The gentlemen’s historian: Comparing Harari’s "Sapiens" against Connor’s "A People’s History of Science"
How Harari reinforces the traditional Great Men Theory of History.
[Section of lithograph by April Burke]
Part 1.4 in my critique of Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. See the full series to date.
In my previous essay, I argued that the historical logic in Yuval Noah Harari’s 2015 Sapiens [2011 original] aligns with the legacy of intellectual elitism which Clifford D. Connor critiques throughout his 2005 A People’s History of Science. I focused on a broad claim Harari makes in Sapiens: that hierarchy and unjust discrimination are necessary for complex societies. In this essay, I’ll look at some of the ways Harari’s elitist view of history manifests in particular arguments.
Harari’s Sapiens and Connor’s A People’s History of Science present opposite stories of human history. Connor’s is a project that challenges the traditional Great Men Theory of History, according to which “history is made up of long periods of ignorance and confusion, punctuated once an age by the ‘Eureka!’ of a brilliant thinker who puts it all together.” For example, “many continue to believe that the Scientific Revolution was the creation of a very few extremely talented geniuses: ‘from Copernicus to Newton.’”[1] Whereas Connor sheds light on the profound contributions of ordinary people to the history of science, narrowing the historical gap between elites and ordinary people, Harari subsequently reinforces—often subtly—the idea that science has always been advanced by a small number of extraordinary elites.
In passages pertaining to the history of science, Harari prioritizes a more top-down set of factors, such as policies, funding, and the traditional heroes of science. Of course, these factors are important, but that doesn’t mean they’re the most fundamental in determining the history of science. Harari also makes some rather bizarre and confusing arguments, such as that racism in science ended because Hitler was so extremely racist.[2] And he maintains some profound fallacies among traditional histories of science which Connor and other historians had already dismantled, namely the idea that science and technology are, or have been historically, rigidly distinct,[3] and the correlate idea that the Scientific Revolution was born in the mind. According to Harari, what distinguishes modern from premodern science is a “willingness to admit ignorance:” “The great discovery that launched the Scientific Revolution was the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions.”[4]
However, thanks to Connor and other historians like him, we know that science and technology were never totally separate; that there were countless non-academic sciences that had no established place in the academy, such as chemistry, metallurgy, botany, zoology, and experimental physics; that the philosophy, standards, and methods which characterize the Scientific Revolution were born in the workshops of artisans;[5] and that the gap between academic science and artisan science was overcome when the ideas of prolific artisan-authors were disseminated in mass with the advent of the printing press.[6]
Connor explains the need for a people’s history of science: “the historical record has long been severely unbalanced by the gentlemen’s historians and by the nature of history’s dependence on written documentation, with power relationships determining who did the writing.”[7] However, there has also often been in history what Connor describes as “people’s science” movements—from the Epicureans of ancient Greece to the Paracelsians of the early modern period[8]—and since the 1950s, there has been a growing body of literature on the importance of craftsmen vs. scholars in the making of the Scientific Revolution. This is the tradition Connor builds upon and which Harari completely ignores.
To demonstrate some of the ways Harari maintains a more elitist account of history—reinforcing the type of history Connor had systematically problematized less than a decade prior—I’ll compare from the two books on topics pertaining to the history of science: the historical relation between science and technology; the origins of writing; the end of racism in science; the role of patronage in science; the Great Men of navigational sciences.
On the historical relation between science and technology
Connor and Harari have directly opposed views on the historical relationship between science and technology. The two historians acknowledge that it is common today to think of technology as the result of the application of science, but they disagree regarding the historical nature of the relationship.
Connor critiques the common notion “that science is rigidly distinct from and supersedes technology in historical importance.” Against this view, he argues that science and technology have always been closely related, with a “cumulative mutual reinforcement,” but that historically technology has delivered the “initial impulses” of innovation,[9] an argument he supports with countless examples throughout the book.
