Ahistorical Theory

"[Robert] MacArthur and [Edward O.] Wilson's predecessors had commonly explained the pattern in historical terms. Remoteness was an impediment that only eons could overcome. Impoverishment together with remoteness suggested that an island's history had been relatively brief. Colonization of any new oceanic island took time-vast sweeps of time, if the island was remote-and remote islands were generally not ancient enough to have acquired great richness of species. So said the historical hypothesis.

But MacArthur and Wilson suspected that history wasn't the answer. Time was the limiting factor only during the earliest period on a new oceanic island, they believed, and most of the world's island ecosystems had long since come to maturity, to a state of balance, to equilibrium, with the number of species on each a reflection of ongoing processes, not historical circumstances. The ongoing processes that most shaped balance, they argued were immigration and extinction."

David Quammen in The Song of the Dodo.. (Scribner, 2004) p. 422.

Historicism versus Process in Ecology.

“One theme underlay most of his work. This theme-it seems almost a truism now, but [Robert] MacArthur himself considered it worth stating-was the search for patterns. He emphasized patterns and equilibria and ongoing processes, while de-emphasizing the sort of one-time contingent events that figure in historical explanations. Where lies the distinction between those two types of explanation, the process-oriented and the historical? A historian pays special attention to the differences between phenomena, because they shed light on historical contingency. “He may ask why the New World tropics have toucans and hummingbirds,” Macarthur wrote, “and parts of the Old World have hornbills and sunbirds.” The hornbills of Africa and Asia are large-bodied, omnivorous birds with huge beaks allowing them to fill roughly the same ecological niche as the toucans of tropical America; likewise the sunbirds of Africa and Asia are small-bodied bright-colored nectar drinkers, filling roughly the same niches as American hummingbirds. The history-minded biogeographer wonders why hummingbirds, not sunbirds, have occupied the suitable niches on a given continent. MacArthur himself was more interested in in the similarities among phenomena, because similarities reveal the workings of regular processes. He was more inclined to wonder why hummingbirds and sunbirds, despite their different ancestries and their independent histories in two different regions of the planet, are so similar. I’ve already quoted MacArthur’s statement that to do science “is to search for repeated patterns, not simply to accumulate facts,” and the patterns that particularly concerned him were the patterns of biogeography.”

David Quammen in The Song of the Dodo.. (Scribner, 2004) pp. 431-2.

Modernism and Historicism

"Admittedly even the liturgical movement itself had not been wholly free from historicism. Rereading its literature today, one finds that it was much too influenced by an archaeological mentality that presupposed a model of decline: What occurs after a certain point in time appears ipso facto to be of inferior value, as if the Church were not alive and therefore capable of development in every age. As a result of this, the kind of thinking shaped by the liturgical movement narrowed into a biblical-positivist mentality, locked itself into a backward looking attitude, and thus left no room for the dynamic development of the faith. On the other hand the distance implied in historicism inevitably paved the way for "modernism"; since what is merely past is no longer living, it leaves the present isolated and so leads to self-made experimentation."

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, translated by Adrian Walker, in Mary: The Church at the Source. (Ignatius Press, 2005), p.24.

What Pope Benedict XVI is saying is of course regarding the tensions at Vatican II, but at the same time his point is universal, it applies just as much to the Neo-Confucianism of the Song, in China as it does to 20th century Church politics. The past famously is a foreign country, and when we try to recover it from a distance, we inevitably come up with something that far more reflects "modern" sensibilities than anything that we would have done if we had not tried to throw out our present, in the name of an idealized past.

San Francisco's City Hall

Yesterday, Thursday, I went down to City Hall, here in San Francisco, to attend a planning meeting. It was quite interesting and I will probably write on some of the issues that I felt were raised at the meeting later. But for now I just wanted to post some pictures I took on the 4th floor of City Hall before the meeting and during a recess.



I always find these little touches of Imperial grandeur magical, especially in this city, a city so often intent on elevating coarseness and fixated on the disparagement of glory.

The monogram of the city.

The only Howard Zinn quote you'll ever need.

"A box cutter can bring down a tower. A poem can build up a movement. A pamphlet can spark a revolution."

Howard Zinn, from his forward to Cindy Sheehan’s magnum opus, Dear President Bush (City Lights, 2006)

Cuvier and History

"The Ancient History of the Earth, the ultimate goalwhich all this research is leading, is in itself one of the most fascinating subjects on which the attention of enlightened persons can be fixed. If they take an interest in following, in the infancy of our own species, the almost erased tracks of so many extinct nations, tey will doubtless find it also in gathering, in the darkness of earth's infancy, the traces of revolutions previous to the existence of every nation"

Georges Cuvier (from Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes: New Translations and Interpretations of the Primary Texts translated by Martin J. S. Rudwick) as quoted on the last page in When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time. by Michael J. Benton (Thames & Hudson, 2003)

Cuvier is clearly discussing natural history, but could not this same statement be made for human history? I think in this context it is possibly a most elegant justification and apology for the study of history for its own sake.

Books completed in September 2006

Books I have read this month: September 2006

When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time. by Michael J. Benton (Thames & Hudson, 2003)

Dawn of Empire. by Sam Barone (William Morrow [Harper Collins], 2006)