Methods for Human History

Studying Social, Cultural, and Biological Evolution

Patrick Manning

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030538811
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030538828
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historiography
• Index: History

This book presents a concise yet comprehensive survey of methods used in the expanding studies of human evolution, paying particular attention to new work on social evolution. The first part of the book presents principal methods for the study of biological, cultural, and social evolution, plus migration, group behavior, institutions, politics, and environment. The second part provides a chronological and analytical account of the development of these methods from 1850 to the present, showing how multidisciplinary rose to link physical, biological, ecological, and social sciences. The work is especially relevant for readers in history and social sciences but will be of interest to readers in biological and ecological fields who are interested in exploring a wide range of evolutionary studies. 

© The Author(s) 2020

P. ManningMethods for Human Historyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53882-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Patrick Manning¹

(1)

World History Center, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Patrick Manning

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

The purpose of this book is to assist students and researchers in learning and applying multiple methods for historical and cross-disciplinary analysis. It is to provide practical guidelines for expanding knowledge of the human order as we explore it in this global age. The book is to assist readers in reaching new resources—across the many fields of knowledge and back in time to moments of causation and interaction—in hopes of resolving the dilemmas of the present and the mysteries of the past. The scope of the book includes identifying major topics and issues in research, along with the disciplines, theories, methods, and data through which research questions are explored. The time frame crosses three geological epochs, including the present.¹

This survey focuses on disciplines, theories, and especially methods of historical study. Disciplines are the social institutions and analytical engines that have divided academic knowledge into subsections, then expanding knowledge within each terrain.² Theories are formal interpretations of the dynamics in each field of study. Methods involve two basic stages: combining analytical logic and empirical detail to explore the dynamics of change, and then presenting the results to an audience in the hope of confirming historical and analytical interpretations.

The benefit of gaining an acquaintance with the full map of disciplines and methods associated with human history and evolution is that of expanding historical literacy. Advanced study generally provides researchers with deep training in a primary specialization; in addition, advanced study commonly provides researchers with initial training in closely related disciplines. The purpose here is to expand such knowledge across disciplinary borders—to show how researchers can move beyond their principal specializations to develop broad literacy in the disciplines that address human history.

Priorities in Topics and Methods of Analysis

The discipline of history can address almost every topic in the past, but one cannot study everything at once. How are we to prioritize topics in order to explore methods for a range of historical issues that are wide yet still specific? I have chosen to give first priority to human life itself, in all its complexity, from the short term of individual lives to the long-term existence of our species. This top priority is examined in the domains of biological sciences and social sciences.

Of necessity, a secondary emphasis is the environment within which humanity exists. That is, human life is conditioned by the massive and influential surroundings, organic and inorganic, of which humanity is still a tiny part. The environment of humans includes the biosphere (the lives of animals, plants, and microorganisms) and the inorganic constituents of Earth (the geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere). This second priority is examined in the domains of biological sciences (thus overlapping the biological study of humans) and also the physical and environmental sciences.

A third set of emphases comes out of intellectual accomplishments—representations of the world that have emerged from the human mind and are now centered in universities. The theories, collections of data, and interpretive arguments leave their sediment in libraries, archives, electronic files, and human brains.

These three arenas form a triad in research: human life itself, our environment, and the human knowledge on which we rely to make sense of the first two. On the third point, men and women have been asking themselves for millennia about the origins and changes in human society.³ The discourse on origins is built deeply into myth, philosophy, religion, and culture, especially in literature. During the past 160 years, however, these questions have been rephrased, since Darwin’s 1859 Origin of Species expressed them in terms of biological evolution.⁴ The 1858 discovery of Neanderthal skeletal remains (followed by the 1864 naming of Homo neanderthalensis) reinforced this rephrasing of the question of human origins. Darwin’s principle of natural selection was a successful explanation of the human organism. Indeed, the logic of Darwinism became a powerful metaphor for how to organize the study of large systems in change. Parallels to Darwinian thinking became influential not only in biological subfields but in studies of the physical universe, studies of human learning, and analyses of human social change.

Within the triad of research arenas that I have identified, a common inquiry has persisted at least since the time of Darwin. I propose to think of that inquiry as a combination of biological and sociocultural evolution—I call it “the discourse on human evolution.” The idea of human evolution as an encompassing and interacting set of changes, at multiple levels from the biological to the macro-social, has now moved beyond a vague dream to become a series of practical research projects. As a result, researchers and readers in many disciplines are finding that, in order to investigate the issues in human evolution, they need to develop at least basic literacy in disciplines beyond their home discipline. This broad discourse, as I present it, encompasses biological, cultural, and social evolution of humans, along with the surrounding environment—although I will emphasize that “social evolution” has involved several approaches.

During the same era of some 160 years, expanding universities have encouraged disciplinary specialization. They have led in packaging knowledge into five great intellectual containers: biological sciences, physical sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities, and now information sciences. Biological and social sciences have given most attention to aspects of human evolution, yet physical sciences and the arts and humanities have also developed visions of human evolution within their distinctive frameworks. Exploring broad evolutionary change requires crossing disciplinary boundaries—locating and learning to use resources on widely varying topics, with theories and methods that are at once distinctive and localized but also interconnected, drawing inspiration from each other. Investigating this set of issues requires attention at once to the specificity of each domain and to the interplay and generality of domains.

Disciplines have grown and expanded in depth, resulting in elaborate theories, huge libraries and datasets, impressive empirical results, specialized terminology, and institutional walls to protect each discipline from others. Yet they preserve the traces of their common origins and mutual inspirations. Each discipline is now written up skillfully by its leading practitioners. In addition, there are growing efforts at combining disciplines and showing the ways in which applying multiple disciplines can help in addressing big and difficult problems. National censuses, national income, climate analysis, genomics, and studies of health provide past cases of such large-scale, multidisciplinary enterprises. In another interesting case, the discipline of history of science formed itself in 1945, to explore historical development of the full range of natural sciences (but leaving aside the social sciences). For the future, the human order faces challenges that will require further advances in multidisciplinary analysis: the problems of impending climatic disaster, the accelerating social inequality, and, perhaps most importantly, the problems of denial in which humans have developed new knowledge but cannot agree to apply it.

To pursue this approach to methods in the study of human evolution, I must define disciplines in terms of their outward-looking relati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• Part I. Methods for Human History
• Part II. Disciplines and Theories
• Back Matter