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이 진화학자의 이름은 잊을 수가 없죠.. 다이아몬드라니... 제레미 다이아몬드.. 이름부터 범상치가 않죠?
이 분의 얘기를 한 마디로 얘기하면... 공간의 선택 그리고 사고의 방향이 결국 모든 것을 결정했다는 것이죠. 시공의 사유가 생각나는 책으로 기억합니다. 다시 읽겠습니다.
책장에 두터운 부피를 차지하고 위용을 뽐내며 존재감을 과시하고 있는 책입니다.
1998년 퓰리처상 일반 논픽션부문과 영국의 과학출판상을 수상한 책으로 인류 문명이 대륙별, 민족별로 불평등해진 원인을 다각적인 시각에서 명쾌하게 분석한 책이랍니다.
세계적인 석학이라는 수식어가 항상 붙어다니는 재레드 다이아몬드의 총, 균, 쇠는 전세계의 주요언론과 저명한 교수들이 한결같이 명저로 추천을 하고 있습니다.
-이현복(서울대 언어학과 명예교수), 폴 얼릭(스탠포드대학교 교수), 루카 카발리 스포르차(스탠포드대학교 유전학 교수), 제임스 B. 그리핀(미시간대학 인류고고학 교수) 를 비롯한 수많은 저명인사들의 추천이 실린 책입니다.
By the time the Mongols roared across Asia, or the Moguls invaded India, many cultures around the world already changed so much that bioregional factors, though seminal in the creation of these broadest trends, weren't nearly as important as the political, religious and economic ones. He is not ignoring religion and so on but, he states plainly several times that isn't his focus. He is looking for ultimate causes--before humans had extremely advanced mental concepts like religion. He also wanted to point out the devastating influence of disease on history. It was surely the European germs that did most of the conquering of Native Americans. The guns and horses were almost incidental. Later on, once Europeans had established themselves, then we can focus on economic and political systems. But we can't ignore the effects of the diseases unleashed on the Americas. These plagues gave the Europeans a very lucky boost that catapulted them beyond the wealth and power of China, India or the Middle East--long before the Industrial Revolution made this gap obvious. Another thing that some people seem to be having trouble with is his assertions about the native intelligence of tribal peoples around the world. (If you read the book, you notice that he is not just saying this about the New Guineans.) He takes pains to point out what he means by this. He not talking about some mysterious genetic superiority of tribal peoples. It's all straight up culture. Tribal culture forces people to be better generalists than they'd have to be in literate civilizations. They can't rely on embedded support structures like books for memory or experts for obscure fields. They have to be pretty good at a lot things. Otherwise they die. They have to be better at memorizing things because they can't count on computers or books to remember things for them. Living in a dangerous, wild environment makes them cautious and aware of all that is going on around them. That was all he meant. The circumstance of tribal peoples force them, only in very broad ways and only on an individual basis, to be smarter and more curious than civilized people. And in the end it does them no good. Because civilized societies are SMARTER than tribal societies. That is why tribal society has been steadily disappearing over the millenia. They just can't compete. Finally, of course the book is repetitive. In fact he sums up his argument in the preface of the book. You needn't even read the rest if you don't want to. The rest of the book consists of him reiterating his points from different angles to point out the objections he has managed to answer and the many questions that still remain. He is just following scholarly practice and exposition--just to make things clear that he has thought about this. He knows that his theory can't explain everything. In the epilog he points out that China, India and the Middle East are good counter examples to his idea. They each had an expansionist rise to great power--a time when they were unafraid to try new ideas and explore new ways of doing things. If the highly complex forces of economics, politics, religion had arrayed themselves differently. We might all be speaking Arabic now. Or Cantonese. Europe was just lucky to be in the right place at the right time for things to come together as they did. This question has been answered by others before; Diamond's idea that Europe's geography is the cause ("geographical determinism") has also been proposed before. Any student of history can drag up a case or two of this thesis. Baron Montaigne, for example, proposed that Europe's primacy stemmed from its superior government, which could be derived directly from the coolness of its climate. The deep significance of this book is that Diamond's thesis is not simply idle speculation. He proves that the Eurasian land mass had by far the best biological resources with which to develop agricultural societies, and was thus more able to form large, coherent, and powerful social entities. To support this idea, Diamond introduces thorough set of well-researched data on what kinds of plants and animals are necessary to support a farming society. He investigates the biological resources available to potential farmers in all parts of the world. The people of Eurasia had access to a suite of plants and animals that provided for their needs. Potential farmers in other parts of the world didn't-- and so their fertile soil went untilled. After establishing this strong foundation, Diamond falls into repeating ideas about the formation of large-scale societies. These ideas, while unoriginal, are still compelling, and Diamond presents them in a very clear and well-written way. His other major original contribution comes when he discusses the diseases that helped the Old World conquer the New. Building on his earlier chapters dealing with Old-World domesticated animals, he shows that these very animals were the sources of the major plagues (such as smallpox) which virtually annihilated New World populations. The fact that Old Worlders had immunities to these diseases was a