Truffles, Parachutes, and Parachutes That Don't Open ...

by Cliopatria

Big History: Emmanuel Le Roy Ladourie once suggested that all historians are either truffle hunters, with their snouts buried in archival minutiae, or parachutists, surveying the big picture and telling us all there is to see. David Christian is a parachutist. Anthony Grafton reviews Christian's Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History.

Emancipation Narratives: Two recently discovered autobiographies of former slaves, Wallace Turnage and John Washington, tell of their escape during the Civil War. Yale's David Blight, who will publish them, says that they illuminate the discussion of whether emancipation was accomplished by Abraham Lincoln's proclamation or the initiative of the bondsmen themselves. Here are excerpts from both documents.

Historical Logic: There is something to be said for David Beito's historical logic. If Ronald Reagan was a great president, then Warren G. Harding needs to be considered a near great one.

Three-Card AmStud: Penn and Teller's Penn Jillette, writing in the New York Times, says:

You can't justify three-card monte as art, but how about as education? Once you've lost a few hundred bucks at a three-card monte cardboard and newspaper table, you've learned an important lesson, one that should save you a lot of money and time. It's the classic scam, and once you're hip to it, you should never again be taken in. After a three-card monte loss, you should never again get burned. You should never go to a psychic, buy a magnetic bracelet or get a Ph.D. in American studies.

Any comments? Thanks to Jesse Lemisch for the tip.

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More Comments:

Richard Henry Morgan - 6/18/2004

Sorry. Couldn't be helped. I'm a big fan of Penn, and think he's not only funny but quite smart -- a relative rarity in show business. That comment about American Studies ripped me up -- the field does tend to attract, say, the methodologically inexact.

Richard Henry Morgan - 6/18/2004

Sounds like you might be talking about Geoffrey Blainey, who coined the expression 'black armband history'.

Ralph E. Luker - 6/15/2004

David went to Yale, from Amherst as I recall, about a year ago. His work, as your comment suggests, is first rate.

Van L. Hayhow - 6/15/2004

The last post,didn't. Prof. Luker: When did David Blight go to Yale?
A few years ago on CSPAN II, on the weekend, I saw a lengthy talk given by him in Washington sponsered, as I recall, the the Park Service. It was about memory and the Civil War. If I recall, the talk was well over an hour long (maybe closer to two hours) and got a standing ovation. It was one of the best historical talks I have every heard.

Van L. Hayhow - 6/15/2004

Oscar Chamberlain - 6/15/2004

Strictly speaking yes; history concerns humans. But the professional trend has been toward expanding its boundaries.

Once history confined itself to groups with written histories. Now many historians use the findings (and often the tools) of anthropology and archaeology to expand its reach to humans previously outside the historical record. We both know how much this has enriched the history of the peoples of our continent as well as the rest of the world.

More recently we have seen the beginnings of ecological history. I am not as familiar with the works in that area as I should be but I find the concept fascinating.

Of course Big History goes beyond the human entirely, at least in its look back. But does it really? If the ice age shaped the geography of Wisconsin and the geography helped to shape the lives of the people there, then is the most recent Ice Age totally removed from the history of the people thousands of years later?

I admit that I am someone who is fond of seeing barriers between disciplines breached. I like well done interdisciplinary courses. I like radio programs that mix genres. (I once dj'd at a public radio station, and I suspect I am the only person to ever begin a New Age program with Townes Van Zandt singing "Pancho and Lefty.")

So I admit a predisposition to favoring something like Big History.

I do realize that it is stretching the discipline to its limits, and then some. I also know that in the wrong hands it could turn into mush. (Some of my radio programming probably seemed a bit incoherent to some listeners, too.)

But I think that in the right hands it could be wonderful, and I really do believe that on balance historians could do it best.

Ralph E. Luker - 6/14/2004

Oscar, Isn't there a good case to be made that: absent self-conscious human beings acting self-consciously, there is no history?

Oscar Chamberlain - 6/14/2004

Ralph, your absolutely right. The proponent I heard speak--whose name I forget, though I can tell you that he's a historian from Australia--argued that such a course at its best helped to provide students a sense of our place in the cosmos.

He defined the cosmos as the universe perceived through the light of science. He argued, somewhat successfully from my vantage point, that historians ought to see that as part of their mission, to help people orient themselves not simply in the context of their civilization's past but in the broader context of Life's past.

This can start sounding religious very, very quickly, but so long as it links the scientific vision of the past to human existence, I don't think that it is.

Whether that's good or bad I will leave for others.

Ralph E. Luker - 6/14/2004

I think I agree with you, Oscar, but it sure has the effect of reducing some things that we ordinarily think of as "historic" to miniscule proportions.

Oscar Chamberlain - 6/14/2004

I've been intrigued by Big History ever since I heard a talk on it at a conference four years ago. As the review of David Christian's book suggests, it has the potential to bind together science (particularly the time-laden fields of astronomy, geology, and evolutionary biology) with human history.

I think history on that scale is defensible as history; it provides a perspective on human action that could be distinctive and illuminating. More generally, if done well Big History could help students understand some of the sciences better; a goals that I consider extremely worthwhile in a world more and more shaped by human action.