Stark's Ravings On Reason

Back in January I discussed a review of Rodney Stark's triumphalist The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Lead to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success by Alan Wolfe who describes the book as "the worst book by a social scientist that I have ever read." The current issue of Historically Speaking: The Bulletin of the Historical Society offers three similar indictments of Stark's foray into history.

Jack Goldstone (George Mason School of Public Policy:

It pains me to say that the results [of Stark's investigations] are a tissue of gross historical errors and illogical conclusions. It is hard to know where to begin. His numerous mistakes on the history of technology? Serrious errors about the role and importance of capitalism? Or his wholly false conclusions about the role of Christianity and capitalism in world history?

Joel Mokyr (Northwestern):

Rodney Stark argues that Christianity created Reason and Reason created the Rise of the West. If Reason means anything, it must mean that hypotheses need to be confronted by facts and rejected if the facts prove inconsistent. It also means that we take Einstein's famous dictum that "everything should be made as simple as possible but not simpler" seriously. By those tests, Stark's essay seems as good evidence against his hypothesis as can be found, since whatever else one can find in it, Reason is not it.

Ricardo Duchesne (University of New Brunswick):

[H]is essay sprays out too many sweeping statements about medieval Europe's technological superiority over the rest of the world that can only be judged as expressions of someone not familiar with world economic history.

There's a total of eleven of three-column pages of this critique. In reply, Stark offers a meagre half page "rejoinder" which does say much beyond "I'm right, you're wrong". In attempting to nullify a point made by Goldstone regarding the Aztecs, Stark falls back on their "surpass[ing] the Spanish in the matter of human sacrifices ... this supports my view that not all religions are equally compatible with the celebration of reason." Reason, eh? Dare I mention the Inquisition, the witch trials, parading relics of the saints and suchlike around Europe, and so on? As Wolfe noted in January, Stark exhibits historical blinders, only seeing what he wants to see in his "Christian" version of history.