direct result of their agricultural head-start. Along with these monumental contributions to History, this book has its drawbacks. If you're looking for a narrative explaining Great People, Great Events, or Modern Ideas, you will be sadly disappointed. Diamond's thesis offhandedly assumes that it is difficult to believe Shakespeare's plays or Newton's laws could have been written by hunter-gatherers. If you are looking for reasons why Europe came to dominate the world, rather than, say, China, Diamond presents mixed results. He mentions the 14th century self-isolation of China, but does not analyze it. He also brings up the odd theory about the relationship between the coastline lengths of Europe and China and trade potential; this idea is provably wrong. If you are looking for a book that explains the world's history of the past 500 years, look elsewhere. Guns, Germs and Steel exhausts itself by effectively, coherently, fundamentally, definitively, and entertainingly explaining the preceeding 15,000. I do not hesitate to recommend this book to anyone with an interest in world history. The scholarship is first-rate, and the thesis is incredibly significant. The technical details, while complete, are presented in a very easy to understand way, and Diamond's writing style is fun and engaging. It fully deserved the Pulitzer prize.Customer Reviews
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Diamond states that "those four sets of factors constitute big environmental differences that can be quantified objectively and that are not subject to dispute." Fair enough, but what *is* subject to dispute is that there might be some other factors at work. Thomas Sowell in Race and Culture does a good job of developing the thesis that the exchange of information among European cultures, facilitated by Europe's plentiful navigable rivers, was the key to Europe's technological and economic rise. David Landes in the Wealth and Poverty of Nations attributes China's conscious decision in the 1400's to isolate itself form other nations as the key event (decision) that caused it to lose it's technological advantage and fall behind Europe. (Diamond briefly touches on 15th Century China in the final chapter, but manages to boil this as well down to an accident of geography.)
This is unfortunate, because the book contains a wealth of excellent material which is excellently explained. Many of the core causes which Diamond explores ring very true, and his points are persuasively argued. The connection between the development of agriculture and the subsequent unequal rise of military capability worldwide is very convincing. But convincing though they may be, reading these theories one can't shake the sneaking suspicion that Diamond is selectively presenting evidence which he's has found to support his previously drawn conclusion, and neglecting evidence which runs counter.
Diamond plants these doubts through his sometimes-careless prose. Consider the following statement, which he includes in the introduction to his chapter on the rise of food production:
"My fellow farmhands were, for the most part, tough whites whose normal speech featured strings of curses, and who spent their weekdays working so that they could devote their weekends to squandering their weeks' wages in the local saloon. Among the farmhands, though, was a member of the Blackfoot Indian tribe named Levi, who behaved very differently from the coarse miners - being polite, gentle, responsible, sober, and well spoken"
I thought for a moment that I'd wandered into the script for "Dances With Wolves." Note that had this statement been turned on its head - had he, for example, recounted an unflattering anecdote about Native Americans or Hispanics -my instincts would immediately warn me that the author's biases might be influencing how he chooses to present the evidence. I myself am a Black American, I'm all too painfully aware that we've had to wade through some pretty grim stuff penned by authors clutching at straws to support their racist white supremacist views of the world. In this case Diamond does the reverse by aiming his negative bias towards Caucasians, but if I'm truly interested in unbiased science then my skepticism should remain the same.
That I lead with these criticisms is evidence of my disappointment in what could have been an excellent book, and indeed much of it *is* indeed excellent. This is a book that taught me much and has indeed changed my view of world history in many ways. I do recommend this book - the details are good and many of the theories ring true, but in the same breath I would warn against accepting Diamond's conclusions in their entirety without a bit of skepticism.
In summary, Guns, Germs, and Steel contains an important feature which David Landes's Wealth and Poverty of Nations so conspicuously lacks: a grand unifying theory which links the disparate growth rates of diverse societies worldwide. But Diamond's tidy conclusion that world history is simply a deterministic result of geography and nothing else is not entirely satisfying, especially in that it might cause us to be complacent about the future. I accept that accidents of geography have had a huge effect on mankind, and Diamond convincingly argues this. But culture and human decisions do matter. Diamond argues that human ingenuity is simply the result of the accident of having a larger population from which to draw innovations - but societies that internalize this philosophy do so at their considerable peril.
박사님을 만나기 전, 우연히 도서관에서 발견해서는 흥미로운 제목에 끌려서 읽었던 책.
그때는 인류사를 바라보는 새로운 시선에 그저 감탄한 정도.
3년전 호주 가기전 애보리진 발표를 위해 다시 만났을 때는 무릎을 치게 만들었던 책.
