Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

 

Main review

CHARLES C. MANN – 1493, HOW EUROPE’S DISCOVERY OF THE AMERICAS REVOLUTIONIZED TRADE, ECOLOGY AND LIFE ON EARTH – 2011

 

It may occasionally take some time to discover a book, an idea, a theory. That was the case with Charles C. Mann. I had reservations on the first book, 1491 [Appendix A] and I have even more with the second. The first problem is the fact that, like the first book, this second book is collecting information from various sources that are duly identified – no plagiarism or theft of intellectual property at stake here – but besides this collecting of data, there is not much. First, the value of the various sources is not really assessed in any contradictory and objective way. He sets side by side different interpretations of events from different points of view, at times contradictory, but he does not go beyond this confrontation. He accumulates theses and antitheses but he never gets to any synthesis because he does not assess the truth-value of the various points of view, and when his text seems to be leaning one way rather than another it is only an illusion, an impression you get, a feeling in no way supported by some scientific valuation. Second, the only personal work of the author is the presentation itself, the presentation of his collected data in order to support – in no way prove – his a-priori hypothesis that is entirely condensed, contained and confined in the subtitle of the book, exactly 13 words, the fatidic number thirteen which, along with 20, is one of the numerical bases of the Maya mythology and their calendars. And a naïve Frenchman would add that this thirteen is contained in the title itself in French: “quatorze cent quatre-vingt-TREIZE.” And actually, 20 is there too in the surviving vigesimal counting system of the French with “QUATRE-VINGT” that should carry an “S” but does not because it is followed by “treize.” What I have just done here is what Mann does all along in his book. Putting data on his desk and considering that, as soon as this data is there, he only has to arrange it in the flat space of his desk or desktop for it to become a theory, a real scientifically historical truth. In other words, his accumulative presentation of different, even contradictory data is for him the post-modernism he wants to wrap himself in, and he forgets the essential third element:

 

1- Collect all data you can find because there is no truth, or all is true – which is an oxymoron since truth rejects everything that is not true, so all cannot be true.

2- Build up the contradictions among the various points of view, because there are only different points of view that are, according to the first principle, all and any one of them as true as any and every other one of them.

3- Postmodernism states that if there is maybe the beginning of something true it has to be built upon all the differences the data contain without negating or rejecting one single one of them all.

In other words the author gives us a bipolar (the medical meaning can be included in this term that I use with the simple meaning of “binary method that cuts every single vision or observation into two contradictory and antagonistic elements,” and we will come later to the etymological meaning of “bipolar” as opposed to “multipolar”) thinking dividing the world in systematic dual oppositions of As and Bs, but it never provides the beginning of a ternary vision that states the necessary synthesis that does not negate the thesis and the antithesis but brings them together in some kind of unity that has to be constantly modified because everything changes in this world, all the data is moving and the synthesis has no permanence, no stability, is nothing but a constantly moving process that constantly aims higher, targets farther and tries to reach a deeper truth that has evaded everyone so far, and this new deeper synthesis will not negate A and B. It will transcend A and B by bringing them together. Let me be clear here. I defend a materialistic Hegelianism as opposed to both traditional idealistic Hegelianism and materialistic Marxism. I here work on an enormous reality in this world, and in this book, western thinking simply ignores, meaning does not want to take into account, Buddhism and its three principles:

1- Anicca, everything changes constantly.

2- Dukkha, we are always misfitted to that changing reality and we have to constantly adapt, adjust our behavior or way of thinking.

3- Anatta, which is the result of these very first two principles, there is no stable essence of anything, no stable self, no stable mind, no divine – which would be unchanging – soul. The truth – if there is any truth in Buddhism – is in this absolute impermanence, in the fact life is nothing but a process, and in the reality that we have to constantly adapt our behaviors, our views, our beliefs to this impermanent material, psychological, mental reality, this everchanging reality. And that’s the task of the mind, this human construct which is never finished, completed, achieved in any way, and always has to reformat itself as soon as a new batch of data comes into view of this mind. That’s what Buddhist meditation is all about.

 

 

After having said this, I must admit that the author is totally ignorant of Buddhism, or Confucianism, or Taoism. Anyway, he would not integrate these oriental philosophies to change his way of thinking because, as he defines himself in the Prologue, he is “a reporter to the news division of the journal Science.” (page xx) That’s the answer he would level at what I am going to say: he is nothing but a journalist, not a scientist, so he cannot, in any way, build or construct a theory and he cannot judge, assess, or simply deem as more or less true or false any theory at all, any view at all he encounters and brings up in his writing. In other words, he is not responsible for what is written in the book. He is not a historian or a physicist, a physician, or a mathematician.

 

So all he says, and first of all his a-priori hypothesis in the subtitle of the book, is nothing but a hypothesis because if he pretended it were a theory he would have to respect and follow a complicated methodology that he does not follow nor respect.

 

He should take into account absolutely all available data. His ignorance of oriental thinking is probably the worst challenge to his hypothesis, the worst frustrating void in this hypothesis.

