The Dynamic John Lewis Gaddis on the Ecological Approach to History

Before diving into my thoughts on the first four chapters of John Lewis Gaddis’s The Landscape of History, a forward seems appropriate.

Growing up in a Catholic household, I have been steeped in myth and fairytales from cradle to college. However, as teenagers often do, I grew to be suspicious of myths. I favored hard science and empirically verifiable truths over myths, but then I learned that myths do not aim to communicate truths in the same way a science theory does. Myths exist to communicate truths about the human condition. For instance, one lesson the myth of Genesis communicates is how the world was created as an intentional act of love; the “seven days” are simply artistic flare. 

Doesn't have to be this way, does it?

This phenomenon is exactly what author C.S. Lewis references when he says, “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” Fairytales (and here I use fairytales and myths interchangeably) seek to communicate truths about the human condition. With maturity, I find it easier to ascertain the truth to be found in myth. I was reminded of this when I was reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings when the character Gandalf says, “Hobbits really are amazing creatures. You can learn all there is to know about their ways in a month, and yet after a hundred years they can still surprise you.” Substitute hobbits with humans, and you arrive at a simple yet important truth— humans are dynamic.

The ever-wise Gandalf 

With this simple truth in mind, one part of Gaddis’s work stood out to me— the ecological approach to human affairs/history. Gaddis defines the ecological approach to human affairs as the study of human affairs that “values the specification of simple components… [and] considers how components interact to become systems whose nature can’t be defined merely by calculating the sum of their parts” (55). In other words, the ecological approach identifies individual components of a system, and goes a step farther in identifying how the components interact to create the system. This approach allows many variables to exist without compromising lucidity. Gaddis posits that the ecological approach should be applied to history. To understand how this approach works in history, think of how the American Revolution started. A historian using the ecological approach would identify the various causes of the American revolution, (economic distress, geographic distance, lack of American representation in Parliament, etc) and show how these possibly innumerable causes work together to culminate into the start of the American Revolution.

You weren't expecting this, were you? Ahhh, human dynamism.

What is most remarkable about Gaddis’s ecological approach is how it accounts for humanity’s dynamism. For this reason, I think Gaddis is really onto something grand. I look forward to reading the rest of his book.