책은 사서 모셔놓고 내용은 다큐로 먼저 만난 책.
새로운 관점,시각의 중요성을 일깨워 준 책입니다.
에스파니아인들에게 친절을 베푼 남미인들의 궤멸을 가져온 세균.
가차없는 미생물의 힘.
책으로 다시 제대로 만나보고 싶습니다.
고고학적 증거에 의하면 인류는 아프리카에서 시작하여 지구상 곳곳으로 퍼저 나갔다. 그런데 왜 아프리카인이 아닌 유럽 사람들이 세계를 지배하게되었을까?
인간이 평생하는 일은 의식주를 해결하는 것이다. 의식주가 해결되지 않으면 자신이 살아남는 것 이외에 다른 일을 할 수 없다. 우선 먹는 것이 중요한데, 잉여 농산물을 생산해야 다른 사람들이 직접 농사를 짓지 않아도되어 그 시간에 다른 일(옷과 집을 만드는 일 등)을 할 수 있다. 농산물을 자신이 먹는 것 이상으로 생산하려면 채집만으로는 어렵다. 따라서 농사를 지어야하는데, 작물을 재배하려면 이에 적합한 종자가 있어야한다. 처음부터 작물이 재배된 것은 아니므로 어떤 식물을 재배에 적합한 종으로 바꾸어야하는데, 이는 그 대상이 될 만한 식물 종이 많은 곳에서 유리할 수 밖에 없다. 따라서 식물 종이 많고 잘 자라는 곳이 문명의 발상지가 되었으며, 대형 포유류(소, 돼지 등)를 가축화한 이후 농사는 급격한 진전을 이룰 수 있었다.
인간이 가축과 함께 생활하면 가축에 있는 병균이 인간에 옮겨질 수 있는데, 이는 때로 치명적인 전염병을 유발하기도한다. 병균에 감염된 인간은 죽기도하지만 일부는 살아남아서 병균과 공존하는데 성공한다.
가축으로 부터 옮겨온 병균도 별로 없고, 한 지역에 고립된 종족이 다른 종족과 만나게되면 병균, 기동성(말), 무기(총), 조직화된 군대에 의하여 힘없이 무너지는데 이런일이 아메리카와 호주 땅에서 일어났다.
결국 지배자와 피지배자의 차이는 인종간의 차이가 아닌 지정학적 차이에 의한 것이라는 주장이다.
그런데 지정학적으로 비슷한 중국과 유럽은 과학기술 면에서 왜 차이가 벌어졌을까? 저자는 정치체제에서 답을 찾는다. 유럽의 경우 작은(너무 작지는 않은) 나라로 나뉘어 서로 경쟁하고 있었고, 중국의 경우 일치감치 통일되어 하나의 큰 중앙집권적 국가를 이루어 경쟁할 상대가 없었다는 점을 들고있다.
조류학자로 출발한 저자가 우연히 접한 인도네시아 원주민의 질문을 계기로 (왜 당신들 서구인은 세계를 지배하는 주인공이 되었는가?) 출발한 인류 문명사에 대한 대단한 통찰력의 기록이라고 생각합니다.
초기 우리의 조상들이 아프리카로 부터 대 이동을 하는 과정에서 정착지에서 농경과 가축 길들이기를 하면서 균에 대한 면역력을 얻은 사실, 잉여 농산물에 대한 약탈 방지차원에서 군대가 결성되는 과정, 그리고 전쟁의 승부를 높이는 도구로서 총이 등장 하는 과정을 대단히 정교하게 설명하고 있습니다.
개인적으로는 기독교를 앞세운 서구 콘키스토 (정복자)들의 침략으로 잉카문명이 마구 유린되고 멸망되는 과정(천연두에 대한 면역력 결핍, 전략적 무지, 총과 쇠 등의 도구를 사용하지 못한 문명의 몰락) 을 접하면서 우리 역사를 대비하는 마음으로 함께 많은 아픔을 느끼기도 하였습니다.
즉 세계사의 거대한 흐름이랄까 도도한 과학기술 문명의 범세계적 조류에서 완전히 소외된 상태에서 대원군의 쇄국 정책으로 대표되는 폐쇄된 상태를 고수한 19세기 중반 이후 우리 선조들 혹은 그 당시 지도세력 (Leadership Group)의 무지에 따라 우리 대한민국이 근세사에서 엄청난 슬픔과 비극 (을사늑약, 한일합방, 징용, 정신대, 남북분단, 625 동란) 을 겪은 것은 아니었나? 그렇다면 이제 21세기 초반에서 내가 지금 21세기의 풍요와 자부심을 우리 후배들, 후손들에게 남기기 위해서는 무엇을 할 것인가 많은 생각을 하였습니다.
박문호 박사님 추천 도서에 제가 깊은 인상을 받은 책이 포함 된 것에 감사한 마음입니다.