person1937–

Jared Diamond

Disciplines:

Summary

American scientist and author — UCLA — author of Guns, Germs, and Steel (Pulitzer Prize 1998) and Collapse — whose synthesis of evolutionary biology, geography, and history explains why Eurasian civilizations came to dominate — the most influential practitioner of big history.

Core Contribution

Creates the geographic determinism account of human history — Guns, Germs, and Steel's argument (that Eurasian civilizations' success was caused by geography — east-west axis allowing crop and technology diffusion, availability of domesticable animals, and resulting immunity to crowd diseases — not by racial superiority) is the most evidence-based rebuttal of biological determinism in popular history.

Key Spikes & Highlights

Spent decades studying birds of paradise in Papua New Guinea — his scientific fieldwork (in a region with virtually no Western contact at the time) gave him direct experience of the diversity of human societies that Guns, Germs, and Steel synthesizes; he is the only author of a major civilizational theory who has personally spent thousands of hours with stone-age-era societies
His Papua New Guinea field assistants taught him more about human history than his academic training — the acknowledgement in Guns, Germs, and Steel that a question from his field assistant Yali ('Why do you white men have so much cargo?') was the genesis of the book is the most consequential intellectual debt to an indigenous person in modern academic history

Notable Works & Achievements

The Third Chimpanzee

Guns, Germs, and Steel

Collapse

The World Until Yesterday

Historical Influences

Ernst Mayr E.O. Wilson Alfred Crosby

Intellectual Lineage

Boston Harvard Cambridge and Harvard UCLA Guns, Germs, and Steel

Contemporaries & Peers

Yuval Noah Harari Ian Morris E.O. Wilson

Minds Influenced

Big history Anti-racist historical narrative

Intellectual Posterity

Guns, Germs, and Steel Geographic determinism Collapse The World Until Yesterday

Discussing

Jared Diamond

Ask anything about Jared Diamond — their ideas, influences, contradictions, legacy.

person1937–

Jared Diamond

Disciplines:

Summary

Core Contribution

Key Spikes & Highlights

Spent decades studying birds of paradise in Papua New Guinea — his scientific fieldwork (in a region with virtually no Western contact at the time) gave him direct experience of the diversity of human societies that Guns, Germs, and Steel synthesizes; he is the only author of a major civilizational theory who has personally spent thousands of hours with stone-age-era societies
His Papua New Guinea field assistants taught him more about human history than his academic training — the acknowledgement in Guns, Germs, and Steel that a question from his field assistant Yali ('Why do you white men have so much cargo?') was the genesis of the book is the most consequential intellectual debt to an indigenous person in modern academic history

Notable Works & Achievements

The Third Chimpanzee

Guns, Germs, and Steel

Collapse

The World Until Yesterday

Historical Influences

Ernst Mayr E.O. Wilson Alfred Crosby

Intellectual Lineage

Boston Harvard Cambridge and Harvard UCLA Guns, Germs, and Steel

Contemporaries & Peers

Yuval Noah Harari Ian Morris E.O. Wilson

Minds Influenced

Big history Anti-racist historical narrative

Intellectual Posterity

Guns, Germs, and Steel Geographic determinism Collapse The World Until Yesterday

Discussing

Jared Diamond

Ask anything about Jared Diamond — their ideas, influences, contradictions, legacy.