When pop history bombs: a response to Malcolm Gladwell
I quite like Malcolm Gladwell. Here's why:<p>I view empirical truth as having layers. There is one objective truth, of course, but there are higher-order concentric rings of abstractions above those that aren't strictly true but serve as an accurate enough first-order approximation of the truth.<p>The clichéd example of this would be the Bohr model of atoms being the first "ring" of truth, and quantum mechanics being a second or third "ring". Another example would be "everything revolves around the earth" -> "everything revolves around the sun" -> "Newtonian gravity" -> "Einsteinian general relativity".<p>As a first-order approximation of the truth, Gladwell is fine. There are serious criticisms of him in this article that may cause me to rethink this, but as long as they aren't full-on manipulations of reality, I view them as a useful entry point into a subject.<p>Nuanced and rigorous history requires careful and objective study to truly understand. Gladwell, on the other hand, I can read in the bathtub with a cold beer. He's fun in a way that the more academic approach to history necessarily can't be (unless there is a Feynman-esque character writing history books that I'm not aware of?)