Totally contrary to Connor, Harari reinforces the idea that historically science and technology were rigidly distinct. According to Harari, while these fields appear inseparable today, “the relationship between science and technology is a very recent phenomenon,” a relationship forged through the Scientific Revolution: “Prior to 1500, science and technology were totally separate fields.”[10]
What Harari confuses here and which Connor can help clarify is that academic science and technology were largely separate prior to 1500—in large part as a result of the sort of intellectual elitist disdain for manual labor and natural sciences, extending back to Plato. To maintain that science and technology were totally separate before 1500 supports the traditional idea the Scientific Revolution was born in the mind—that the theoretical developments preceded the technological developments which characterize this period of science history—and it thus enables the idea that this revolution originated on the side that is not associated with technology, namely, on the side of the scholars rather than the artisans. However, there are numerous reasons why this view is problematic, some of which I introduced above, including the fact that the philosophies, standards, and methods which characterize the Scientific Revolution first emerged in artisans’ workshops.
On the end of racism in science
It was not until the aftermath of the Second World War that we saw delegitimization of racism in the sciences. Both Connor and Harari note that this delegitimization was not the result of developments within the fields of science but rather a result of factors in the social context. However, the two historians have very different explanations regarding the factors which led to the elimination of racism in science within that post-Second World War context.
The context Connor emphasizes is that of anticolonialism. He explains that, “[a]lthough the generation of new scientific evidence eventually helped to refute racial theories, the final demise of racial science occurred only in the wake of the powerful wave of anticolonialism that swept the world after World War Two.” In other words, while today we can disprove the eugenicist theories of there being a biological basis for race, the end of racism in science came initially from without, driven by the movements of anticolonialism and independence that followed the war and “forced scientists to reexamine their racist premises.” Additionally, as formerly colonized peoples gained academic positions that had been previously unavailable to them, many of these scholars scrutinized the racist foundations of colonialist scholarship, “which rapidly crumbled.”[11]
The context Harari emphasizes, on the other hand, is Hitler’s racism. He credits Hitler’s racism with having buried racism in general, by being so racist: “Hitler dug not just his own grave but that of racism in general. When he launched World War Two, he compelled his enemies to make clear distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Afterwards, precisely because Nazi ideology was so racist, racism became discredited in the West.” With a much grander claim than Connor’s about “overt racism” in science ending, Harari credits Hitler’s racism with burying “racism in general.”
While he alludes to social and political contexts, the key factor for Harari is ideological. And by focusing on the ideology of the bad guy, and the unintended consequences of it, Harari avoids acknowledging any tradition of anti-racism, including the anti-colonialist movements which Connor emphasizes. Harari describes policy change and the formerly colonized peoples’ reception of rights entirely in the abstract.[12] Moreover, it’s not clear to me how people being compelled to think in racist terms, or even how the super racism of Hitler, would result in the discrediting of racism. It kind of sounds like it could make sense, though, if you don’t think about it too much!
On the origins of writing
Regarding the origins of writing, Connor credits the collective role of ordinary people engaged in productive activity, whereas Harari credits geniuses pursuing logistics in a growing city. In stating the hard facts, Connor and Harari are in agreement: writing emerged among the Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia. The difference between the two histories, Connor’s and Harari’s, is of course the historical explanations they provide.
