Överdriven specialisering kan göra vilken vetenskap som helst synnerligen ointressant för andra än de närmast sörjande. Inom historia tycks emellertid bättring ha skett: Det har blivit inne att i en och samma bok beskriva hela mänsklighetens historia - och boken ska gärna vara kort.
Bentley (2005) skriver
Since the year 2000, at least five major English-language publications (not including textbooks) have taken serious, analytical approaches to all of human history within the confines of a single volume.
Felipe Fernández-Armesto opened this round of publication with Civilizations (2000). Noel Cowen soon followed with a brief essay entitled Global History: A Short Overview (2001). Michael Cook’s Brief History of the Human Race (2003) appeared a few months after the McNeills’ Human Web (also 2003). Finally, David Christian recently published a study entitled Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (2004).
Böckerna skiljer sig åt i huruvida de ser mönster och regulariteter i historien eller inte:
Cowen’s emphasis falls on commonalities of experience: once human societies make a commitment to settlement, agriculture, and theproduction of a surplus, he argues, “there are some common consequences.” [...] The riposte to Cowen’s schema is Fernández-Armesto’s insistently idiographic Civilizations, which argues specifically, pointedly, and repeatedly that there are no determinist principles at work in theworld, rather that history unfolds randomly as the product of human wills intersecting with available resources.
Själv har jag kommit säkert halvvägs i The Human Web, och äntligen börjar saker och ting falla på plats. Boken hör med andra ord till kategorin som hjälper läsaren att se mönster och regulariteter i historien. Rekommenderas!
Källa: Bentley (2005). "WEB BROWSING." History and Theory 44:102-112.