Transforming History: A New Curriculum for a Planetary Culture by William Irwin Thompson

Yesterday I reported on the educational ideas of Dorothy Sayers, who recommended a return to the Trivium. Today, I’ll review the curriculum of William Irwin Thompson, who, while not mentioning the Trivium or suggesting a return to any past curriculum, has created a curriculum that draws deeply on the past and that looks toward the future. I found it compelling and fascinating. Would it work? In fact, it’s the curriculum of the Ross School in Long Island, so it has current real-world application. 

Looks a bit like a leprechaun but don't be fooled!

For those not acquainted with William Irwin Thompson, he’s a rogue academic. After completing a doctorate at Cornell in cultural history and writing a book about the Easter 1916 uprising in Dublin and how the literary imagination shaped those events, he went to faculty appointments at Syracuse, MIT, and Toronto. But Thompson’s interests were too big and too unorthodox to work in the academic mainstream, and he left academia to found the Lindisfarne Association, which worked to cultivate ideas outside the academic establishment. I was introduced to two of his early works, At the Edge of History: Speculations on the Transformation of Culture (1971)and Passages About Earth: An Exploration of the New Planetary Culture (1973) by Professor John S. Nelson, one of my political theory professors, who defined his field very broadly (and rightly so!). Since then I’ve read a fair amount of Thompson, although there’s much more I’d like to read (but little on Kindle at this point). Thompson ignites intellectual and historical fireworks in his writings. Put simply, Thompson looks deeply into the human past to develop some sense of where we might be headed. Thompson follows trails first laid down by the likes of Barfield and Gebser in his chronicle of changing forms of consciousness and culture. And as reflected in this curriculum, in later years he teamed with mathematician Ralph Abraham to bring a mathematical perspective to complement the literary. 

What Thompson outlines in Transforming History is a comprehensive K-12 curriculum that tracks both the development of the child and the development of human culture. Ontology recreates phylogeny? In Thompson’s sense, they seem to complement one another, at least. Thompson coordinates the developmental abilities of the children to match the curriculum. (He’s apparently aided in this by the perspective of his wife, who was a kindergarten teacher in Switzerland.) Complementing his appreciation of child development are this theories of “complex dynamical systems” and “cultural ecologies”.

We humans have moved from creatures of the African savannah to dwellers in the megacities of the 21^st century connected by the internet. (N.B. I write this from the Chinese city of Suzhou that is building skyscrapers as fast as it can.) Thompson explains his perspective: 

A technological innovation is itself deeply embedded in various systems of values and symbols; a new tool can emerge synchronous with a new form of polity, as well as with a new form of spirituality. Cultural history, as opposed to the more linear history of technology, is concerned with the complex dynamical system in which biological natural drift, ecological constraints, and systems of communication and social organization all interact in a process of “dependent co-origination”. 

Irwin, Thompson William (2009-04-01). Transforming History: A New Curriculum for a Planetary Culture (Kindle Locations 170-174). Steiner Books. Kindle Edition.

Thompson, in responding to a paper by Ralph Abraham, describes the scheme he uses: 

I proposed in 1985 that “Western civilization” could be re-described as a development that proceeded through four cultural ecologies—Riverine, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the post-World War II aerospace cultural ecology of the Pacific Rim. Now, I would prefer to re-designate them as Riverine, the Mediterranean, the Oceanic, and the Biospheric. Each of these cultural ecologies was characterized by a mathematical and artistic mentality that brought forth a new worldview.

Id. 175-179

Thompson’s scheme looks at cultural change through a variety of lenses: changes in technology, language, identity, and mathematics. He summarizes: 

Each of the five cultural organizations of Culture, Society, Civilization, Industrialization, and Planetization can also be seen to be enhanced and reinforced by a matrix of identity.

