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Today I got on the internet after spending the morning with my kids and then lifting with a friend, to see Tyler Cowen say this: “this is one of the very best non-fiction books of the year,” in relation to Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy. I’ve read a fair amount on the Mongols conquests and Central Asia in general (e.g., <Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present or Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane). And, I’ve also read the author, Frank McLynn before. His Marcus Aurelius: A Life, could have been a bit more thoroughly edited. People ask me how I figure out which books to read. One of them is by strong recommendations from people whose judgement I don’t think is crazy. I don’t know Tyler Cowen that well, and he’s not a god in my universe, but he decided to type out “one of the very best non-fiction books of the year”, and it’s on a topic which I’m already somewhat interested in, then of course I’m going to read it (also, at 700+ pages, there is a high possibility of lots of information per unit of cost).
When people try to talk about cross-cultural comparisons I often tell them to shut up. For example, let me mention the reader (who I will not name though I know this person continues to read me) who could not think of any non-Western thought which expressed the sort of altruistic ethos reminiscent of the Christian Gospel (this reader was not at the time a Christian by the way). When I asked if they knew of the thinkers of ancient China they admitted they were only very familiar with Western works. Which immediately prompted me to ask how they could make a comparative judgement in the first place.
This is a reminder to readers that though any truly educated person does not need to know the works and thought of all societies across history, one does need to sample more than one. I have long thought one of the most important figures in fact, if not legend, in Chinese history was Xunzi, who influenced both later Confucianism as well as Legalism. And, as it happens, there is a recent affordable translation of his thought, striking the right balance between being overly academic and excessively abridged. Last week I promoted Meditations, so this week I thought I should balance it out.
Obviously still very busy with things since coming back from ASHG. My blogging productivity tends to be a bit punctuated…. You know how it goes.
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(Substantially copied from last week’s Open Thread/Comment Thread: it is only 3-4 hours old, since when posted, there was no newer Open Thread):
This Man Failed A Paternity Test Due To His Vanished Twin’s DNA
I imagine RK has heard about this; I think the rest of us need a blog post. The facts seem fairly straightforward. What I’m hoping for is some of RK’s (very well) informed speculation.
Funny you mention Tyler. Recently he linked to a review of “Why Do People Sing?: Music in Human Evolution” by Joseph Jordania, under “False claims about music and human evolution”. I was thinking of commenting about it in the next open thread. Coincidence.
Based on the review, “why do people sing?” sounds like one of those just-so stories a la aquatic ape. But it is a funny one and sounds strangely plausible. Any thoughts?
I have a big book beside me with a carmelite in Boston who is perpetually confused with a zen buddhist. Then there’s the pin-up about the far east exchange student who brings home Aquinas and Anselm with exotic vim. I myself am a Catholic confucian. My problem is much less which new books to read but how to move on from the ones I love and cherish. The best (and quite old) small collection of Dr. Johnson’s essays I always keep are amazing to me for quoting Dryden about eighty percent of the cites. That is a solace.
Tyler Cowen is a prominent and popular behavioral economist and all, but he is not exactly an expert on Central Asian history and, contrary to what he might think, a good food critic. I am skeptical about this book, largely because Central Asian historiography tends to be repetitive due to scarcity of accurate and verifiable records, and relevant information tends to be second-hand often from hostile narrators. But (by the same token – the dearth of good books in English about the region), I will probably give it a shot.
I happen to be a strong proponent of the so-called classical education, and have imparted a version of it on my children. But I have augmented the traditional Western-centric classical learning with a great deal of Asian linguistics, history, and philosophy, because I have seen too many products of the former who, despite their high intelligence and intellectual capacity, are woefully ignorant of the rich traditions of history and philosophy on the eastern end of Eurasia.
There is definitely a deficiency of some sort when a “Great Books” curriculum includes “The Prince” by Machiavelli, but not “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu.
I too will give Genghis Khan book a try — I recently finished “Empires of the Silk Road” and have to admit that while there was certainly a lot of information in it, I found it somewhat tedious and (by the end) embarrassing.
Lots of stuff around me lately that there is no biological basis for race, and if people concede some ground to biology, they then claim that it has no effect on anything regarding behavior and cognitive ability. Are there any articles I can direct them to for a concise refutation of this, in language that’s relatively accessible to a layperson? Just no UNZ or controversial websites please, they’ll jump on anything they can to accuse me of racism.
This is probably only interesting to people who are interested in situations where there’s a possibility of mythology being an echo of prehistory but…
apes are incredibly strong
how come and given the ancestry how come humans aren’t?
maybe myostatin inhibition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Follistatin#Clinical_significance
so if correct what if this increased myostatin inhibition happened gradually and/or faster in some environments than others?
There is definitely a deficiency of some sort when a "Great Books" curriculum includes "The Prince" by Machiavelli, but not "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu.Replies: @April Brown
I’ll cut anybody slack on not getting Central Asian history; nobody here seems to know it that well either. I’m living in my second Central Asian country (first Uzbekistan, now Kyrgyzstan), and it’s kind of entertaining to ask the locals about their own history. I’m not talking about university professors who might be expected to know such things; these are conversations I have with taxi drivers and old ladies selling onions in the bazaar who allegedly went to at least grammar school and should have learned something about their own country. The Uzbeks like to claim Tamerlane and Navoi as ethnic Uzbek heroes (conveniently forgetting that Navoi wrote in Persian) and here in Bishkek they’ve got all these statues to a fellow named Manas who is an amalgam of different folk heroes. He’s always up on a horse with a pointy hat and some sort of spear, and locals have told me he was everything from a good friend of Mohammed to a WWII hero. Weird.
You were talking about human pigmentation a few months ago (I’ve been catching up), and I’m curious, do you know of any studies done on linkage between pigmentation and personality traits?
Pigmentation seems like it might be linked to behavior in several animals (From the Siberian Fox experiments to the different color morphs in the side-blotched lizard), and beyond that, most domesticated animals appear to have distinctive coloration, even those without a clear reason for it being selected (cows, farm fowl).
Seems like something someone might have picked up upon and studied, particularly in cases like Melanesian blonds.