Citing the archaeologist Denise Schmandt-Besserat, Connor credits the invention of writing to “routine economic activities of farmers, artisans, and traders:”
The roots of that writing system in commercial activity were revealed by archaeological detective work on the part of Denise Schmandt-Besserat. Schmandt-Besserat demonstrated that
preliterate people, to keep track of the goods they produced and exchanged, created a system of accounting using clay tokens as symbolic representations of their products.[13]
Harari, on the other hand, credits the invention of writing to “some unknown Sumerian geniuses,” and he emphasizes the fertility of the region, as opposed to the developments and needs of the economy as emphasized by Connor. It’s a more subtle hint at an elitist account of history:
There [in in southern Mesopotamia], a scorching sun beating upon rich muddy plains produced plentiful harvests and prosperous towns. As the number of inhabitants grew, so did the amount of information required to coordinate their affairs. Between the years 3500 BC and 3000 BC, some unknown Sumerian geniuses invented a system for storing and processing information outside their brains, one that was custom-built to handle large amounts of mathematical data.[14]
Compared to Connor, who challenges the traditional histories of science wherein “a few Great Men with Great Ideas tower over the rest of humanity,” Harari’s attribution of the invention of writing to “some unknown Sumerian geniuses” resembles more the traditional Great Men account. To me, Harari’s description brings to mind what Connor critically described as “a very few extremely talented geniuses” being credited with the Scientific Revolution. As opposed to a system born by the ingenuity of ordinary people performing routine economic activities, a system evolving over thousands of years into writing, as Connor describes, in Harari we get a vision of an elite few, collaborating over an indefinite period of time—maybe even a weekend, who knows—gracing society with a civilization-building mind liberation.
On the role of patronage in science
Not only Connor but also Harari is willing to challenge to some extent the importance of the legends of Great Men histories of science. For example, Harari argues that “[i]f these particular geniuses had never been born, their insights would probably have occurred to others.”[15] However, in Harari’s case, their greatness is only diminished relative to the patrons of science. Whereas Connor critiques the traditional attributions of scientific discovery to conquerors like “Henry the Navigator,” whose contribution was actually limited to patronage, Harari argues that such patronage was far more important for the history of science than the achievements of individual scientists.
On Henry the Navigator, Connor explains that “Henry's contribution to oceanic science was confined to patronage of navigators, cartographers, mathematicians and astronomers:”
[Prince Henry of Portugal (1394-1460), a.k.a “Henry the Navigator”] did not create the important scientific knowledge for which he is often praised; he bought it. And even that gives him too much credit, because he did not pay for it all. Some of it he stole, and in the most brutal manner: those whose knowledge he coveted were kidnapped at his command and interrogated to extract the valuable information they possessed.”[16]
Connor explains that not only was Prince Henry of Portugal not a navigator but he was also not what we would call a “clean-handed” commissioner of science; rather, he was a ruthless conqueror. While Connor’s exposition on the history of Prince Henry supports a people’s history of science, Harari’s assessment of the greatness of the traditional heroes of science history serves to emphasize a much more top-down understanding of history, where not only are ordinary people less important than the Great Men of science but the Great Men of science are less important than their patrons; where significance is relative to power:
During the past 500 years modern science has achieved wonders thanks largely to the willingness of governments, businesses, foundations and private donors to channel billions of dollars into scientific research. These billions have done much more to chart the universe, map the planet and catalogue the animal kingdom than did Galileo Galilei, Christopher Columbus and Charles Darwin.[17]
Of course, Harari never minds the patrons’ dependence upon some laboring class or another to produce the surplus in the first place, nor for that matter, the massive contributions of craftsmen to modern science. And although in Sapiens the Great Men of science are not quite as important for Harari as the funding of science, they maintain their traditional status as geniuses towering over the rest of humanity.
Indeed, despite what we learn in Connor’s book about the fact that Henry hardly ever sailed, and that when he did it was only as a passenger, in Harari’s Sapiens, published years later, Prince Henry remains “Henry the Navigator,” who according to Harari, “explored the coasts of Africa.” Even regardless of the fact that “Henry the Navigator” himself never navigated, by Harari’s measure, Henry’s patronage ought to place him among the greatest heroes of science.
