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We're uncomfortable about considering history as a science. It's classified as a social science, which is considered not quite scientific.

Jared Diamond

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Jared Diamond
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: September 10
Biologist
Ecologist
Geographer
Ornithologist
Physiologist
Scientist
University Teacher
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Jared Mason Diamond
Jared M. Diamond
Literature
History
Science
Classified
Social
Considering
Uncomfortable
Scientific
Considered
Quite

More quotes by Jared Diamond

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The past was still a Golden Age, of ignorance, while the present is an Iron Age of willful bliss.
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Biology is the science. Evolution is the concept that makes biology unique.
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Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.
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Thousands of years ago, humans domesticated every possible large wild mammal species fulfilling all those criteria and worth domesticating, with the result that there have been no valuable additions of domestic animals in recent times, despite the efforts of modern science.
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The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem!
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The adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered.
Jared Diamond
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Not until the beginning of the 20th century did Europe's urban populations finally become self-sustaining: before then, constant immigration of healthy peasants from the countryside was necessary to make up for the constant deaths of city dwellers from crowd diseases.
Jared Diamond
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The King's 28 letters have been described by scholars as the world's best alphabet and the most scientific system of writing.
Jared Diamond
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Lest those islands still seem to you too remote in space and time to be relevant to our modern societies, just think about the risks... of our increasing globalization and increasing worldwide economic interdependence.
Jared Diamond
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Measles and TB evolved from diseases of our cattle, influenza from a disease of pigs, and smallpox possibly from a disease of camels. The Americas had very few native domesticated animal species from which humans could acquire such diseases.
Jared Diamond
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Infectious diseases introduced with Europeans, like smallpox and measles, spread from one Indian tribe to another, far in advance of Europeans themselves, and killed an estimated 95% of the New World's Indian population.
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The United States has long thought of itself as the land of infinite plenty, and historically we did have abundant resources. But now we are gradually exhausting our fisheries, our topsoil, our water. On top of that, we're coming to the end of world resources.
Jared Diamond
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In the latter case it is often government that organizes the conquest, and religion that justifies it.
Jared Diamond
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Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial in tipping the outcomes [of the various societies' histories] towards success or failure: long-term planning and willingness to reconsider core values. On reflection we can also recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of our individual lives.
Jared Diamond
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Even to this day, no native Australian animal species and only one plant species-the macadamia nut-have proved suitable for domestication. There still are no domestic kangaroos.
Jared Diamond
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Australia is the most isolated continent.
Jared Diamond
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To dismiss the current extinction wave on the grounds that extinctions are normal events is like ignoring a genocidal massacre on the grounds that every human is bound to die at some time anyway.
Jared Diamond
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African cavalry mounted on rhinos or hippos would have made mincemeat of European cavalry mounted on horses. But it couldnt happen.
Jared Diamond
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The southward advance of native African farmers with Central African crops halted in Natal, beyond which Central African crops couldn't grow - with enormous consequences for the recent history of South Africa.
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History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves
Jared Diamond