George W. Stocking, Victorian Anthropology (1987)

I read this extremely learned and (for me) fairly accessible book by one of the authorities on the history of anthropology for my project on scientific history. Most broadly, Stocking traces the shift from James Prichard's early 19th century "ethnology" to the post-Darwinian social evolutionism. The former was primarily an ethically motivated (intending to protect "savages" in the face of European colonialism) and Biblically influenced study that aimed to demonstrate humanity's common monogenesis. The latter, represented by figures such as Herbert Spencer and Edward Tylor, either assumed a monogenetic origin and tried to explain the great dicversity of cultures and cultural levels, or argued for polygenesis. My summer reading for my science of history project included this book; Daniel Moses, Prophet of Progress; Stephen Gaukroger, The Natural & the Human; and Frederick Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition. All of them illuminated, from different angles, the question of what I'll call, as shorthand, the "science of man." I've taken notes on each, but here I want to memorialize some of my own tentative conclusions. I come away especially from Beiser and Stocking thinking that many of the ingredients were in place for what I would consider scientific history, above all competing explanations of key questions and a norm-bound community of scholars. Of course, at the same time there were also deep challenges, having to do with individuality, the widespread belief that humans were sui generis, etc. In the case of German historicists, unfortunately, there was a turn away from these ingredients - away from common questions, away from explanation, and, as nationalism gained momentum, away from a single community. As I suggest in my notes, Ranke and others' "source criticism" may have preserved a veneer of scientificness, while really misunderstanding how science worked. And "common sense" may have added a further apparently indubitable warranty. In the case of evolutionary anthropologists, people like Tylor basically got it right, I think. However, as Carl Degler has shown in In Search of Human Nature, this approach was rejected from roughly 1900 to 1960, and supplanted by Boasian cultural relativism, largely for moral and political reasons. Since the 1960s and evolutionary - and theory-comparative - approach has made a big come back.

Frederick C. Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition (2011)

I read this for my project on historical methodology. In fact, I'd read it several years ago, but I'd forgotten the contents nearly completely, and it seemed to fit with my current focus within the project, i.e. understanding how and why the study of human history parted ways with other historical sciences (geology, paleontology, archeology, anthropology) in terms of methodology. Beiser seems to know the topic quite deeply and his judgments seem persuasive. What I came away thinking was that the earliest historicists - Chladenius, Moeser, Herder, Humboldt - all seemed open, or even committed, to the 18th century idea of a naturalistic "science of man." This was particularly true of the last two thinkers. At the same time, compared to Scots like Smith and Hume, and Frenchmen like Montesquieu, Rousseau or Condillac, the Germans were simultaneously wrestling with heavy-duty philosophical questions - about individuality, free will, and providence in history, for example. The enormous (and in my eyes disastrous) influence of Ranke from the 1830s on cannot be explained by the originality or persuasiveness of his ideas. Ranke is the first historicist who fully rejects naturalism and seeks to establish history in a way fundamentally distinct from the natural sciences. He emphasizes the importance of source criticism - this is to provide the scientific certainty of history. However, source criticism had been around for some time, originating in the Renaissance with men like Lorenzo Valla and Agricola, and in Germany being promoted in the 18th century at the University of Goettingen. My argument might be that source criticism didn't become the rallying cry of history in the 18th century, say, because a more naturalistic science of man was still being considered. Once that is dropped - because it would require unacceptable compromises when it came to philosophical ideas about individuality, free will, and providence - source criticism comes to seem especially appealing as an adequate source of scientificness. (Alas, it really isn't!). At least, this is one of the reasons. Another might be that the naturalistic science of man became associated with Hegel's teleological and procrustean account, something historians found distasteful for several reasons. No doubt I will have to return to this book when I am ready to return to writing.

Daniel Noah Moses, The Promise of Progress: The Life and Work of Lewis Henry Morgan (2009)

This is a wonderfully written, sensitive, nuanced, and persuasive account of Morgan, a 19th century pioneer of anthropology and social theory. Morgan was the only author cited by Darwin, Marx, and Freud. For me this is not just any old good book. It's a bridge back to a meaningful experience and set of friends. Daniel is a close friend, whom I got to know more than 20 years ago when were both teaching the sophomore tutorial in Social Studies at Harvard. This great books course, in which a handful of smart students and I read and discussed Rousseau, Smith, Mill, Weber, Freud, Beauvoir, Habermas, and others, is where I cut my teeth as a teacher and has shaped my approach to teaching ever since. (It's no accident that teaching the First-Year Seminar class has consistently been my favorite class to teach at BHSEC Queens). On Thursdays, Daniel, Paul Lachelier, Thomas Ponniah, and I would meet, usually at Grendel's, for nachos and drinks, to debate the world. After reading this book, I see why Daniel was the perfect teacher in Social Studies 10. Daniel paints a vivid, persuasive picture of Morgan's life and thought in an industrializing America. Born in 1818 to an affluent, educated, Calvinist family in the Finger Lakes region of NY State, which benefitted from the nearby Erie Canal, Morgan's thinking combined classical reverence for the virtues with liberal confidence in progress. Early on he became fascinated by, and drawn to, the remnants of the nearby Iroquois Nation. He befriended some of them and spent considerable time living with them, which launched his scholarly career as an ethnographer (which he pursued alongside his more traditional career as a lawyer). The Iroquois' tribal conception of property seemed utterly different than the Europeans' and convinced Morgan that kinship was both malleable and profoundly important. Eventually, he would expand his study of kinship, and its varieties, to encompass the rest of the world and changes over the long run. Morgan's mature theory, as presented in Ancient Society, was teleological - there was a single path, from simple kinship to more complex (and ultimately, the European nuclear family), along which different societies were travelling at different paces. Through this teleology, Morgan remained hopeful that the communal aspects of the Iroquois could be reconciled with the gains made by individualistic societies. Namely, while the Iroquois were fated to disappear, Morgan hoped that progress would lead full circle back to a newly invigorated community.