Big History: Buckle, Taine, and Du Bois-Reymond

Big history is back—back, that is, if we believe Jo Guldi and David Armitage, whose manifesto suggests that we should return to the grand narratives of Voltaire, Gibbon, Hegel, Comte, and Marx (for those who read) and Sir Kenneth Clarke, Jacob Bronowski, Carl Sagan, and Neil deGrasse Tyson (for those who don’t). In light of Guldi and Armitage’s polemic, I propose to discuss some lesser-known exponents of the genre: Henry Thomas Buckle (1821-1862) in England, Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893) in France, and Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896) in Germany. Now dismissed as shallow positivists, these thinkers once enjoyed great renown, combining immense erudition, provocative theses, and elegant style in works that found a large critical response. In reviewing their contributions, I’d like to pay particular attention to the effect they had on professional history. My contention is that the challenge of their writings pushed much of our discipline into a fortress of context from which it has yet to emerge.