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" How history gets things wrong : "
Alex Rosenberg.
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BL
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| Record Number
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877135
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| Main Entry
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Rosenberg, Alexander,1946-
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| Title & Author
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How history gets things wrong : : the neuroscience of our addiction to stories /\ Alex Rosenberg.
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| Publication Statement
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Cambridge, Massachusetts :: The MIT Press,, [2018]
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| Page. NO
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289 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates :: illustrations (some color), maps ;; 24 cm
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| ISBN
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0262038579
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: 9780262038577
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| Bibliographies/Indexes
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Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-272) and index.
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| Contents
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Besotted by stories -- How many times can the German Army play the same trick? -- Why ever did Hitler declare war on the United States? : That's easy to explain, too easy -- Is the theory of mind wired in? -- The natural history of historians -- What exactly was the Kaiser thinking? -- Can neuroscience tell us what Talleyrand meant? -- Talleyrand's betrayal : in inside story -- Jeopardy! "question" : "It shows the theory of mind to be completely wrong" -- The future of an illusion -- Henry Kissinger mind reads his way through the Congress of Vienna -- Guns, germs, steel--and all that -- The Gulag Archipelago and the uses of history -- The back(non)story.
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| Abstract
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"This trade book takes on the widely-shared belief that learning the history of something always contributes to understanding it, is often the best way to do so, and sometimes is the only way. The aim is to explain away these three beliefs, to show why historical narrative is always, always wrong, not just incomplete or inaccurate or unfounded, but mistaken the way Ptolemaic astronomy or Phlogiston chemistry is wrong. The resources employed to do this are those of evolutionary anthropology, cognitive science, and most of all neuroscience. Much of the book reports Nobel Prize winning advances in neuroscience in ways that are accessible to the non-specialist and reveals their relevance for our fatal attraction to stories. Although framed as a searching critique of historical narrative as path to understanding and knowledge, the book also provides a report of the current state of play of research in cognitive social psychology, evolutionary anthropology, and the study of the brain at the level of neural detail"--
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"To understand something, you need to know its history. Right? Wrong, says Alex Rosenberg in How History Gets Things Wrong. Feeling especially well-informed after reading a book of popular history on the best-seller list? Don't. Narrative history is always, always wrong. It's not just incomplete or inaccurate but deeply wrong, as wrong as Ptolemaic astronomy. We no longer believe that the earth is the center of the universe. Why do we still believe in historical narrative? Our attachment to history as a vehicle for understanding has a long Darwinian pedigree and a genetic basis. Our love of stories is hard-wired. Neuroscience reveals that human evolution shaped a tool useful for survival into a defective theory of human nature. Stories historians tell, Rosenberg continues, are not only wrong but harmful. Israel and Palestine, for example, have dueling narratives of dispossession that prevent one side from compromising with the other. Henry Kissinger applied lessons drawn from the Congress of Vienna to American foreign policy with disastrous results. Human evolution improved primate mind reading-the ability to anticipate the behavior of others, whether predators, prey, or cooperators-to get us to the top of the African food chain. Now, however, this hard-wired capacity makes us think we can understand history-what the Kaiser was thinking in 1914, why Hitler declared war on the United States-by uncovering the narratives of what happened and why. In fact, Rosenberg argues, we will only understand history if we don't make it into a story." -- Publisher's description
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| Subject
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Cognitive neuroscience.
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History, Modern-- Psychological aspects.
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Psychohistory.
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Cognitive neuroscience.
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Geschichte
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Geschichtsschreibung
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HISTORY-- Historiography.
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Neurowissenschaften
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Psychohistory.
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Psychologie
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| Dewey Classification
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901/.9
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| LC Classification
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D16.16.R674 2018
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