While much of the coverage of widespread outbreaks of disease tends to focus on the immediate effects being seen, those who take a more historical view of the world well know that even larger changes – perhaps even paradigm-shifting ones – are often seen in the aftermath of pandemics. Prof. James Belich’s “The World the Plague Made” presents his examination the Black Death of the European Middle Ages and the changes it brought to the world.
While unified global theories of everything are often problematic, particularly when humans are involved, there is still some reason to give cautious consideration to commonalities across national boundaries as well as over extended periods of time. Of course, it is all-too-easy to fall into teleological errors when assessing changes in societies, yet when care is taken to focus on the causes rather than the purposes for the observed results, asking such questions as “What makes the modern world work?” are entirely reasonable.
I’m not entirely sure just what the meaning behind the name of the alternative rock music group Ben Folds Five is (particularly as it was apparently a trio), but in the case of Mark Avery’s most recent Sunday Book Review in which he takes Dieter Helm’s newly published “Net Zero: How We Stop Causing Climate Change” from HarperCollins UK, five fold is how Mark describes his reasons for recommending the book.