Comes now an ill-written account of the work of economic historian Gregory Clark. Nicholas Wade’s “In Dusty Archives, a Theory of Affluence” is one of the gobbledy-gookiest things that I’ve read in the Times in a long time, but it’s typical of the paper’s ability to make hash of new ideas. The first paragraph recites the passage of some (mostly Western) cultures from “abject poverty” to “amazing affluence” via “the industrial revolution” – a revolution that has never been satisfactorily explained. (Why did it happen where and when it did?) Here is the second paragraph:

Historians and economists have long struggled to understand how this transition occurred and why it took place only in some countries. A scholar who has spent the last 20 years scanning medieval English archives has now emerged with startling answers for both questions.

Suffice it to say that Dr Clark theorizes that Malthusian pressures on the English population led to genetic changes favoring the nonviolence, self-discipline, and ability to save that characterize the middle classes. It’s an interesting idea, and quite possibly correct. But Mr Wade’s second paragraph is so deadly that few readers will get far enough to form an opinion. Who cares about scholars spending twenty years in the archives? Give us the sexy bit: human evolution, which most people seem to think of as having ceased, proceeds as we speak! 

Five thousand years, ago, scientists say, everyone was lactose-intolerant.  Adults could not digest milk. Then God created Denmark and Holland. It didn’t take long for Man to invent Ice Cream.

Maybe this is the problem with newspapers: where a magazine such as The New Yorker would write up Dr Clark’s ideas, the Times is more interested in the academic debate surrounding them. The debate is “news.” Everyone seems to agree that Dr Clark has made some rock-solid findings, but not everyone agrees with his interpretation. The Times projects the debate about that interpretation, which may be lively enough to insiders, ahead of the interpretation itself. General readers who are unfamiliar with Dr Clark’s theories, however, are unlikely to care about the debate. 

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
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