Jared Diamond
Jared Diamond
Jared Mason Diamondis an American scientist and author best known for his popular science books The Third Chimpanzee; Guns, Germs, and Steel; Collapse; and The World Until Yesterday. Originally trained in physiology, Diamond is known for drawing from a variety of fields, including anthropology, ecology, geography and evolutionary biology. As of 2013, he is a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles...
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth10 September 1937
CityBoston, MA
fun people leisure
I'd rather spend my leisure time doing what some people call my work and I call my fun.
science reality discovery
We scientists have fantasies of being uniquely qualified to make great discoveries. Alas, reality is cruel: most of us are replaceable. For the vast majority of scientific contributions, if scientist X hadn't achieved it that year, scientist Y would have achieved the same result or something very similar soon thereafter.
mean technology today
Technology causes problems as well as solves problems. Nobody has figured out a way to ensure that, as of tomorrow, technology won't create problems. Technology simply means increased power, which is why we have the global problems we face today.
home civilization conquest
Civilization originates in conquest abroad and repression at home.
agriculture adoption way
The adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered.
children real heart
But this was the only way of life that humans knew for their first 6m years on the planet. In giving it up over the past few thousand years, we have lost our vulnerability to disease and cold and wild animals, but we have also lost good ways to bring up children, look after old people, stave off diabetes and heart disease and understand the real dangers of everyday life.
christian kings pride
When you have seen the errors in which you live, you will understand the good that we have done you by coming to your land by order of his Majesty the King of Spain. Our Lord permitted that your pride should be brought low and that no Indian should be able to offend a Christian.
native-american gun steel
It invites a search for ultimate causes: why were Europeans, rather than Africans or Native Americans, the ones to end up with guns, the nastiest germs, and steel?
disaster blueprints elites
A blueprint for disaster in any society is when the elite are capable of insulating themselves.
focus important problem
The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem!
australia isolated continents
Australia is the most isolated continent.
practice littles fads
All human societies go through fads in which they temporarily either adopt practices of little use or else abandon practices of considerable use.
ignorance past iron
The past was still a Golden Age, of ignorance, while the present is an Iron Age of willful bliss.
years development lasts
Why did human development proceed at such different rates on different continents for the last 13,000 years?