Tests in Time: A Review of Natural Experiments of History, edited by Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson

Abstract

Laboratory experiments, where researchers manipulate one variable at a time in order to elucidate causal mechanisms, are a cornerstone of many fields in the natural and social sciences. However, as Mayr pointed out, such an approach is a non-starter for many historical questions. In Natural Experiments of History, Jared Diamond and James Robinson have collected a series of papers in order to argue that the same kind of comparative techniques routinely used in the natural sciences and other branches of the social sciences can be employed to tackle questions relating to human history. Such an endeavor is important as the discipline of History tends to employ narrative descriptions of particular periods and places in the past. Historians, and many in the related disciplines of Anthropology and Archaeology, generally spend a long time gaining in-depth knowledge about their particular specialization, and can be skeptical, if not down-right hostile, to attempts to generalize or extend their findings beyond their own narrow scope of study. The papers in this volume argue that important insights into human history and the current differences between societies can be revealed through the comparison of more than one society or time period. In particular, they suggest that historians can make use of fortuitous (from the point of view of the historian) cases where a kind of natural experiment has occurred such that only one or a few variables have been changed but most have been “kept constant,” thereby limiting the number of alternative explanations.