1. Sanguinal [family/kinship] identity

2. Territorial identity

3. Linguistic identity (language and religion)

4. Economic identity (class and nation)

5. Noetic identity (scientific and spiritual) [arising since 1945]

Id. 287-292

Thompson believes that we’re on the cusp of further major changes, not all for the good, as the current industrial nation-state system of political economy begins to fray. Thompson believes that we face an “up or out” cultural transition. He writes: 

Religious fundamentalism and right-wing, nationalistic terrorist reactions to planetization are precisely the sort of heat that is released in these transitions. Like the Inquisition and the Counter-Reformation, which sought to stop and reverse the modernizing forces of the Renaissance and the Reformation, these reactionary explosions can do much damage and deter cultural transformation for centuries. Whether humanity can move up to a transcultural identity in which science and a new kind of post-religious spirituality can reintroduce the fully individuated consciousness of the individual to a multidimensional cosmos is the question of our time. The cultural project of bringing forth this new mentality is certainly what Ralph Abraham and I have been seeking to do in all our books and cultural projects, such as the Lindisfarne Association and the Visual Math Institute.

….

[N]othing less than truth, goodness, and universal compassion are going to get us through this transition from a global economy to a planetary ecumené. Frankly, I have to admit that it will be easier for humanity to slide down into a dark age than accept such a cultural transformation.

Id. 299-304; 371-373

Having given us a brief tour of his ideas about cultural change and the possible futures that we face, he then turns to “transforming history”, and by this, he also means transforming the school curriculum. Thompson offers (in a nod to H.G. Wells) not an “outline of history” but a “miniaturization of history” to guide the curriculum. Looking at child development, Thompson designs to curriculum to follow certain intervals: 

Because human growth does not unfold in simple linear and accretive sequences, this curriculum is broken up into pulses of organic growth in three-year sequences. Each triad unfolds in a sequence of formative, dominant, and climactic. A formative movement introduces a new element of consciousness; a dominant movement establishes and develops it, and the climactic movement consolidates and finishes it.

Id. 450-453

It is here that that Thompson notes how this outlines tracks with the suggestions of Rudolph Steiner and the Waldorf school movement. (N.B. This book is published by Steiner books.) 

Thompson outlines how math and other subjects, how a “sacred language, like Chinese, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Classical Greek, Latin, or Arabic” can be introduced into the curriculum. So with stories and science. The degree of depth of study is matched the developmental level of the child all through the curriculum. 

In drawing upon his wife’s experience, Thompson sings to praises of the Swiss-German kindergarten. He writes: 

At the source of Origin (in the sense of Jean Gebser’s book Ever-Present Origin), knowledge is integral and not divided into disciplines and technologies. Science and myth, tools and rituals, art and understanding are all together in a cognitive bliss of the sense of the joy, wonder, and fun of being in knowing as a form of being in love—in love with life. Americans tend to view kindergarten as merely babysitting, a time you need to get through as fast as possible until you have got the kids up to speed through reading and computer skills so they can get down to the real work. This is just about as far from the truth as you can get. In fact, what the enlightened adult needs to do is to return to this earlier mind and reachieve it with all the powers that have come from intellectual development. Great scientists and artists have survived their education and have been able to do this, but most people have been beaten into submission and turned into used and abused tools.

           Id. 552-559

 

He continues: 

Kindergarten is a Zen-like place and time, in the sense that it involves a kind of “mind-to-mind transmission” from the teacher to the students. The being and soul of the parent or teacher is more important than pedagogic philosophy, whether Waldorf, Montessori, or Piaget. What truly matters is the sense of soul presence that embodies knowing and reverence. . . . Because knowledge is integral at this early level (as it should be again at the postdoctoral level), there should be no divisions into disciplines such as science, art, religious studies, and languages.

            Id. 592-598

 

Thompson, after spending a good deal of time on kindergarten, takes the reader on up through the grade levels, discussing the abilities of the child and the tasks and learning appropriate to each level. Thompson takes students on trips through time and space (i.e., all manner of cultures, civilizations, and times) to match learning and abilities. For the adult reader, it’s vintage Thompson, taking us here and there for insights into the human project. To have learned this as a kid? I think—although perhaps I delude myself—it would have been a real kick. We did something like this studying American Indians or other lands and times, but nothing with the depth and sophistication (age appropriate, of course) that Thompson suggests. Indeed, the remainder of the book, while outlining a very specific curriculum, also serves as a display of Thompson’s unique and fascinating world cultural history from the earliest humans to the present. That’s always a treat. 

Is education wasted on the young? Sometimes it seems so, but Thompson suggests that the seeds of a doctoral dissertation can be planted during kindergarten. Perhaps. While I read this book with great enjoyment as a work of history and cultural criticism, it is a series work of education as well. No system is perfect, there’s no one size fits all. But education, for anyone living, whether having completed formal education, whether with school-age children or not, must be concerned with what schools teach. 

