Context with Brad Harris

There is an overlooked rule in history: far more is lost and forgotten than is preserved and remembered. Humanity knows more and is more powerful than ever. But, are we getting wiser?  What if our ignorance outgrows our potential? What happens when rich and powerful societies lose their wisdom and forget what made them great in the first place?  It's happened before, and there is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Stephen Greenblatt that tells the tale: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern.

Today, we explore the origin of the modern concept of a fact. We take facts for granted, but they represent an invaluable intellectual technology less than 400 years old, which was forged in a fight between two of history’s brightest thinkers battling over the best way to rescue their society from the madness of medieval barbarism.   We review a book that gives us a front row seat to that fight: Leviathan and the Air Pump, published by the historians of science Steve Shapin and Simon Schaffer.

Today I'm speaking with Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, a historian from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. It would be hard to find a scholar better equipped to enhance our historical perspective on how we decide what's true. Jennifer and I challenge each other's thinking on whether ideas about natural rights were discovered or created, whether or not the distinction between objective truth and pragmatic truth really matters, how we reconcile timeless values with scientific disruption, and more.

Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind became one of the most influential books of the last 50 years, instigating a battle over the soul of the American university that’s been raging ever since.    It became a powerful weapon in Bloom's fight against a morally and intellectually crippling form of relativism infecting America’s educational system by reminding us that the goal of education is not to become open to all ideas, but to cultivate the search for the best ideas.

In this episode, we witness the birth of the most powerful idea in history and how it came to define the meaning of America. This is the idea that argument represents the best path to progress and to justice for all, and that to institutionalize this via a Constitutional right to freedom of speech is the best way to preserve a prosperous society. Joseph Ellis captures the story behind this idea in Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history.

Niall Ferguson is one of the most influential historians of our generation. His professional effort extends well beyond academia to ensure that policy makers and the public better understand how to apply historical lessons to current issues. Niall and I connected to further discuss some of those issues. We talk about the changing politics of academia, the growing challenge of interpreting history productively, the problem of judging the past by the moral standards of the present, and more.

Niall Ferguson, perhaps the most famous historian of our generation, offers yet another breakthrough in his latest work, The Square and the Tower. Through groundbreaking research, Ferguson reveals how social networks, from the Freemasons of the middle ages to Facebook in the 21st century, disrupt established hierarchies to divert the course of history, both for better and for worse. Join me at patreon.com/context for ad-free episodes and bonus content. Visit https://bradharris.com to learn more.

Is there a logic to history?  Many scholars insist that each culture may only be understood on its own terms, but In Why the West Rules - For Now, Ian Morris counters that if we study how human biology, sociology, and geography interact, it's possible to discover a fundamental pattern in history to help us answer the biggest historical questions, from why the West rules for now, to what will happen next. Access bonus episodes on https://www.patreon.com/context. Learn more at https://bradharris.com

A conversation with Bryan Ward-Perkins, author of The Fall of Rome, & the End of Civilization.  It's become fashionable to argue that Roman civilization never collapsed but was merely transformed. This counter-narrative may illuminate intellectual developments of Late Antiquity, but verges on cultural relativism that obscures real suffering. Ward-Perkins' book is a reality check of how dark the post-Roman age really was. Bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/context More info: https://bradharris.co

The Two Cultures was one of the most influential lectures of the 20th century, triggering an intense debate regarding the status of science that has persisted to this day. The main theme of Snow's lecture was to raise alarm about the growing knowledge gap between modern society's scientists and everyone else, and to reinvigorate respect for science among cultural elites who were increasingly dismissive of it. Support Context at https://www.patreon.com/context Learn more at https://bradharris.com

Merchants of Doubt is not just a book about how illusions of scientific controversy have been constructed, it’s also about the people who constructed them, and its most shocking revelation is that the very same people used the very same strategy to prevent regulation on cigarette smoking, acid rain, the ozone hole, and global warming over the span of nearly 50 years. Support Context on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/context Learn more at https://bradharris.com

If civilization collapsed, and our descendants could rediscover one work to get back on track, Peter Atkins’ Galileo’s Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science, would be a contender. If there are miracles, Atkins would argue they are not found in the conjectures of things unexplained, but in the power to achieve cosmic insights through science. Here, he distills his choices for the most profound of those insights. Support Context at https://www.patreon.com/context Learn more at https://bradharris

In this episode, I'll read an article I published in American Scientist called "Evolution's Other Narrative." (https://www.americanscientist.org/article/evolutions-other-narrative) Given our conversation last time about disease in the history of civilization, this article can supplement our understanding of humanity's co-evolution with microbes. To support Context and get all episodes ad-free plus bonus content, go to https://www.patreon.com/context, or https://bradharris.com for more information.

The history of disease demonstrates the accidental nature of history and the triumph of human reason to enable some control over our fate; most of us no longer suffer the death of half our children. William McNeill, in Plagues and Peoples, was the first to capture this balance, offering insight on how disease has both shaped & been shaped by civilization. Access Context ad-free along with bonus content through Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/context or through the website at https://bradharris.com

In 1493, Charles Mann shows us how Europeans emerged at the center of a modern, globalized world by establishing the Columbian Exchange; a system they created but could not control, and with consequences none of them could imagine. You can access all episodes of Context ad-free along with bonus content, including a 20-minute interview with author Charles Mann himself, by supporting the show on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/context or through the website at https://bradharris.com.