Homogeneity, Heterogeneity, Pigs and Pandas in Human History

Abstract

Historians are curious creatures. We believe nowadays in the uniqueness of events, so much so that notions of regularity, pattern, and system have become inherently suspect. Sometimes efforts to see these in the human past are deemed evidence of some nefarious political inclination toward domination or imperialism. Thus we ordinarily leave the very big picture to others, such as journalists, sociologists, or even biologists such as Jared Diamond [6]. Their work offers a challenge from which historians usually shrink, although that charge cannot be leveled at David Christian [3] who has recently sought to find regular patterns not only in human history, but throughout the history of the Universe. In this chapter I offer two different attempts to identify big patterns, regularity, and system in human history. The first concerns a proposed pattern in the evolution of differentiation and integration in human culture, or, as I put it, using terms for the conditions rather than the processes, heterogeneity and homogeneity. The second considers analogies between animal species and human societies.