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William Hardy McNeill war ein US-amerikanischer Historiker kanadischer Abstammung.

✵ 31. Oktober 1917 – 8. Juli 2016
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William Hardy McNeill: Zitate auf Englisch

“An irresistible cycle seemed to operate, repeating patterns of the ancient world where civil strife and war brought disaster… I surmised that patterned and predictable changes were in turn rooted in the very nature of civilization—the ineluctable breaker of custom and eroder of moral codes, and itself a product and expression of rapid technological and social change.”

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William H. McNeill

The Pursuit of Truth: A Historian's Memoir (2005)

“The Chinese language lacked terms capable of conveying Buddhist meanings; and not until the fifth century did a handful of scholars become sufficiently at home in both Chinese and Indian learning to be able to translate Buddhist texts into Chinese with a modicum of adequacy. …the novel and initially alien outlook of the Indian faith had somehow to come to terms with the various strands already woven into Chinese culture, ranging… from Confucian and Taoist learning to local sub-literate peasant magic. …while accommodating themselves to older Chinese expectations, Buddhist doctrines and practices simultaneously widened and redefined traditional Chinese sensibilities and aspirations.”

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William H. McNeill buch The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community

The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1963)

“Categories of understanding along with everything else alter as societies change.”

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William H. McNeill

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

“I came away from the two science surveys superficially acquainted with what was already a rather old-fashioned version of contemporary natural science. Relativity and quantum mechanics were mentioned… but not explained; the stars were still eternal; and both subatomic particles and biochemistry were discreetly omitted. …The two courses persuaded me that, in some sense, I understood the natural world. The illusion endured, for later in life… I tagged along by reading popular accounts, believing that the natural world out there was somehow within my reach, even without the mathematics that made quantum mechanics so mysteriously plausible.”

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William H. McNeill

The Pursuit of Truth: A Historian's Memoir (2005)

“The practical basis of the medical profession rested on psychology. Everyone felt better when self-confident, expensive experts could be called in to handle a vital emergency. Doctors relieved others of the responsibility for deciding what to do. As such, their role was strictly comparable to that of the priesthood, whose ministrations to the soul relieved anxieties parallel to those relieved by medical ministrations to the body.”

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William H. McNeill

Quelle: Plagues and Peoples (1976), Ch.6 "The Ecological Impact of Medical Science and Organization since 1700".

“I am old enough to remember well the depression years of the middle 1930s, when economists were quite unable to agree on what public policy should be, and when President Hoover, in need of advice, turned by preference to sociologists to study and illuminate recent social trends. The circumstances of the 1980s seem similar; perhaps contemporary confusions and dismay will mark the dethronement of economics from its privileged place among the social sciences — but perhaps not.”

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William H. McNeill

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

“Predictive social science does not exist. Indeed, it seems to me that it cannot ever exist, since the behaviour to be predicted reacts to and is partly shaped by the words used by the predictors.”

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William H. McNeill

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

“Towards the close of the eighteenth century, Johann Gottfried Herder boldly proclaimed this idea, asserting that each age and every people embody ideals and capacities peculiar to themselves, thus allowing a fuller and more complete expression of the multiform potentialities of humankind than could otherwise occur. Herder expressly denied that one people or civilization was better than another. They were just different, in the same way that the German language was different from the French.”

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William H. McNeill

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

“The principle obstacle to human dominion over the rain forests is still the rich variety of parasites lying in wait for intruders.”

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William H. McNeill

Quelle: Plagues and Peoples (1976), Ch.1 "Man the Hunter".

“In Korea and Japan, the Chinese example began to find fertile ground as the political and social organization or those regions developed toward civilized complexity. Buddhist monks became the principle carriers of high Chinese culture to Korea and Japan. …The Chinese model, while of the utmost importance, never eclipsed the local differences that made Japan always and Korea sometimes so distinct from China as properly to constitute a separate civilization.”

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William H. McNeill buch The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community

The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1963)

“Birth control may in time catch up with death control. …But for the present and the short-range future, it remains obvious that humanity is in course of one of the most massive and extraordinary ecological upheavals the planet has ever known. …a sequence of sharp alterations and abrupt oscillations in existing balances between microparasitism and macroparasitism can therefore be expected in the near future as in the recent past.”

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William H. McNeill

Quelle: Plagues and Peoples (1976), Ch.6.

“Ssu-ma Ch'ien's many-volumed history of China established the frame within which Chinese history continued to be written almost to the present day. Ssu-ma Ch'ien accepted and made canonical the theory that each dynasty began with an especially virtuous ruler and then gradually dissipated that virtue until Heaven lost patience and substituted a new dynasty in its place.”

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William H. McNeill buch The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community

The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1963)

“With the historicization of the heavens the age-old idea of discovering universal laws of behavior applicable everywhere and always seems to have lost plausibility, whether for sub-atomic particles or for human beings. …all such patterns and regularities, it seems to me, should be understood to be limited, local, evanescent — including, now, even the laws of physics.”

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William H. McNeill

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

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