On the Great Men of navigational sciences
A good example of Harari’s maintenance of the Great Men theory of history is on the topic of navigational sciences. Harari emphasizes the Europeans’ self-awareness of ignorance—awareness that they did not know everything about the world—as the factor which launched the Scientific Revolution and separated Europeans from other imperialists in the rise to power on the global scale. Harari associates this awareness of ignorance with what he describes as the Europeans’ insatiable desire to obtain new knowledge along with new territory (an idea I’ll scrutinize in future essays in this series):
James Cook was not the first explorer to think this way [that he did not already understand the world and could gain new knowledge in conjunction with conquering new territory]. The Portuguese and Spanish voyagers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries already did. Prince Henry the Navigator and Vasco da Gama explored the coasts of Africa and, while doing so, seized control of islands and harbours. Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ America and immediately claimed sovereignty over the new lands for the kings of Spain. Ferdinand Magellan found a way around the world, and simultaneously laid the foundation for the Spanish conquest of the Philippines.[18]
While Connor’s book came before Harari’s, I’ll give final word to his exposition regarding these navigators’ “genius.” Always careful to acknowledge actual contributions they've made, Connor challenges the genius of numerous Great Men of traditional history. And contrary to Harari’s claim about the Europeans’ unique self-awareness of ignorance, Connor emphasizes the elimination of many mistaken ideas and superstitions and the demise of the contemporary elitist science which came after and as result of the circumnavigation of the globe. In his chapter on the navigational sciences, Connor writes:
Prince Henry is one of a handful of Great Men whom historians have traditionally credited with creating the navigational sciences. … Columbus, unlike Henry was a competent Navigator, and his pioneering translate Atlantic voyage was a significant feat worthy of recognition. Portraying him as a transcendent genius who stood far above his contemporaries in knowledge and ability, however, it is simply untenable. … Long before Captain [James] Cook “discovered” the Hawaiian isles, Polynesians had been sailing there from Tahiti and from the Marquesas, voyages of some two thousand nautical miles. … Although [Vasco] da Gama is traditionally portrayed as a navigational genius for pioneering the bold maneuver [to utilize the South Atlantic gyre to reach India], there is no evidence suggesting that he himself supplied the knowledge necessary to attempt it. … It was not his aptitude for seamanship that recommended Da Gama to the Portuguese king, but his dependability as a vassal and his ruthlessness in pursuit of plunder and conquest. … Magellan is conventionally credited with being the original circumnavigator of the globe, but the feat was in fact accomplished by his Basque pilot, Juan Sebastián Del Cano, ‘an ordinary man without wealth or genius to help him.’ … Del Cano was the first navigator to complete a voyage around the globe, but the first human being actually to circle the Earth and return to his point of origin was probably Magellan’s slave, Enrique. … The expedition [by Magellan and his sailors] improved knowledge of the natural world not only by addition but also by subtraction. Its reports served to correct innumerable mistaken ideas that had previously been widely held. … Most important of all, its exposure of many glaring errors and omissions of Aristotelian natural philosophy prepared the way for the demise of the elite science of the day.[19]
Again, not only does Connor undermine the traditional attribution of genius to these figures but he also emphasizes a subtraction of mistaken ideas after the circumnavigation, one which resulted in “the demise of the elite science of the day,” the same legacy which extends back not only to Aristotle but to his predecessor, Plato, as discussed in my previous essay. Harari, on the other hand, reinforces many of the arguments which constitute the traditional histories by ruling class elites.
Notes
[1]. Connor, A People’s History of Science (New York: Nation Books, 2005), 17.
[2]. Harari, Sapiens (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), 234.
[3]. Ibid, 259.
[4]. Ibid, 250-1; 284.
[5]. Connor, 279-80.
[6]. Ibid, 293-5.
[7]. Ibid, 4.
[8]. Ibid, 155, 301.
[9]. Ibid, 13-4.
[10]. Harari, 259.
[11]. Connor, 130.
[12]. Harari, 234.
[13]. Connor, 68.
[14]. Harari, 122.
[15]. Ibid, 272.
[16]. Connor, 190-2.
[17]. Harari, 272.
[18]. Ibid, 250-1; 284.
[19]. Connor, 193-201.