Buckle

I searched my blog-prep blog for the word civilization. First to come up was an unfinished post named "Buckle?" from a year ago, March 2019. Two years ago.

"Buckle?" I echoed...

At JSTOR, an article from 1947: Toynbee and the Decline of Western Civilization by Theodore A. Sumberg. From the first page of Sumberg's article:

... for speculative grandeur and great moral significance, Toynbee's philosophy of history is worthy of standing alongside the visions of the historical process of Augustine, Hegel, Marx, and Buckle.

According to Wikipedia, Henry Thomas Buckle was the son of Thomas Henry Buckle.

Henry Thomas Buckle (24 November 1821 – 29 May 1862) was an English historian, the author of an unfinished History of Civilization, and a strong amateur chess player. He is sometimes called "the Father of Scientific History".
...
Buckle's fame rests mainly on his History of Civilization in England. It is a gigantic unfinished introduction, of which the plan was, first to state the general principles of the author's method and the general laws that govern the course of human progress...

 The article lists ten "chief ideas" of Buckle's History. Among these:

That, owing partly to the want of ability in historians, and partly to the complexity of social phenomena, extremely little had as yet been done towards discovering the principles that govern the character and destiny of nations, or, in other words, towards establishing a science of history;

Some friction there, between Buckle and other historians. Reminds me of Toynbee, whose abridged work opens with these words:

Historians generally illustrate rather than correct the ideas of the communities within which they live and work...

 Another of those chief ideas from Buckle's History:

That climate, soil, food, and the aspects of nature are the primary causes of intellectual progress: the first three indirectly, through determining the accumulation and distribution of wealth, and the last by directly influencing the accumulation and distribution of thought, the imagination being stimulated and the understanding subdued when the phenomena of the external world are sublime and terrible, the understanding being emboldened and the imagination curbed when they are small and feeble;

Climate and soil and food are not high on my list. I go directly to "the accumulation and distribution of wealth", which is determined more by time and compound interest than by climate, soil, and food.

Also, I think Buckle's "intellectual progress" (in the context of the history of civilizations) is very much like a successful response in Toynbee's "challenge and response": It's what keeps civilization moving forward. So now, I'm more interested in what Buckle had to say.

Number 10 on Wikipedia's list of chief ideas confirms this view of intellectual progress:

That the progress of civilization varies directly as "scepticism", the disposition to doubt and to investigate, and inversely as "credulity" or "the protective spirit", a disposition to maintain, without examination, established beliefs and practices.

One more of those chief ideas:

That religion, literature and government are, at the best, the products and not the causes of civilization;

No question there.

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I see Project Gutenberg has three volumes of History of Civilization in England available for download.

I see that Part One is listed "Among my Favorites" at Excursions into Libertarian Thought. For what that's worth.