The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past

207 Pages·2004·1.15 MB·English

by  John Lewis Gaddis

THE LANDSCAPE OF HISTORY
also by john lewis gaddis
The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947
Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States: An Interpretive History
Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American
National Security Policy
The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War
The United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications,
Reconsiderations, Provocations
We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History
THE LAN DSCAPE OF HISTORY
How Historians Map the Past
JOHN LEWIS GADDIS
1
2002
1
Oxford New York
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Copyright © 2002by John Lewis Gaddis
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gaddis, John Lewis.
The landscape of history : how historians map the past / John Lewis Gaddis.
p. cm. Includes index.
isbn0-19-506652-9
1. History—Philosophy. 2. History—Methodology.
3. Aesthetics—History. I. Title.
d16.8 .g23 2002 901—dc21 2002010392
Book design and composition by Mark McGarry, Texas Type & Book Works.
Set in Linotype Fairfield.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For Toni
The Love of Life and a Life of Love
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CONTENTS
Preface ix
one The Landscape of History 1
two Time and Space 17
three Structure and Process 35
four The Interdependency of Variables 53
five Chaos and Complexity 71
six Causation, Contingency, and Counterfactuals 91
seven Molecules with Minds of Their Own 111
eight Seeing Like a Historian 129
Notes 153
Index 183
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PREFACE
The University of Oxford has again provided a hospitable set-
ting in which to write a book. The occasion this time was the 2000/1
George Eastman Visiting Professorship in Balliol College, a chair dat-
ing back to 1929 whose occupants have included Felix Frankfurter,
Linus Pauling, Willard Quine, George F. Kennan, Lionel Trilling, Clif-
ford Geertz, William H. McNeill, Natalie Zemon Davis, and Robin
Winks. As befits a position with such diverse and distinguished prede-
cessors, the Eastman electors do not find it necessary to provide cur-
rent chairholders with detailed instructions as to what they are
expected to do. My own letter of appointment specified only “partici-
pation in twenty-four academic functions during the three terms of
the academic year.” It then added, accurately enough as I discovered,
“that the Eastman Professor enjoys considerable scope for flexibility in
adjusting the pedagogical activities in combination with scholarly proj-
ects which the holder may wish to pursue.”
Confronted with so much latitude in so congenial a setting, I was
at first at a loss to know how to use my time. One possibility, I sup-
pose, would have been simply to dine: high table at Oxford is defi-
nitely an “academic function.” Another would have been to spend the