It would be interesting to learn how Ross School graduates (that use this curriculum) fair in the larger world. Thompson reports he home-schooled his son Evan after grade school, and by all indications, that went well. Evan, now a professor in B.C., has just published another book, Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy that’s on my to-read list. Seems like a pretty good test run.

If you’re interested in education curriculum or where our world has been and where we’re going, I highly recommend this book and anything by WIT. And if you’re interested in both, you’ve hit the jackpot.

Three Cheers for Big History, David Christian, and Bill Gates

Nerd fest. Love it.

The NYT published its education issue of the Magazine that included an article entitled “So Bill Gates Has This Idea for a History Class . . .” written by Andrew Ross Sorkin about Bill Gates and his promotion of “Big History”. The article details the Big History project that grew from the inquisitive mind of David Christian, an academic who started his teaching career as a Russian history specialist in Australia. Christian decided to widen the scope of history, and he developed a course that runs from the Big Bang to the present (and that even peers over the edge into the future). Bill Gates, like me, came across the Teaching Company course and really liked it. (Bill watched on his treadmill. I listened in my car.) Gates was taken with the concept and now actively promotes it. It’s heartening (in a small, silly sort of way) that the world’s richest nerd shares my enthusiasm. 

The article describes the genesis of the project, beginning with David Christian’s personal history, his initial course development, his “discovery” by the Teaching Company, and their release of the course in 2008. Gates (a fellow Teaching Company aficionado) not only became enthusiastic about the course, but he put his money where his mouth (and brain) is and began to promote it through his Foundation. Now the course is taught in more and more schools. 

Some of the article includes comments from those who carp about Gates and his involvement in education. Such comments are petty. He puts ideas to the test and backs up his enthusiasm with money, testing, and refinement. Business leaders who promote educational reform (even real change) aren’t going to lead us to the educational mountaintop, but they can help. Gates seems exemplary in this regard. At least he’s not out trying to buy elections for right-wing causes. Besides, he’s a rather likeable nerd, and he channels his nerdiness to good use. I’ll never share his income bracket, but I do share his enthusiasm for this and other topics. (He posts lists of books that he’s read that’s a treasure of serious, non-fiction reading.)

The other gripe in the article came from Stanford history professor Sam Wineburg, who complained that the course left out too much history (of the archives and texts variety) to focus on natural science. This misses the point of the course, which is—contrary to the organization of colleges and universities—truly multi-disciplinary. This should not be a turf war. We can view history through a telescope looking back into vast areas of time, space, or topic, or we can view it through a microscope, focusing on moment-to-moment events documented by texts in archives. Each has its place and irreplaceable value. No single perspective, large or small, distant or recent, can supplant all of the others. 

The best aspect of this article, however, is that it gives us pause to think about history and to asses its nature and value. What is history? History is the master discipline, the source of knowledge. Every thing has a history: the universe, you and me, civilizations, disciplines (math, science, literature, etc.). Every thing changes over time (although sometimes too slowly for us to appreciate). All knowledge is from the past. This idea isn’t my creation, but a gift that I received from John Lukacs. Lukacs calls on C.S. Lewis to help explicate the insight: 

The past in our minds is memory. Human beings cannot create, or even imagine, anything that is entirely new. (The Greek work for "truth, aletheia, also means "not forgetting")"There is not a vestige of real creativity de novo in us," C.S. Lewis once wrote. No one can even imagine an entirely new color; or an entirely new animal; or even a third sex. At best (or worst) one can imagine a new combination of already existing—that is, known to us—colors, or monsters, or sexes.

Lukacs, At the End of an Age, 52.

Lukacs goes on: 

In sum, the history of anything amounts to that thing itself. History is not a social science but an unavoidable form of thought. That "we live forward but we can only think backward" is true not only of the present (which is always a fleeting illusion) but of our entire view of the future: for even when we think of the future we do this by remembering. But history cannot tell us anything about the future with certainly. Intelligent research, together with a stab of psychological understanding, may enable us to reconstruct something from the past; still, it cannot help us predict the future. There are many reasons for this unpredictability (for believing Christians let me say that Providence is one); but another (God-ordained) element is that no two human beings have ever been the same. History is real; but it cannot be made to "work", because of its unpredictability. 

