A review by icywaterfall
On Deep History and the Brain by Daniel Lord Smail
3.0
A good book that historians ought to read.
Historians frequently make the claim that history begins in the Near East, the cradle of civilization, among the farming communities that mushroomed up there. But Smail makes the case that this beginning just replaces the Garden of Eden (which existed at about the same time) with the post-Natufians. We don’t theorise about some metaphysical paradise, but instead we transfer the same chronology onto modern day findings. Same structure, different paint.
A proper Enlightenment perspective doesn’t depend “on the whims of a particular region, but should conform to universal or natural truths.” A history that begins roughly 4,000 years ago? Doesn’t go back far enough. Several hurdles block the path to a proper history including what historians have taken to be the appropriate evidence for the study of history. (The word ‘history’ incidentally dissolves in a consilient mess after you’ve properly understood the book.) If you describe history as the study of self-consciousness (that which first emerges with the written document), then your subject will necessarily begin about 4,000 years ago. But why should we privilege the written document over what Smail calls traces, anything that encodes some sort of information about the past? Written documents, the author claims, are not essential to the writing of history.
Ontogeny describes the development of an individual organism, from beginning to end. Phylogeny describes the evolutionary history of a species. The author claims that while the former has a beginning and an end, the latter does not. I could not disagree more. Phylogeny is ontogeny writ large; there is only a difference in scope between the two, otherwise they’re the same. (It’s because the author is operating from within an Enlightenment paradigm that he makes this claim, a paradigm that seeks to refute the grand narrative of a divine creator at the top of the chain of being. Neo-Darwinism all over again, the claim that no evolved entity is more evolved than any other.)
The latter half of the book concerns Neurohistory, a history based on the evolved brain structures, body chemicals, and universal behavioral patterns that no subject can afford to ignore. However, to acknowledge this point is not to engage in crude genetic determinism, since the degree to which organisms are built by the interaction of genes, environment, and random developmental noise also must be taken on board. He then goes on to talk about exaptations and how the human institutions, while varying from context to context, nonetheless make use of the evolved brain grooves. The mood-altering practices, behaviors, and institutions generated by human culture are referred to as psychotropic mechanisms, mechanisms that powerfully affect the brain, such as teletropic mechanisms (that affect others) and autotropic mechanisms (that affect self).
“To acknowledge the role of psychotropic mechanisms in the development of human societies is to see that what passes for progress in human civilization is often nothing more than new developments in the art of changing body chemistry.” (Nothing buttery school of thought, representative of the orange Enlightenment.)
Historians frequently make the claim that history begins in the Near East, the cradle of civilization, among the farming communities that mushroomed up there. But Smail makes the case that this beginning just replaces the Garden of Eden (which existed at about the same time) with the post-Natufians. We don’t theorise about some metaphysical paradise, but instead we transfer the same chronology onto modern day findings. Same structure, different paint.
A proper Enlightenment perspective doesn’t depend “on the whims of a particular region, but should conform to universal or natural truths.” A history that begins roughly 4,000 years ago? Doesn’t go back far enough. Several hurdles block the path to a proper history including what historians have taken to be the appropriate evidence for the study of history. (The word ‘history’ incidentally dissolves in a consilient mess after you’ve properly understood the book.) If you describe history as the study of self-consciousness (that which first emerges with the written document), then your subject will necessarily begin about 4,000 years ago. But why should we privilege the written document over what Smail calls traces, anything that encodes some sort of information about the past? Written documents, the author claims, are not essential to the writing of history.
Ontogeny describes the development of an individual organism, from beginning to end. Phylogeny describes the evolutionary history of a species. The author claims that while the former has a beginning and an end, the latter does not. I could not disagree more. Phylogeny is ontogeny writ large; there is only a difference in scope between the two, otherwise they’re the same. (It’s because the author is operating from within an Enlightenment paradigm that he makes this claim, a paradigm that seeks to refute the grand narrative of a divine creator at the top of the chain of being. Neo-Darwinism all over again, the claim that no evolved entity is more evolved than any other.)
The latter half of the book concerns Neurohistory, a history based on the evolved brain structures, body chemicals, and universal behavioral patterns that no subject can afford to ignore. However, to acknowledge this point is not to engage in crude genetic determinism, since the degree to which organisms are built by the interaction of genes, environment, and random developmental noise also must be taken on board. He then goes on to talk about exaptations and how the human institutions, while varying from context to context, nonetheless make use of the evolved brain grooves. The mood-altering practices, behaviors, and institutions generated by human culture are referred to as psychotropic mechanisms, mechanisms that powerfully affect the brain, such as teletropic mechanisms (that affect others) and autotropic mechanisms (that affect self).
“To acknowledge the role of psychotropic mechanisms in the development of human societies is to see that what passes for progress in human civilization is often nothing more than new developments in the art of changing body chemistry.” (Nothing buttery school of thought, representative of the orange Enlightenment.)