determinism

By assigning personal attributes to birth cohort, generationism tends to undermine personal responsibility.

How historians changed their approach, from the 1960s to the present.

Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing.

The US military’s greatest enemy worked in an institution saturated with military funding. How did it shape his thought?

His “Clash of Civilizations” essay in Foreign Affairs turned 30 this year. It was provocative, influential, manna for the modern right—and completely and utterly not true.

The rise and rise and rise of data.

Two new books model radically different ways of studying the past.

A new book provides a framework that engages with “big history” or “deep history” while avoiding explanations that flirt with forms of determinism.

Our ethics and desires can shape digital networks at least as forcefully as those networks influence us.

The past and present of counterfactual history, from antiquity to the Napoleonic Wars to a few very active subreddits.

In the 1970s, a crop of books purporting to provide a scientific basis for gender inequality met sharp criticism from figures like Gould.

Which public figures impacted baby naming trends?

At universities, American Marxism has led to good scholarship, but it’s also encouraged hyper-specialization and the use of impenetrable jargon.

Modernization theory and the delusions of American strategy.

The project's editor falsifies the history of American history-writing, openly embracing the privileging of “narrative” over “actual fact.”

Board games invite discussions of counterfactuality and contingency, resisting the teleology and determinism that are so common to looking backward in time.

Sweeping the human story into a cosmic tale is a thrill but we should be wary about what is overlooked in the grandeur.

Illuminating a path forward.