Lukacs, At the End of an Age, 53-54

Strictly speaking, I would define history as the study of the recorded past (again following Lukacs). That has meant mostly documents, but it now includes a variety of other media as well. For more remote times, we get glimpses of life from the world of signs, symbols, and non-perishable tools. But in a larger sense, the “Big History” sense, we can understand history as the story of change. Thus, we move beyond (but do not discard) the story of politics, war, individuals (biography), social relations, or economics, among the more traditional subjects of history. We now encompass the natural world as well. The cutting edge of physics investigates the changing universe, while biology was revolutionized by its incorporation of history, which we label “evolution”. This appreciation of change is relatively new to the Western mind. It has a genesis going back to Heraclitus, but ideas about static Being and an unchanging God dominated for the greater part of Western history. With the likes of Hegel, Whitehead, and Eastern thinking (Daoist and Buddhist), we now enjoy a conceptual orientation that better appreciates the fundamental perspective of change and process. 

The other point to consider about the value of the Big History project comes from its value for bridging the two cultures. Since everything has a history, including every body of knowledge (as a field of study and in the “real world”), each subject can be taught through its history. I first received this idea from the late Neil Postman. (Sorry, I don’t have my library here to provide you the title in which he makes this point.) But as usual, John Lukacs has a pertinent quote, and from none other than the greatest American philosopher, William James: 

William James wrote: "You can give humanistic value to almost anything by teaching it historically. Geology, economics, mechanics, are humanities when taught by reference to the successive achievements of the geniuses to whom these sciences owe their being. Not taught thus, literature means grammar, art a catalog, history as list of dates, and natural science a sheet of formulas and weights and measures" 

At the End of an Age, 53, quoting James, Memories and Studies (1911), 312-313.

So I say “three cheers!” for Bill Gates, David Christian, and Big History.

Big History--I Mean BIG History

I finished listening to Professor David Christian's Big History course from the Teaching Company (courtesy of ICPL). When he says "big" he means from the Big Bang (now pegged about 13.7 billion years ago) to peering deep into the future (where does this story stop?). This project, and he's now one of many that are pursuing this new line of thinking, is really quite entertaining and fascinating. You may recall that I posted on his TED Talk on the subject, but in this course he gives 48 one-half hour lectures. They are organized around theme of complexity, how from the Big Bang, the simple in the universe has become more complex, entropy notwithstanding. The early science is interesting, but I'm most into the human history, and Christian does a fine job here. Of course, as human society has become more complex, so the story tends to back load. That is, since about 1700, and the oncoming of modernity, change to humanity has come fast and furious (literally furious in some arenas). In fact, one measure of how complex we have become is the density of energy use. Of course, this may prove our downfall, as well. We shall see: the story isn't over yet! If like me, you're in the car and have more than enough news, why not take a trip down memory lane! This was enjoyable and informative. Recommended. (And thank you, ICPL!)

David Christian & Really Big History

This is my year (or two, or three) of reading big history. Iam Morris's Why the West Rules--For Now is probably my biggest, widest angle look so far (and I should mention 1493 and The Better Angels of Our Nature as recent additions), but David Christian dwarfs Morris's tour, which runs from the beginning of humankind to our possible futures. In this TED talk, Christian begins at the Big Bang! Now that's big history! And quite a fascinating tour it is: from the first nanosecond of creation to the present is a story of increasing complexity and "Goldilocks" (just right) circumstances that bring us to our present. Just right--and quite fragile. Anyway, the tour is fascinating. He and some of his colleagues have put together "The Big History Project" at this webpage for use as a high school curriculum. What a great idea and organizing theme to look at our past through both the physical and social sciences, and a great way to learn and teach complexity. Consider the desirability of learning history through this kind of lens, and not as just "one damn thing after another", as it is too often taught. No one remembers disjointed events well, but add a story (narrative) and they'll remember; make it a detective story (as history really is), and you've got them hooked.

P.S. How wonderfully nerdy is this? After initially posting, I found a short talk by Bill Gates on the Big History Project website home page. The ultimate nerd endorsement!

