The Muse of History and the Science of Culture

by Carneiro, Robert L.

• ISBN13: 9780306462726
• ISBN10: 0306462729
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-05-01
• Publisher: Kluwer Academic Pub

Summary

Is history more than (in Boswell's words) a 'chronological series of remarkable events'? Does it have a pattern? Is it fraught with 'meaning'? Can we discern its trends? What determines its course? In short, can a substantial and coherent philosophy of history be devised that offers answers to these questions? These issues, which have intrigued -and bedeviled - historians for centuries, are explored in this thoughtful book.

Table of Contents

The Philosophy of History: A Bone of Contention	1	(12)
First Attempts at a Philosophy of History	3	(2)
The Philosophy of History Rejected	5	(4)
The Philosophy of History Reembraced	9	(4)
The Changing Faces of History	13	(34)
The Practice of History	15	(1)
History as the Recounting of Objective Facts	16	(2)
History as Literature	18	(12)
Universal History	30	(5)
The Concept of Cultural History	35	(8)
The New History	43	(4)
The Thorny Thickets of History	47	(36)
Free Will versus Determinism	47	(10)
Moral Judgments in History	57	(9)
Contingency in History	66	(6)
An Anthropologist Looks at Contingency	72	(2)
Historical Relativism	74	(9)
What Drives the Engine of History? Race and the Deity	83	(26)
Racial Determinants of History	86	(7)
God in History	93	(16)
The Great Man and Ideas as Prime Movers	109	(36)
Anthropology and the Great Man Theory	113	(8)
The Great Men Speak for Themselves	121	(9)
Ideas as Prime Movers	130	(15)
How to Turn History into Science	145	(32)
The Anthropological Perspective	156	(2)
From History to Social Science	158	(4)
The Comparative Method	162	(3)
History and Evolution	165	(12)
The Culture Process and Its Determinants	177	(22)
The Culture Process Exemplified	179	(3)
The Rise of Chiefdoms and States	182	(4)
The Theory Put to Use	186	(4)
Economic Factors as Historical Determinants	190	(4)
Charles Beard's Economic Interpretation	194	(5)
Are There Laws of History?	199	(34)
Historical Laws Opposed	207	(1)
Laws of History Championed	208	(1)
Historical Laws Denied	209	(1)
Laws of History Proposed	210	(10)
People and Culture Distinguished	220	(13)
Proposed Laws of Culture	233	(24)
The Law of Evolutionary Potential	235	(2)
Statistical Laws of Culture	237	(4)
Complexity as a Function of Size	241	(2)
Predicting the Onset of Chiefdoms	243	(5)
A Law of Cultural Development	248	(4)
Conclusion	252	(5)
Cast of Characters: Selected List of Historians and Other Scholars and Writers Cited in the Text	257	(10)
References	267	(22)
Index	289