primitive society --> Tribal society --> Monarchist society --> Democratic society --> Trustizational society
And the metacognition above may vary in detail, but in the end it can be summarized as about the weakness of three human functions (the function to respond to the gradual and continuous environmental change, the function to manage oversatisfaction, and the function to simplify complex information).
#Jared #Diamond #guns #germs #seel #Criticism #Trustizational #Society
No comments:
Post a Comment