Niall Ferguson's Civilization: The West & the Rest

Niall Ferguson's Civilization: The West and the Rest (2011) describes six "killer apps" that defined Western civilization and led to its preeminence in the 500 years between 1500 and 2000. Ferguson is a lively and engaging writer who steps into the sweep of a 500-year history with verve and flair. Ferguson is not adverse to controversy, and he doesn't shy away from making judgments. This has made him a controversial figure within the ranks of some historians. In addition, he moonlights as a commentator on current events. Nevertheless, I think we can disagree with him and still find him very persuasive.

Ferguson argues that competition, property rights and liberty, modern medicine, the Scientific Revolution, consumer goods, and the work (or word) ethic distinguished Europe and its progeny (North America and Australasia) from its rivals in the Ottoman empire and China, both of which were surely were more advanced than most of Europe as of 1500. Indeed, the "great divergence" begins about 1800.

Some have criticized Ferguson for underplaying the detrimental aspects of European colonial empires. However, I find these criticisms unpersuasive. Ferguson, who certainly has a combative streak in him, argues that colonialism, for all its downsides, nevertheless has some good sides. In some sense, this is simply a truism. Ferguson certainly notes some of the horrors associated with colonial rule. He does not spend much time dealing with the day-to-day indignities that colonialism entailed. Nevertheless, his critics seem to miss the point. That point is that Western civilization brought cultural, scientific, and industrial advances to portions of the world where they would not have arisen or where they would only have arisen much later.

Perhaps Ferguson is most interesting in this work when he talks about where we go from today. Has he argues in his book, Japan was the first of the Asian nations to take up and apply the "killer apps" of the West. Other Asian nations have done so quite successfully, and China is now in the midst of making an incredible transformation. Ferguson notes, however, that few of the Asian nations have "downloaded" all of the apps. For instance, China has only a limited sense of private property and no real democracy. Russia has some vestige of democracy, but no real sense of property rights. Ferguson suggests that in order for any nation to get all of the benefits of this heritage, all of the "apps" must be downloaded and run.

Ferguson also delves into where we might head from here. His greatest concern is that empires in the past have often collapsed quite suddenly. Rome, the Soviet Union, and numerous other examples show a sudden and drastic collapse as opposed to the stereotype of a slow decline. He ponders the possibility that current Western nations may suffer the same fate. Knowing that it is very difficult to predict the future (a point about which I think that he would agree), one can only speak conditionally; nonetheless, this prior pattern causes some concern. By the way, Ferguson delves into complexity theory and sudden tipping points that might cause collapse, an important and fruitful perspective.

This book makes a fine companion to Ian Morris's book. Both deal with the transition that distinguished Western Europe and its offspring from the remainder of the world. This is one of the great historical phenomena. It is the dominant narrative of the past 500 years, and Ferguson conversation in an engaging and worthwhile manner.

In sum, I highly recommend this book, and I enjoyed a great deal. If you're looking for a good overview of what happened and why, this is it an excellent place to start.

Joseph Tainter: The Collapse of Complex Societies

While on my trip I decided to tackle Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies. I learned of this book from Thomas Homer-Dixon’s excellent The Upside of Down. Since we were once again headed to see some ruins, I thought this an appropriate time to approach this book, although in the case of the Incas, we can easily identify “Guns, Germs, and Steel” (and perhaps horses) as the proximate causes of collapse. But other cases, like the Maya, the Western Roman Empire, and Easter Island, are among those situations that do not provide easy explanations. Tainter reviews virtually all of the prevailing theories. He identifies the prevailing theory in popular thinking and among some historians (Toynbee, for instance) as “mystical” explanations, a poor choice of words to my mind. Toynbee, following a long pedigree, thinks in terms of biological analogies, with birth, youth, maturity, decline, and death the pattern for “civilizations” as well as individuals. This, Tainter argues, provides a false and rather misleading or unhelpful analogy. The other theory, of “decadence”, seems more literary and moral than causative. So what is Tainter’s alternative? Declining marginal returns on complexity (complexity being a term of art in this instance). In short, he bases his theory upon a fundamental economic law (if you will suffer the dubious term here). His analysis and application of his theory to the Western Roman Empire argues that it was not barbarians, Christians, or plagues that brought down Rome, but a limitation on the value of complexity. He applies a similar analysis to the Mayans and to the Chaco Canyon civilization in North America. If he’s right, and I think that he makes a very strong argument (but see Peter Turchin’s War and Peace and War for an excellent competing theory), it has to be taken quite seriously, and if he’s right, then we have to think very carefully about our current predicament. Can we innovate our way out of the inevitable decline of petroleum? Can we get out from under excessive demands for complexity?

