Peking University Forum on History of Science and Philosophy of Science, Lecture 60
Time: Friday, November 21, 2008, 3:00–5:00 p.m.
Place: Meeting Room, 1st Floor, Department of Philosophy, Peking University (Four Court)
Speakers: Jiang Xiaoyuan (Professor, Department of History of Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University), Liu Bing (Professor, School of Humanities, Tsinghua University)
Topic: After *Collapse*: Reflections on the Anxiety of Human Civilization
http://hps.phil.pku.edu.cn/bbs/read.php?tid=828&keyword=
It’s been a long time since I last wrote a comment after a KeKe Forum lecture. Partly because I didn’t attend some of them, partly because I was lazy, partly because I felt there was nothing much to write, and on top of that the forum is often suspended… In short, I almost ought to have dropped this matter altogether. But in the future I still want to try to keep up the tradition of writing something after attending the forum, and I also hope that my fellow students and teachers will urge me more. It would be even better if I also wrote some reflections, comments, or arguments.
I hurriedly read through *Collapse* before the forum, and my impression was that it really is a very good book. But the problem is that most of the audience here today probably had not read the book in advance, and may not even have known roughly what sort of book it was—science fiction? a novel? a prophecy?—and more people probably came for the names of the two teachers or for the topic “the anxiety of human civilization.” From that point of view, it is truly baffling that the two speakers gave almost no introduction at all to the book’s basic contents. If one had not read *Collapse* beforehand, but knew of Diamond and his *Guns, Germs, and Steel*, then that would be one thing; but I don’t know what it must have felt like for an audience member with no background knowledge to sit through this lecture—just from the titles of Diamond’s two books, one could never guess what genre they actually belong to. If Teacher Liu had not, at the outset, mentioned doubts about the author’s historical training and also circulated some sample copies in the room, the audience might even have ended up thinking it was a science-fiction novel.
Not only did the two teachers fail to introduce this book sufficiently at the beginning, they also did not give it enough attention throughout the lecture. Of course, this sort of impromptu conversational report ought to be allowed to ramble somewhat, but since it was after all centered on *Collapse*, one cannot simply set the book completely aside.
The key point is that many questions raised during the talk and the Q&A—such as “Is Diamond a pessimist?”; “What does collapse mean?”; “Will modern civilization collapse?” and so on—are things Diamond clearly has his own views on in the book, yet the two speakers seemed almost as if they had never read the book, scarcely mentioning its arguments at all, at most referring to them in the most cursory way, without giving any specific introduction to or criticism of Diamond’s views. For example, on whether Diamond is pessimistic, Diamond explicitly says that he is a “cautious optimist,” and he explains in detail why one can be optimistic. Or take the “what exactly is ‘collapse’?” question that Teacher Wu kept pressing without letting go—along with “does dynastic replacement count as collapse?”, “does economic crisis count as collapse?”, and so on—Diamond gives an explanation right at the beginning of the book (page 3). If one had read the book and had it in hand, it would have been fine to pull out the original wording on the spot to deal with Teacher Wu; why ignore the book and instead start talking about science-fiction stories?
Some of the questions were even more obviously off the mark. For example, the speaker said that Diamond was pessimistic “because he still can’t prescribe a remedy,” or something to that effect. Setting aside whether optimism or pessimism necessarily means being able or unable to prescribe a remedy, what do we mean by “prescribing a remedy”? Could it be that the two speakers insist that only by finding a practical, workable, guaranteed-success all-in-one solution does one count as prescribing a remedy? And prescribe it for whom? Who is the one who will take the medicine (take action)? If “prescribing a remedy” means issuing an all-in-one solution to an empty object of unknown identity, then Diamond naturally did not prescribe such a remedy, and I myself do not know what such a remedy would even mean. What I can understand as a “remedy” is something prescribed for concrete agents—for example, citizens as individuals, the will of the masses as a group, government decision-makers, entrepreneurs, and industry managers… These units are capable of acting; that is to say, feasible suggestions made for those roles are what count as “prescribing a remedy,” right? Otherwise what does it mean to prescribe a remedy in the abstract, from nowhere to nowhere? And looking at the end of Diamond’s book, how can one say that he did not prescribe a remedy? Whether for individuals, the masses, decision-makers in the political and economic spheres, and so on, Diamond provides quite a lot of analysis and advice, especially in the last nearly five pages of “Further Reading,” where he talks about what an individual citizen can concretely do. This doesn’t count as prescribing a remedy? This is pessimism?
In fact, I feel Diamond’s attitude is similar to what I previously saw in Feenberg (see https://yilinhut.net/2007/05/31/821.html): both emphasize humanity’s capacity for “choice” (*Collapse*’s subtitle is “How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed”). Blind optimism believes that human beings need not do anything at all; pessimism holds that whatever human beings do is useless. Diamond chooses “cautious optimism”—rather than empty arguments about whether modern civilization will collapse and when it will collapse (questions posed by Teacher Liu), or being satisfied with empty answers like “if things go on like this, modern civilization will certainly collapse” (Teacher Jiang’s answer), Diamond (as well as Mumford, Postman, and others) emphasizes more what kind of “choices” we can make.