 

He should assess the value of every single source he uses, refers to, brings up. He cannot satisfy himself with lining them up, as some sort of gallery of statues in a mental museum. He cannot repetitively use what Adam Smith wrote in the second half of the 18^th century to analyze and assess data and facts that occurred in the 15^th, 16^th, and 17^th centuries. Obviously, Raleigh, Cortés, or any other adventurer or conquistador could not know what Adam Smith was supposed to think and write three centuries later. We in our modern times can use the concept of Adam Smith or anyone we want to analyze the past and build what we want to think about it, but we cannot use these concepts to confront people of the past who then are more or less rejected as ignorant, incompetent, uncultured, and some might even say idiotic. This anachronic use of historically dated concepts to evaluate people who lived long before the historical validation of these concepts is definitely to be criticized, as being extremely arrogant (we will develop this reference to Adam Smith when dealing with slavery). Thus he should constantly present a continuum from total trust to total distrust, and position all the views he presents somewhere on this continuum between trustworthy and untrustworthy, objective and subjective, unbiased and biased (and do not forget implicit bias), and always in the time concerned by the facts and events considered, hence in the minds of the people living in that time. This is becoming trendy bigotry in today’s world: to judge, deem and assess peoples and actions of the past within the modern definition we have of human rights, justice, democracy, liberty, etc. We seem to forget that all the “rights” we may have today are the result of a slow and long emergence. THEY EXIST TODAY BECAUSE THEY DID NOT EXIST YESTERDAY OR IN THE PAST.

 

 

And it is also common to judge deem and assess any foreign entity within the rights and liberties we have in our own country. This way of thinking, behaving, acting is purely umbilical, self-centered, egotistic. It is not because I am right-handed that everyone should be righthanded. It is not because I can speak three languages and read about half a dozen, that everyone should be able to speak the same three languages and read the same half a dozen. We are all capable to learn something new every day, but we are not all capable to learn the same things and the same amount of knowledge every day. WE ARE ALL EQUAL BECAUSE WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT. I am afraid Charles C. Mann has an implicit homogenizing conception of the world and globalization.

 

That would lead us to the third moment in this methodology: the confrontation of all points of view in order to falsify or verify their truth-value, to prove or disprove their veracity, to support or reject what is being considered in these points of view. And such confrontation has to respect some standard rules of evaluation, and yet not be afraid of rejecting this or that standard rule, but it has to be justified methodologically, scientifically. Rejecting this or that idea, this or that method, because “some me, myself and I” thinks or believes it is justified, is not objective, not even acceptable. And any rule can be seen as valid only within some clear limits, and it is non-valid outside these limits. Two rules about the same phenomenon but with different validity bases should be brought together by integrating the two validity bases, but that’s not always simple. Is light some photons going from one emitting point A to one receiving point B? It is obviously true. But is light some photons advancing on a sinusoidal wave and not on a straight line? We also know it is true. We can easily bring the two together and yet in some cases the light will behave as if it were some photons advancing on a straight line and in some situations it will have to be seen as some photons advancing on a sinusoidal wave. What about freedom of speech?

 

1- We have total freedom of speech.

2- So, we have the right to say Black people are animals.

3- But do we have the right to put these people in slavery because we think they are animals?

 

OR THIS ALTERNATIVE

 

1- We have total freedom of expression.

2- So, we have the right to say Black people are just as human as we are.

3- So, do we have the right – and duty? – to provide them with the same level of comfort, education, healthcare, etc. as we have, or do we have the right to let and encourage them to get – or take? – the same level of comfort as we have?

 

How can we bring these two points of view together in a reasonable and sustainable synthesis? Is it possible to synthesize them?

 

For every $100 white families earn in income, black families earn just $57.30.

That’s almost unbelievable—and it’s a huge racial-justice issue. (https://countysustainabilitygroup.com/2020/06/08/employers-and-unions-must-address-systemic-racism/)

 

Once I had to explain to a school inspector why I had given the students the assignment to prepare the arguments FOR and AGAINST racism for the next class. He was saying: “There are no arguments for racism which is unacceptable, and you should not even dream of planting such ideas in the heads of some students that there might be arguments for racism.” I just told him: “One-third of the class is from the Maghreb. They know all the arguments FOR racism because they are the victims of them.” And true enough with these students it is more difficult to make them find rich arguments against racism because one always knows better what one is the victim of than what one never experiences.

 

But this absence of scientific methodology leads him to an a priori immodest and arrogant introductory conclusion that wants to appear humble: “My excuse is that the subject is too big for any single work.” (page xxiv) I could not agree more, or less actually. Then, take only one part of the subject and do it properly, keeping the other parts for later. There is nothing more frustrating than a compilation that becomes unreadable with an enormous text of more than 500 pages. Plus 66 pages of notes in a font size that is half that of the main text, and thus represents 132 pages with the standard font size of the book.  With 521 notes in these 66-132 pages. Not to speak of an enormous bibliography though the 26-page index is not really helpful to get a bird’s eye’s view of the book. The author has forgotten that “he or she who embraces too many people cannot give anyone a real hug.” He also forgot that a reader is not a gargantuan consumer of pages. If the author had tried to just give a two-page summary at the beginning of each chapter he would have realized how his compilation of points of view is in no way logical as a demonstration of conclusions that are not anyway and always very clear.

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