I highly recommend this book, and I count it an excellent part of my Big History reading project.

Ian Morris: Why the West Rules--For Now

I like big history and I cannot lie.

Almost famous rap

Okay, that’s a bit of a misquote, but for yours truly, it works. As someone who has declared his own year of big history, this book provided a great start. The full title of this book tells a lot: Why the West Rules—For Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal About the Future. Quite a mouthful, and quite a claim, but Professor Morris (Stanford Classics & Archeology) backs up his claims. Let me unpack it a bit.

Morris starts with a tale of counter-history: a tale of Prince Albert traveling to Beijing in the mid-nineteenth century, held virtually captive to the Chinese hegemon. Of course, almost the opposite was true, except the Chinese emperor sent a small dog, Looty, to Balmoral Castle, as a form of homage and tribute. How did this happen? How did the West come to dominate the globe in the nineteenth century? This is the guiding question of this book, and to answer it, Morris goes back, way back.

Morris goes back to the first journeys of humans out of Africa. There were multiple migrations and multiple forms of humanoids that evolved in Africa and that migrated out. Morris retraces all of this to arrive at solid beginning for his account: race (as biology) does not account for human differences. We’re all birds of a feather genetically (Although some hanky-panky in Europe mixed some Neanderthal genes in with the homo sapiens. Neanderthals eventually died out.) After the beginning of humans, and then with the development of agriculture (about 10,000 years ago), divergences began between East and West. Note: Morris notes that distinctions between East and West are in some sense artificial and to some extent limit the human populations that he considers. By “East” he means China and its civilization, of which Japan became the most prominent offshoot. By “West”, he means that world that started in the “Hilly Flanks” of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and then migrated west into the Mediterranean, then into Northern Europe, and then across the Atlantic. He does not consider other human civilizations, such as those of the Americas.

Morris tells how, using an index of social development that he created, East and West went back and forth over the millennia in the lead for development. The West began in the lead and continued up through the time of the Roman Empire, then the East lead (around 1100 during the Song dynasty), and the two were nearly even up into the late 1700’s, when the West shot into a lead and changed the game. Up until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the empires and nation-states of both East and West would hit a ceiling of social development that neither the Romans nor the Song could break. Each time this ceiling was approached, at least one of the “five horsemen of the apocalypse” would ride: epidemic, famine, state failure, climate change, and migration. However, in the 1600’s China on the East and Russia in the West (and East geographically) closed the “steppe highway” that allowed the horsemen of Central Asia (think Ghengis Khan and Tamarlane) to move from East to West, wrecking havoc on civilizations in the West. These horsemen are the barbarians who helped bring down Rome, and in the East they were the reason for that lovely wall the Chinese have.

The weakness of the book lies in the fact that Morris doesn’t give as definitive and persuasive answer to the question of why the West shot out ahead via industrialization. Perhaps he knows of very important and provocative literature out there. For instance, he praises Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence on several occasions, but I think that he could have done more, as this change in humanity—the Industrial Revolution—is the most significant change in the human condition since the advent of agriculture and the resulting development of cities (and thus civilization). But perhaps I quibble. To get another take on this issue, see Timur Kuran’s review in Foreign Affairs.

After bringing the tale up to today, and after some discussion of China’s growing influence and how it might take the lead in social development back to the East, Morris ponders the future. In an essay that Niall Ferguson rightly praised in his brief note on the book in Foreign Affairs, Morris contemplates to divergent paths that humanity may take. First, the possibility of the rise of The Singularity, where humans and machines sync-up for a brave new world. The other path that he contemplates is the possibility of Nightfall, a phrase borrowed from Asimov’s Foundation series, where civilization collapses and the five horsemen ride again. Climate change, anyone?

The great reluctance that I have to write a review of this book comes from the inadequacy of my review to do this book justice. It’s a very learned undertaking, yet its written with a light and engaging hand. Morris blends analysis and narrative in a pleasing manner. He carefully lays out his premises and supports his conclusions. He finds patterns in history, but not laws. He does about everything right that one could hope for in such a book as this. If you want to know where humankind has been and where we might be going, you’d be hard pressed to find a better book than this one.

726 pages, published 2010.