The two speakers made “collapse” sound as if it were a science-fiction issue, and then went on to talk about how humanity will collapse in the future and the like; this is precisely contrary to the main thrust of *Collapse*. This deviation is also bound to make it difficult for the two speakers to answer Teacher Wu’s persistent question, “What exactly is ‘collapse’?” (though perhaps the two teachers felt they had already answered it). When Teacher Jiang answered what collapse is, he often tried to conceive of it “from thin air,” designing a scenario in which modern society collapses in the future in order to explain what collapse means. Yet this empty science fiction is precisely what Diamond wants to avoid.
This makes it necessary once again to mention a basic question ignored by the speakers: what sort of book is this? The answer, of course, is not a science-fiction book, but—as with *Guns, Germs, and Steel*—it is a book about “history.”
Most of the book’s very large bulk is devoted to history, introducing cases of various civilizations from ancient times to the present that either collapsed or survived. Easter Island, Pitcairn Island, the Maya, the Vikings in Greenland, Rwanda, Haiti and the Dominican Republic… When the author narrates the histories of the rise and fall of these civilizations, he is almost in no way sparing with space, and only at the very end does he offer certain so-called “conclusions.” Yet Teacher Liu seemed to focus precisely on those final conclusions—especially things like “science and technology cannot solve environmental problems” and “environmental problems are political problems.” But the proposition that “science and technology cannot solve environmental problems” appears in a massive volume of more than 500 pages only as a mere one-page aside, as a passing remark among the “refutations of certain arguments”; it is by no means the focus of the whole book.
Statements such as “science and technology cannot solve environmental problems” and “environmental problems are political problems” may have been electrifying to hear decades ago, but now they are really no more than commonplaces and not especially novel. If one says Diamond wrote this thick book ultimately in order to prove the conclusion that “environmental problems are political problems,” then that would be far too dull. That is absolutely not where the book’s distinctive character and value lie.
So we must emphasize from the very beginning: first and foremost, this is a history book! What are history books for? They select and organize historical stories to show readers, and at the end they say a bit more or less about the lessons and insights of history. “Drawing experience and lessons from history” is the book’s central aim, not proving some conclusion or predicting the future.
The book’s distinctive character and value also lie precisely in its selection of historical materials, and by no means in its incidental “conclusions.”
The first benefit that the introduction of “history” can bring to the discussion of environmental issues is this: it avoids empty and fantastical talk. For example, when some environmentalists talk about the most severe consequences of an environmental crisis, they may also say “collapse.” But if you press them on “what is collapse?” and “what exactly does collapse look like?”, they will probably have to unfold some science-fiction story for you to see—that is exactly the response style of today’s speakers. Teacher Wu’s criticism was quite sharp: “You’ve been reading too much science fiction…” (roughly speaking). And to break free from airy fantasy and speak solidly, on the basis of evidence, there is no better way than introducing history and using history as a mirror—“collapse” is not an invention; it exists right there in real history. Look, there are the experiences of these civilizations!
Of course, others may say: this society is not like that society, this era is not like that era; how can the experiences of those different cultures still be of value to us? The author also responds specifically to such doubts. In any case, history cannot provide any truth that works once and for all, just as fantasy likewise cannot provide us with any definite prediction. But history can indeed give people insight, and our situation indeed bears obvious similarities to those civilizations in history that declined or survived. Why shouldn’t modern people, so lonely and helpless in the face of environmental problems, seek guidance from history?
The introduction of “history” helps make the discussion more solid and evidence-based, so that it does not slide into emptiness. For example, facing an environmental crisis, can human beings do anything? If you run off into science fiction to chatter vaguely about optimism and pessimism, you will always be off target. Diamond’s method, however, is to lay out history: for example, on Pacific islands that were equally isolated, the civilization on Easter Island collapsed while others flourished for thousands of years; in Greenland, where Inuit and Vikings coexisted, the former survived while the latter disappeared; on the same island, Haiti and Dominica coexisted, the former tending toward collapse while the latter escaped it… Well then, do these historical facts not show that fate is not without room for negotiation? Do these historical facts not precisely show that the “choices” made by human societies can lead to utterly different outcomes?
Beyond repeatedly emphasizing that social “choice” is possible, the author further attempts to summarize the gains and losses, successes and failures, and lessons of various choices. What about “top-down” policy? What about “bottom-up” transformation? What would hostility or trade each bring about? What kinds of choices may lead to the most tragic outcomes? Neglect of which problems will create greater crises? … These questions are not discussed in the language of abstract theory; every question is tightly bound to real cases—why did the Vikings fail? Why did Dominica prevail? Every evaluation is corroborated against historical materials. No matter how reliable one thinks the selection of these materials may be, no matter to what extent one thinks those historical experiences can enlighten modern people, at the very least such a discussion is grounded, rich, and open to criticism.
But after saying all this, in fact I only skimmed the book too hastily, so I won’t go on expanding on it further. In short, as a book related to environmental issues, its first distinctive feature lies in its unique historical perspective (the selection of materials is also ingenious, with the few cases showing the various typical modes of survival and circumstances of societies); second, it lies in its emphasis on human “choice.” These two features were both left unclarified by the two speakers. Of course, Diamond’s prose is also popular and fluid, to the point that I could get through such a thick volume from cover to cover without too much effort.
November 21, 2008
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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