My take on change over time
In recent weeks, I have described how workers in the British Industrial Revolution (1750-1850) were wrenched out of their slow, agriculturally paced existence into an unpleasant, time-dominated factory life. Eventually, they accepted that pressured life.
I offered two forces that encouraged them to accept it. Now I have a third. Continue reading “Workers Unite: ‘The Transforming Power of the Cross’”
In a previous post I critiqued an author for wasting enormous talent trying to write something “new.” In this column I will discuss three books that ushered in new ways of thinking, but did it better. These books aren’t easy reading, but their density is proportional to their content. (I can cover three books because praise takes less space than criticism.) Two were readings assigned in class; the other was recommended.
The Stripping of the Altars by Eamon Duffy[1] overturned decades, perhaps centuries, of stultifying complacency about the Protestant Reformation in England (including my own). Duffy challenged the widespread presumption that the Reformation brought a true and purified religion to a country gripped by ritual, magic and saint worship—in other words, the Catholic Church.
While the title refers to the destruction of the traditional church under Protestant kings Henry VIII and Edward VI, more than half the book is devoted to describing Christianity before the Reformation. Duffy shows how the Catholic Church was woven into the texture of people’s lives through holy days, celebrations, pageants, processions, veneration of saints, deathbed donations, prayers, and, above all, the miraculous Eucharist. Overseeing that world and everyone in it were the saints, from the Virgin Mary to little-known local martyrs, all of whom could help people in various kinds of trouble. Continue reading “Three Good Books That Revised History”
Years ago, as a young economics professor, my husband served on a history student’s advisory committee. At the student’s dissertation defense, the historians asked detailed questions about the paper. My husband asked, “What is the theory behind your findings?” The student stammered an answer and my husband concluded that historians don’t think much of theories.
I won’t address whether historians have theories right now, but, rather, discuss economists’ theories about how people make decisions. Some are simple: Incentives matter, so when something becomes more costly (in money, effort, or pain), people usually want less of it. Another is opportunity cost: something may have value, such as sitting on the lawn on a nice day, but its opportunity cost is high if it means missing an interview for a good job.
Economists apply their theories to all kinds of human behavior. In my historical research on primogeniture in the Middle Ages, I came across a bold and bracing paper, “An Economic Analysis of the Protestant Reformation.“[1] The economist authors tried to figure out why some regions in Europe became Protestant and why others stayed Catholic. They hypothesized that some European countries were more open to Protestantism than others: “societies characterized by the decline of feudalism and relatively unstable distribution of wealth” would welcome Protestantism, while “more homogeneous, rent-seeking societies that were mostly dissipating rather than creating wealth” would reject it. Continue reading “Historians Have Facts, Economists Have Theories?”