Jared Diamond - Work

Work

Diamond's original specialism was salt absorption in the gall bladder. He has also published scholarly works in the fields of ecology and ornithology, but is best known for authoring of a number of popular science books combining topics from diverse fields other than those he has formally studied. Because of this diversity Diamond has been described as a polymath.

Diamond's first popular book, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (1991), examined human evolution and its relevance to the modern world, incorporating evidence from anthropology, evolutionary biology, genetics, ecology, and linguistics. It was well received by critics and won the 1992 Rhône-Poulenc Prize for Science Books and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In 1997, he followed this up with Why is Sex Fun?, which focused in on the evolution of human sexuality, again drawing from anthropology, ecology, and evolutionary biology.

His third and best known popular science book, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, was published in 1997. In it, Diamond sought to explain the political and economic dominance of Eurasian societies over those from other parts of the world throughout history. Using evidence archaeological and historical case studies and evidence from genetics and linguistics, he argued that gaps in power and technology between human societies are not primarily caused by cultural or racial differences, but originated in environmental differences amplified by various positive feedback loops. According to Diamond the geography and ecology of the Eurasian landmass gave societies there an advantage over those on other continents, which they were subsequently able to dominate or conquer. Guns, Germs, and Steel was a best-seller and received several awards, including a Pulitzer Prize, an Aventis Prize for Science Books and the 1997 Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science. However the work was criticised for factual inaccuracies in some of Diamond's case studies, and more generally as an argument for environmental determinism. A television documentary based on the book was produced by the National Geographic Society in 2005.

Diamond's next book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), examined a range of past civilizations in an attempt to identify why they either collapsed or succeeded, and considers what contemporary societies can learn from these historical examples. As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, he argued against explanations for the failure of past societies based primarily on cultural factors, instead focusing on ecology. Among the societies mentioned in the book are the Norse and Inuit of Greenland, the Maya, the Anasazi, the indigenous people of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Japan, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and modern Montana. Similarly Collapse was again both critically acclaimed and criticised for environmental determinism and specific factual inaccuracies. It was nominated for Royal Society Prize for Science Books. In 2012, Carl Lipo and Terry Hunt proposed an alternative theory to a central thesis of "Collapse" by demonstrating – both through research and full-scale recreation for National Geographic television – that the statues on Rapa Nui could have "walked" and that the people of the island may not have cut trees to transport their statues.

Diamond's most recent book Natural Experiments of History, co-edited with James Robinson, is a collection of essays illustrating the multidisciplinary and comparative approach to the study of history that he advocates.